Behind-the-Scenes Expert

Jeffrey Gold is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to community planning. He can talk at length about everything from transportation and health care policy to the environment and development. But when he is asked about his accomplishments in the neighborhood, Gold can be at a loss for words, if not downright modest. â??I"ve never claimed to be that successful, he said, â??because the neighborhood is not where I want it to be. Certainly not every battle has been a victory, but he"s an informed voice in the debate nonetheless. Gold convened education forums during Mayor Michael Bloomberg"s push for congestion pricing, which would have charged drivers a fee for entering certain parts of Manhattan. His nonprofit, the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, in collaboration with labor negotiator and transit advocate Theodore Kheel, created a plan for congestion pricing that would have allowed the city to offer free public transit. A decade before recent work started on the Second Avenue subway, Gold and his nonprofit supported a proposal for a Second Avenue light rail. Recently, he has worked with activists and elected officials who want to ban natural gas drilling near the city"s upstate drinking water source. His advocacy often goes far beyond the Upper East Side. â??So much of our life is controlled by Albany and D.C., Gold said. â??That"s why we try to balance local activism with national or statewide [advocacy]. Gold, a 53-year-old Brooklyn native, graduated from Hampshire College with a degree in planning. His knowledge of transit stems from his days as a journalist for community weeklies and trade magazines on architecture. When covering a meeting of nongovernmental organization in Europe, he was shocked to meet people who wanted to develop around the automobile. â??I came back to the U.S. sort of shell-shocked and said we need to do something about this, Gold said. â??If we can"t be a demonstration model in New York City, where we do have a transportation structureâ?¦ he paused and added, â??God we"re doomed. Gold became a board member at Transportation Alternatives, a group that promotes walking, bicycling and public transit. In 1980, he moved to the Upper East Side after finding a rent-regulated apartment. State Sen. Liz Krueger calls Gold a â??walking encyclopedia who"s been a great help to staffers. â??Someone will go to a transportation forum and Jeff would have really good information on public transportation. They"ll see him at a health care reform forum. I"ll laugh and say, â??Yeah it"s the same one," Krueger said. She applauded Gold"s willingness to make policy recommendations and educate East Siders's without expecting praise. â??He"s the last person I"ve ever met who would seek out attention for the work he is doing in some kind of self-congratulatory way, Krueger said. But Gold says he doesn"t deserve special gratitude, as his work is often collaborative and he has a more â??selfish goal: â??I want to live in a neighborhood that"s more humane, that"s more livable, he said. â??It"s not entirely altruistic.