By Aaron Naparstek
naparstek@nypress.com

In the bloodsport of New York City real estate development, city planners are supposed to function as the referees. In theory, planners mediate between the aggressive, profit-focused real estate developers and the protective, neighborhood NIMBYs. In practice, New York City's referees kick back and watch Team Developer commit hard fouls and run up the score. When urban planning is working, it helps these inherently conflicting parties come to terms with each other and establishes a solid framework for healthy, long-term growth. When urban planning isn't working, you get New York City 2005: a city planned by and for real estate developers.

One of the most important tools for the planner is the environmental-impact statement. But in New York these days, the EIS process has become little more than a speed bump on the road to big development. The Hudson Yards EIS evaluating Mayor Bloomberg's West Side stadium proposal is a prime example. "The transportation analysis and environmental review is faulty," says Kate Slevin, associate director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. To smooth the way for the project, "it underestimates traffic impacts and overestimates transit usage" of future stadium patrons. Her organization is suing the city over the numbers. In New York, urban planning by lawsuit is almost the norm.

With the MTA spiraling into insolvency, Slevin believes that the city needs to start asking more of developers. She cites the Red Hook IKEA as a major missed opportunity. The nearest subway station to the IKEA, the F line's Smith-9th Street stop, has been in decrepit condition for years. Recently, the MTA announced that it may not have enough money for a long-planned station renovation. The MTA has also raised the possibility of reducing bus service to transit-poor Red Hook. "IKEA is a huge company," Slevin says. "Why not ask them to give some money back to a struggling transportation system that is ultimately going to serve their business?"

This isn't unreasonable. In 2004 IKEA hauled in $15.4 billion in revenue. Out in suburbia, the giant Swedish retailer is willing to drop $50 million on a highway off-ramp and road improvements. For that kind of money, Brooklyn could have gotten a renovated subway station, a stretch of waterfront greenway, and serious neighborhood traffic-calming. But with city planning AWOL and community opponents' vocabulary limited to the word "no," Brooklyn got nothing but a big box on the waterfront and lots of future traffic congestion.

Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, puts the boom into perspective. "For 350 years the story of New York is one of continuous flux, transition, and growth. We are just coming out of a quarter century of unusually slow development. In a way, things are just getting back to normal."

Over the last 15 years, New York City had the fastest-growing urban population in the U.S. Officially we added 750,000 residents. Including the undocumented, the real number is a couple hundred thousand more. With the rapid influx of immigrants and "every 24-year-old in the country" wanting to live in New York, "we filled up most of the vacant lots and old houses that were abandoned in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The easy stuff to develop is gone," Yaro says. In the next 15 to 20 years, planners expect New York City to grow by an additional 1.5 million residents. "Where do we put at least half a million additional housing units?" Yaro asks. "Obviously, some places need to be rezoned, like the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront."

Necessary though it may be, the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning is shaping up as yet another example of weak planning and missed opportunities. The rezoning fails to create meaningful amounts of guaranteed affordable housing, closes off the waterfront to the public, neglects transportation infrastructure, and allows the neighborhood's light industrial job base to wither and die. The rezoning appears designed almost exclusively to foster the development of high-rise luxury condominiums.

Planning doesn't have to go this way. Yaro looks across the pond to England where Mayor Ken Livingstone's "creative, comprehensive, long-term" London Plan shows another way.

"They're figuring out where to put the next million residents and have some very thoughtful strategies on how to do that. Half of the new housing units built in the next 10 years will be affordable. They're setting high targets to give the city leverage to push for a much greater amount from private developers. And they're developing citywide standards for development on the neighborhood level, something we've never had in New York."

In other words, the London Plan gives that city's planners the tools they need to referee the game.

Meanwhile, here in New York City, the referees don't even have a whistle. "Too often the city has allowed the planning process to begin when the developer's proposal comes in," says Yaro. "It doesn't have to be this way."