New York City Planning Commissioner, Amanda Burden
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-11-19/new-york-city-planning-commissioner-amanda-burden
Amanda Burden might be the most influential figure in New York City government, after Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As New York City Planning Commissioner for the past decade, she has spearheaded efforts to re-zone a huge swath of New York and reclaim its waterfront. While Burden focuses on those grand ambitions, she is also dedicated to details that make "streetscapes" work. Her supporters call her a visionary who will leave behind a much-improved city. But critics worry she’s creating gentrified neighborhoods that no longer welcome the working class. Diane talks with Amanda Burden about her role as the city’s planning commissioner and lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy.
Guests
Amanda Burden
director of New York City Department of Planning.
Photo Gallery: Planning New York City's Streetscape
Images courtesy of the New York City Department of Planning. All rights reserved.
Comments
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NYC has an emerging urban farming/urban homesteading movement. Perhaps encouraging green roofs, community gardening, and care for the environment could be in order.
As a certified permaculture practicioner, the aforementioned will definitely make a difference. In addition to the three permaculture ethics--Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, this will make things much better for individuals and as a collective.
20% affordable housing? Why so little?
Yes, the brownstones are beautiful in that neighborhood, but folks who live in that neighborhood are by no means wealthy.
Puh-leeze! I don't buy the Donald Trump explanation that your guest has given at all. Why are the rules different for him?
How about allowing folks convert their front lawns as an area to grow food (i.e. raised beds, fruit and nut trees)? This will help alleviate the so-called "hunger crisis".
Ms. Burden,
I'm in the process of reading Robert Caro's book about Robert Moses. Diane initially described you as a power broker in New York. Do you, or anyone else, have the same level of authority that he had for decades in creating the parks, parkways and highways in New York?
Ms. Burden, can you please help us in Cleveland?
Amanda Burden is to be commended for her accessibility and openness to public input and concerns. Queens freight rail needs your attention. Turning rail property into parks at a point when the city wants to use more freight rail is a contradiction. What this does is force more freight traffic -- including the city's municipal solid waste -- into the same, limited, dirty, old freight rail system. Expansions of the passenger rail system have chipped away at freight rail facilities, tracks, and hours of operation. A major example is the East Side Access project, which has cut off access to Sunnyside Yards and the Montauk Cutover. The result is that some neighborhoods are favored and others are forgotten, with more of the city's and region's burdens pushed on them. Queens neighborhoods are being turned into trash transfer stations, as railroads do as they please in the absence of appropriate state and federal regulations-- for example mandating hard lids on open rail cars of construction and demolition debris. All the waste from Sandy that is shipped by rail will come into one 10-acre, 15-track rail yard--Fresh Pond Terminal/Yards--in Queens. The locomotives in use (owned by the State of New York) are old, high polluting, Tier 0 engines. More attention needs to be paid to upgrading freight rail and bringing back alternatives--more routes, classification yards, and marine transportation (barging). With the rise in sea level and the damage to land-based transport, it makes sense to use more marine transport in coastal NYC.
"Is climate change real?"
What is "real"?
This planet changes constantly - is that real?
Man creates things that Mother Earth destroys - not of conscious intent just because that is the way it is.
To waste time, energy and federal reserve notes debating "why" changes are happening Man needs to understand that this planet grows and changes and Man can not make that stop.
It matters not "why" what really matters is how Man figures out how to live with the changes.