September 11, 2013
by: Bill Millard
(l-r): Matt Chaban, Real Estate Editor, New York Daily News; Robert Jackson, Council Member; Julie Menin, Former Chair of Manhattan Community Board #1; AIANY 2013 President Jill N. Lerner; Gale Brewer, Council Member; AIANY 2013 Vice-President/President-elect Lance Jay Brown, FAIA; and AIANY Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIACredit: Camila Schaulsohn
The Manhattan Borough President candidates spoke about their views on land use and development issues. (l-r): AIANY Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIA; Julie Menin, Former Chair of Manhattan Community Board #1; Robert Jackson, Council Member; Gail Brewer, Council Member; Matt Chaban, Real Estate Editor, New York Daily NewsCredit: Camila Schaulsohn
After the event, audience members had a chance to speak to the candidates.Credit: Camila Schaulsohn
After the event, audience members had a chance to speak to the candidates.Credit: Camila Schaulsohn
After the event, audience members had a chance to speak to the candidates.Credit: Camila Schaulsohn

“Everything is political,” a wise person once said, “but politics isn’t everything.” In the first explicitly campaign-oriented event to be held at the Center for Architecture, three Democratic candidates for Manhattan Borough President (all of the major aspirants to succeed BP Scott Stringer except Council Member Jessica Lappin, who had a scheduling conflict) sparred over master plans, housing policy, rezoning, and more, finding certain areas of agreement but offering sharply contrasting profiles. The AIANY’s Platform for the Future of the City suggests that the local architectural community is ready not only to offer expertise, but to pose challenging questions about design, infrastructure, and social policy. If this lively one-hour conversation is any indication, elected officials are eager to reach out to New York’s architects –- at least to put their own positions forward.

Moderator Matt Chaban, whose move from Crain’s to the Daily News was announced last month, launched the proceedings with the topic often identified as the city’s most urgent need: affordable housing. Council Member Robert Jackson noted that perennial long-shot mayoral and gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, running on little besides his famous slogan, “Rent is too damn high,” has nevertheless drawn as many as 38,000 votes. McMillan may not be a serious contender, but he illuminates a deeply held concern that should be a high priority for the next BP (any one of whom, AIANY Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIA, noted, could be a potential future mayor). Jackson, perhaps best known for walking 150 miles to Albany to win support for a suit that ultimately secured a disputed amount of school funding, compared federal underfunding of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to neglectful parenting (“If NYCHA was a father or mother abandoning its children, it would be put in jail”), and called attention to particular exemplary projects, such as the amenity-rich Sugar Hill affordable-housing building opening next year.

Former Community Board 1 Chair Julie Menin clashed with Jackson over her central idea, proposing a full-fledged master plan for the city for the first time since the Lindsay Administration (defining PlaNYC 2030, by omission, as a more specific sustainability plan). Menin believes a master plan can give neighborhoods more input on sensitive topics like the balance between new developments and school resources. Jackson regards a master plan as unnecessary, looking instead to existing institutions such as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure and the West Harlem Development Corporation to guide development. In reply to Chaban’s question about the role of public-private partnerships, Jackson’s contentions included a puzzling claim that communities weren’t consulted before the Citibike launch (the 159 public meetings over 18 months having apparently passed undetected).

Charging the current administration with approving too many projects without community input or purposeful planning, Menin was particularly critical of the proposed leasing of certain NYCHA infill properties to private developers, in part for reasons of process (a lack of town-hall meetings), in part because a 20% affordable segment is too small, and in part because of the undemocratic message implied by designs giving separate entrances to residents of market-rate and affordable apartments. All three speakers came out against the NYCHA infill proposal, and Council Member Gale Brewer predicted flatly that it “is not going to happen.” Menin also raised a range of policy questions regarding disaster response, downtown rebuilding, and schools.

Brewer acknowledged that the city’s recent transportation and public-space reforms had made Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan a “dart board” for controversy in some settings, then refreshingly expressed her own enthusiasm for Sadik-Khan’s achievements. Highlighting her record of support for parks, senior-friendly streetscapes, and independent neighborhood-scaled businesses (“Who needs 72 banks in their district?”), along with her successful sponsorship of the city’s Open Data Law requiring city agencies to make statistics publicly available online, Brewer struck a profile as a quietly effective problem solver dedicated to transparent government operations, a recurrent concern for all three candidates.

Overall, the event was as much a competitive presentation of positions as a design forum – as audience members could readily predict before the proceedings began, when the candidates’ staffers distributed a flurry of glossy campaign flyers. Chaban and Bell shared the difficult cat-herding role of keeping the speakers on topic, and were largely successful in curbing the inevitable tendencies to present campaign boilerplates and amplify relatively minor differences. Since AIANY has presented strong public positions through the Platform, and since both AIANY President Jill N. Lerner, FAIA, and 2014 President-Elect Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, have expressed interest in continuing to involve city officials and office seekers in the Center’s debates, the vigor and frankness displayed at this event create a promising precedent for future panels. There’s no reason why candidates for BP, City Council, or Mayor shouldn’t look regularly to the AIANY community as a critical crucible for policy formation, before and after elections.

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OculusIconContentThe Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: Manhattan Borough President Forum on Design
Location: Center for Architecture, 08.28.13
Speakers: Gale Brewer, Council Member; Robert Jackson, Council Member; Julie Menin, Former Chair of Manhattan Community Board #1; Rick Bell, FAIA, Executive Director, AIANY (Moderator and Closing Remarks); Matt Chaban, Real Estate Editor, New York Daily News (Moderator); Jill N. Lerner, FAIA, AIANY 2013 President (Opening Remarks)
Organizers: AIA New York Chapter

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