Briefing Paper
NEW
JERSEY-NEW YORK-CONNECTICUT METROPOLITAN INITIATIVE FORUM
July 29, 1997
By William B. Shore
Senior Associate, Institute
of Public Administration
[NOTE: These observations are intended to stimulate discussion, not to direct it. They are based on my 37 years of effort to improve conditions in this Tri-State Metropolitan area. Most of the data come from A Region at Risk, Regional Plan Association's Third Regional Plan, written by Robert D. Yaro and Tony Hiss (Island Press, 1996) Important contributions were made by Chris Jones of Regional Plan Association.]
SUMMARY
The New Jersey-New York-Connecticut Metropolitan Region lies not only in three states but in 31 counties and 780 municipalities. Yet it is a single economy and housing market.
Efforts to reach across these borders to strengthen the economy, broaden the housing market and improve life for the Region's now 20 million people began three-quarters of a century ago with the formation of the Port Authority and the Committee on the Regional Plan, now Regional Plan Association.
Currently, there are many plans to improve conditions. The Association's Third Regional Plan (1996) covers the area this Forum will look at, New York City and the surrounding 26 counties. New Jersey and Connecticut have state land-use plans as do most of the 26 counties outside New York City. The three states each have economic development plans and separate transportation plans; the operating public transit agencies have capital plans; there are eight Metropolitan Planning Organizations formulating transportation plans for their parts of the Region. Many cities have both economic development and land-use plans (though New York City has never prepared a land-use plan).
More unusual and exciting are the plans of low-income communities. Over the past two decades, many neighborhoods have organized and pulled themselves from deteriorating social and physical conditions to much-improved housing, safety, services and economic progress. In the South Bronx, a Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program has won an American Planning Association award for helping five Community Development Corporations plan for broad community services.
The problem is, each plan has been prepared with little or no consultation with those preparing the other plans.
How can the federal government help the New Jersey-New York- Connecticut metropolitan region move ahead? First, can it help the Region (and other urban regions) decide which direction IS ahead? Now, most urban regions of the U.S.--and certainly this one--are trying to go in opposite directions at once: (pp. 15-16)
But at the same time, as those goals are announced:
The ambivalence is symbolized by the public resisting new highways but continuing to buy and use more automobiles for more trips because the settlement pattern demands it.
So, should the federal government provide the impetus needed to launch a participation process that achieves public judgment on whether to make the changes needed to achieve recentralization, our announced goal? The changes--for many--will have to be in life style and willingness to mix with "other" people; for everyone, there will have to be a change in how we make the choices that determine the settlement pattern. Spread and scattered development requires only local and individual decisions. Recentralization will require group decisions--through business and civic organizations and governments at all levels.
Having chosen the settlement pattern, should the Region agree on a regional capital investment strategy and connect that investment to jobs and training for low-income communities? Federal fund processes can either encourage or inhibit such a regional strategy. (pp. 19-20)
The old cities and their low-income communities are in a crisis: to shift from welfare to work, people must be able to find jobs within reasonable travel time as well as being prepared to do the job. The short-term response to the crisis could be an accelerated (and much needed) capital investment program (above). The long-term response is recentralization so jobs are within their reach, not just in travel time but within their world so they can shop around for better jobs and go to college while working.
Suggestions for federal demonstration projects from this Initiative:
The federal government might initiate negotiations leading to "concurrent commitments" needed to make selected cities attractive for recentralization. Participants would be the neighborhoods, all levels of government, businesses and civic organizations. New Brunswick offers an example of how concurrent commitments can work. Newark, Jamaica (Queens) and Bridgeport would be good candidates for the demonstration. (pp. 20-21)
The Region's leaders are ambivalent about the economy-- acknowledging that the Region rises and falls together and should be working on economic development as a unit yet failing to work together and devoting millions of dollars to seducing business from one part of the Region to another. (pp. 8-10, 18-19) Should the federal government encourage and stimulate regional economic analysis and development in two ways, both appropriate for demonstration projects:
Other important federal policies
Finally, should the federal government recognize that regions like this one that are accepting huge waves of immigrants require and deserve federal assistance to accommodate them, particularly in education? Should the persistent export of this region's tax dollars through the federal government be increased by changing the fund formula of ISTEA to favor states that burn a lot of gasoline? (p. 23-24)
1. Overview
Description and Brief History: The Last 75 Years
The urbanized tri-state area around the Port of New York was publicly acknowledged as a metropolitan area in 1922 when Russell Sage Foundation formed its Committee on the Regional Plan. The area within a 50-mile radius of Times Square studied by the Committee was then mainly farm and forestland, dotted with old cities like Paterson, the oldest manufacturing center in the U.S., Newark, a small version of New York, Stamford and Bridgeport, CT, also manufacturing centers, and growing suburbs along the railroads, mainly in Westchester and Nassau Counties, NY; Fairfield County, CT, (north and east of the City) and Essex, Union and Morris Counties, NJ, (to the west).
About the same time, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was established to tie the two states together with tunnels and bridges and develop the Port in a unified way.
The Committee produced The Plan of New York and Its Environs (1929, with a design volume in 1931). Its main thrust was to provide elbow room for New York City's huddled masses yearning to breathe. The planners promoted new designs for city neighborhoods, with trees and gardens, and pointed to the vast undeveloped areas between the railroad lines that could offer more living space if public transportation and roads were built there. The Plan was for orderly decentralization, at moderate city densities, built around centers of jobs and services in real communities, served by rail. The journey to work was to be by rail, the journey to play by car-- hence the promotion of parkways rather than superhighways--slow park-lined limited access roads from which commercial vehicles were barred. They would offer the city motorist a rural experience on the way to outlying parks, which the Plan successfully promoted, achieving a doubling of regional park space in 30 years. A new organization was formed to implement the Plan, Regional Plan Association.
But the depression began with the ink barely dry on the 1929 Plan. Railroads were private enterprise, and they weren't investing in new lines. Highways were public investments, a good object of government pump priming to speed the end of the depression-- especially in this Tri-State Region which had a highway plan and master builders in Robert Moses and the Port Authority. So highways were built over and under the Hudson River and into the Long Island potato fields and the Bergen County, NJ, celery fields.
When the depression and World War II ended, federal housing loan guarantees allowed two-thirds of the nation's households to afford a new home--cheaper than an apartment in the city--and housing burst onto the farmland along the already-built highways. The decentralization was anything but orderly. Houses scattered in small and large clumps, not as the 1929 Plan proposed. They were not in real communities built around enlarged and new downtowns served by rail.
For a few years, the new housing remained "sub" to the old city "urbs." People still depended on the main downtowns for jobs and services. But soon, suburban shopping centers blossomed--one along a New Jersey highway had a sign large enough to read at 60 mph: "We're Here Because You're Here." Manufacturers seeking enough land for one-floor operations and easy truck movements also prized the vacant land along the new highways. When the many factories had no trouble getting workers, office jobs were moved out. None of this explosive development was planned or organized, but it was still at moderate suburban densities, high enough for buses to bring commuters to the business centers that existed.
Then local elected officials discovered their power to moderate the rapid growth in school taxes. Each of the hundreds of municipal governments had land use authority, delegated to them by the states. By zoning to sharply limit the number of houses and allow businesses that paid high taxes and sent no one to school, localities would not have to strain as hard to finance education. (School taxes are nearly two-thirds of a suburban home-owner's real estate taxes.) This "fiscal zoning" accelerated the spread of housing and scatter of jobs and services and raised the cost of housing so only higher-income households could afford to live in the large-lot suburbs; that decreased new housing built because few households could afford the kind of housing that was allowed. Moderate-income households escaping the cities had to move beyond where the jobs were locating--to municipalities that hadn't yet acted to restrain school taxes with land-use controls. They still allowed homes that are attached or on small lots.
During this early postwar period, African-American and Puerto Rican households were increasing rapidly in the Tri-State Region. Low income and discrimination confined them to the old cities, where banks refused to loan money to renovate aging housing stock. These deteriorating ethnically changing neighborhoods helped to push other residents and businesses to the suburbs, further impelled in New York City by a bitter teachers' strike and in Newark by a devastating riot. When women began to choose work outside the home, more employers were attracted out of the cities, where well- educated suburban women preferred to work. This happened when many city employers were complaining that job applicants from city schools couldn't fill out their application forms.
Each individual decision was reasonable that led to creating spread and scattered development around cities that were losing their economic function and their attraction to residents. But Regional Plan Association found, in extensive public participation projects from the 1960s into the 1990s, that most people were not satisfied with the result. Particular concerns were:
Regional Plan Association responded in 1968 with its Second Regional Plan and in 1996 with the Third. Both recommended ways to recentralize economic, social and cultural activities in urban centers, primarily existing city downtowns; improved public transit in and to these centers; protection of aesthetically and environmentally important open space; a regional capital investment strategy that would speed necessary improvements and assure maintenance; and actions to expand opportunities for low-income residents, recognizing the added obstacles faced by African- Americans and immigrants. The Third Plan emphasized that if the Region failed to do all these things, it risked long-term decline in prosperity and quality of life relative to the nation.
The 1968 Plan and the actions of other civic organizations did move the Region somewhat toward more compact development with better public transit and protected natural countryside. The Tri-State area's parkland was doubled again, including the first national park in an urban area, Gateway National Recreation Area, and substantial portions of the Hudson Highlands, the hills (including part of the Appalachian Trail) that partially encircle the urbanized portion of the Region about 50 miles from Manhattan's center. Most recently, Sterling Forest, 17,500 acres of the Highlands, has been saved from development through combined federal and bi-state (NY and NJ) action.
Several old downtowns are recovering a central role: Downtown Brooklyn, Newark, Jamaica (Queens), Stamford, White Plains, New Brunswick. And actions of Regional Plan led to saving commuter railroad service when the railroad companies providing the service were going bankrupt; all three states assumed responsibility for public transit to Manhattan and some suburb-to-suburb bus service.
In the late 1950s, Democratic Mayor Robert F. Wagner of New York City and Republican County Executive Edwin Michaelian of Westchester formed the Metropolitan Regional Council, an informal assembly of NYC, suburban counties and some large suburban cities. It sponsored with Regional Plan Association a very influential Park, Recreation & Open Space Study in 1960 and joined Regional Plan in the late 1960s and early '70s to sponsor county planning meetings, which also influenced development.
In the '60s and '70s, there was a Tri-State Regional Planning Commission organized by the three states but paid for mainly by the federal government and required by the federal government to qualify for numerous federal grants and loans. It failed to have much influence on the settlement pattern, seemed threatening to some political leaders in regard to housing policy and was disbanded by the states in the early 1980s (after regional planning was no longer required by the federal government). Critical studies by Regional Plan Association (which had recommended and encouraged its formation) and by the Institute of Public Administration played a role in its demise. In the 1970s, the Metropolitan Regional Council was folded into Tri-State and died in the early '80s.
More recently, broad efforts to promote interstate cooperation have yielded discouraging results. A 1991 Regional Economic Development Compact signed by the economic development commissioners of the three states and New York City did not produce the sustained cooperative efforts that were the objectives of the compact. Similarly, other interstate agreements to refrain from luring businesses from each other's jurisdictions have not prevented states and localities from offering large incentive packages to businesses to relocate or remain in their jurisdiction. More encouraging efforts have taken place on a smaller scale, usually among municipalities within state boundaries, such as the creation of the Long Island Pine Barrens Commission and oher multi- jurisdiction agreements to balance development and environmental interests.
Current Governmental and Civic Structure of the Region
The Region we are using for discussion was delineated by Regional Plan Association in the 1960s in anticipation of substantial growth in jobs and population. (The projected growth in jobs was quite accurate; the growth in population was far below the projected continuation of the baby boom.) The Region includes New York City and the surrounding 26 counties, three in Connecticut (no longer governments but still recognized geographic entities), nine in New York, 14 in Northern New Jersey. It extends 120 miles east to the end of Long Island, 70 miles to New Haven on Long Island Sound's north shore, about 90 miles north through Dutchess (NY) and Litchfield (CT) Counties and through the Catskills to the northwest; in NJ, west to the Pennsylvania border and south to Trenton and about 90 miles south along the coast to the end of Ocean County.
Regional organizations. Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit civic organization, is the principal agency that considers policies from a Tri-State Region point of view. The Institute of Public Administration, along with several higher education institutions in all three states, is currently organizing a Regional Research Consortium to improve data and facilitate policy-relevant research. The League of Women Voters also has a Tri-State unit.
Five governmental organizations cover substantial parts of the Tri- State Region. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is responsible for interstate transportation (tunnels and bridges between New York and New Jersey and a small interstate transit system, PATH), the New York-New Jersey ocean ports and the three airports. It has carried out several economic development projects but is reducing them along with its planning activities and economic analysis. It is under continuing criticism by the City of New York. The Authority is closely controlled by the two governors, which was much less true in the 1950s and '60s under its longtime executive director Austin Tobin, when it was much more a shaper of the Region. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York operates the New York City subway and bus systems, buses in Nassau County just east of the City, toll bridges and tunnels into the City from the north and east, and the suburban railroad system on Long Island and in the northern suburbs, east into Connecticut all the way to New Haven. New Jersey Transit operates trains and buses throughout the State.
There also are two large transportation planning entities, called Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). These are required under federal transportation law, ISTEA, but the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) covers only New York City and five of the Region's nine New York State suburban counties. New Jersey Transportation Planning Agency (NJTPA) covers 13 of the Region's 14 northern New Jersey counties and Connecticut's portion of the Region has six MPOs. (To add to the confusion, Mercer County, NJ, though part of the Region with New York and Connecticut as defined here, is part of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Planning Organization.) NYMTC has been sharply criticized by USDOT for ineffectiveness. NJTPA has satisfied federal overseers that it is effectively planning with public participation, but the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a coalition of civic organizations watching over transportation policy, says NJTPA isn't very effective either in that NJ Department of Transportation often ignores its recommendations.
Counties (outside CT) have responsibilities for health and human services. Some offer public transit service, most have community colleges, all have some highway responsibilities and all have planning departments which, however, have very little authority and seldom exercise what they have. Connecticut has encouraged the organization by municipal governments of regional planning agencies. In the Tri-State Region's CT area, regional planning agencies cover most or all of the area. They function much like county planning agencies in NY and NJ--doing research and making recommendations without authority--responsible to their member muncipalities. Some are MPOs.
Local governance. The Tri-State region's 780 municipal governments have the authority to control land use, and nearly all have enacted zoning ordinances to accomplish that. There are about the same number of school districts, each with their own elected boards; in New York State, school districts were deliberately given boundaries different from municipalities to avoid mixing school and local politics. This has contributed to a weak sense of community even in the few instances in which municipal boundaries actually encompass real communities. Most municipal boundaries are unrelated to real communities.
In addition to the 1,500 municipal governments and school districts, there are hundreds of special districts providing, for example, water or sewerage. These public agencies are scarcely known or responsible to those they serve.
It is widely believed that the proliferation of local governments is one reason real estate taxes are extremely high in the Tri-State Region compared to the rest of the U.S., but there is strong resistance to consolidating either municipalities or school districts. Some small efforts are being made to share services among muncipalities and between municipalities and school districts instead of enlarging the units to a size that seems likely to optimize efficiency.
Economy
While the Region suffered a much deeper and longer recession than most of the U.S. in the early 1990s, its recovery has been much slower. Of the 770,000 jobs lost between 1989 and 1992, only 320,000 had been recovered by the end of 1996. Job growth is averaging about 1% a year, compared to more than 2% nationally. However, there was a reduction in public employment so private sector job growth is closer to the national levels. Some sectors of the regional economy--Wall Street, tourism, new media, communications technology, business services--are expanding rapidly in both profits and employment. These are primarily high-income industries that are providing much of the recent surge in state and local tax revenues. Low wage industries such as health services and retail have been expanding, but declines in manufacturing and government employment have constrained overall job growth.
One striking aspect of both the recession and the recovery has been the similarity in growth patterns in different parts of the Region. All parts declined by similar magnitudes in the early 1990s, and the recovery has been balanced between New York City and suburban areas. Although Long Island and northern New Jersey had the most rapid employment growth between 1992 and 1995, New York City was the leader in 1996 and Manhattan is clearly driving much of the Region's expansion.
The major industry clusters driving the Region's economy, as identified by DRI/McGraw Hill for Regional Plan Association, are: (1) financial services, (2) business services, (3) media services, (4) arts, culture & tourism, (4) biomedicine, (5) transportation and distribution, (6) advanced machinery and systems, (7) fashion. The Region still houses more FORTUNE 500 headquarters than any other, though it has lost many in the past 30 years. In meetings with business leaders in these clusters, three broad priorities emerged: 1. Attract and retain creative talent by improving the Region's quality of life. 2. Improve communication skills, reasoning abilities, and technical skills and continually develop skills of the existing workforce. 3. Provide "efficient infrastructure and regulatory systems, both to keep the costs of doing business competitive and to provide businesses with the flexibility to respond to rapid changes in both global and domestic markets." (Yaro & Hiss, p. 38)
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey echoed these themes in an economic report, Regional Economy, dated June, 1997, saying:
"The NY-NJ metropolitan regional economy continues to secure its stature as the world's leading global location for international business and finance, advanced business services and consulting, bio-medicine, and higher education. As a center of media and the arts, the region is successfully capitalizing on its unique image in popular culture and entertainment." (p. 9)
"...High-value service businesses [have]..been a particular strength....In 1996, management consulting and business services led...expansion....These companies have developed enduring business relationships with a large and diverse corporate headquarters base, both in the metropolitan area and around the world....The region's long-standing position as a center of creativity is again becoming a source of renewal for the economy. New multimedia and entertainment industries (including television, film production, and the arts) have begun to surge as a new source of jobs and...are reinvigorating the region's attractiveness as a 'must-visit' tourist destination." (p. 1) "Since the end of the recession, private employment growth rates throughout the bi-state area have moved largely in step--an important indicator of regional interdependence." (p. 2) "Manhattan...accounts for 42% of total...wages [in the 17-county Port Authority study area]." (p. 15)
Manhattan's raison d'etre is bringing together large numbers and a wide variety of people. So a basic issue for the whole Region's economy is whether electronics will replace face-to-face interaction in a substantial way. I had occasion a couple years ago to interview people providing expertise in telecommunications and other frontier technology and the business people who were consulting them. To a person, they said that electronic communication would not replace face-to-face, and serendipitous meetings that result when people work near each other remain important. Multimedia firms seem to confirm this by clustering-- e.g., in Tribeca, Lower Manhattan and Ft. Greene (Brooklyn).
Ecology
Over the last three decades, the Region's natural environment has seen significant improvements along with some worse conditions. While 350,000 acres of parkland has been added, urbanized land increased 60% over the 1962-1992 period, accommodating population growth of only 13%. Air quality is better than it was a decade ago, but the Region is far from complying with federal clean air standards. The harbor is cleaner than it's been for over 80 years and Long Island Sound is somewhat cleaner; some beaches have reopened after years closed by pollution. However, the Sound remains on the edge of eutrophication despite several clean-up plans. (A recent headline in Gannett Suburban Newspapers: "Lowey's efforts to clean up Sound aren't new," July 9, 1997.) Implementation of those plans requires agreement of Connecticut, New York State, New York City and the federal government.
Under ISTEA, a number of bikeways have been started. And agreements to protect watersheds (New York City-Westchester County and Long Island) through land-use protection more than through public purchase or filtration may suggest environmental and open space protection policies for the future.
Societal Change
Race and ethnicity. In 1960, seven of eight regional residents were white non-Puerto Rican. In the mid-1990s, only three-fifths are white non-Hispanic. White population has been going down in numbers as well as share of the Region. In 1970, there were 15.7 million; in 1995, 12.4 million. In the quarter century since 1970, 3.8 million white people moved out of the Region, partially replaced by natural increase of 500,000. During that quarter century, 800,000 Asians and 700,000 Hispanics have moved to the Region. Hispanics constituted 17% of the Region's population in 1995, African-Americans 16%, Asians 6%. Hispanic growth is now greater from natural increase than from immigration, and there is a small outmigration of African-Americans, but Asian immigration remains very high. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Commission projects that by 2010, white non-Hispanics will constitute just under half the population, but the other half will be split between Hispanics (about a quarter) and African-Americans and Asians (the other quarter).
Income distribution and job opportunities. Like the nation, the Region's income distribution is skewing upward. In the prosperous 1980s, the Region's wealthiest fifth increased their incomes by 40%; the Region's least-wealthy fifth by only 7%. (Port Authority figures covering only a 17-County area.)
Most of the households living in poverty are in the old cities of the Region. In the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, about a quarter of the population has income below the poverty line; in NYC as a whole and three urban NJ counties, 18%; in the rest of the Region's counties, only 5%. While those three New York City counties and inner New Jersey have gained jobs since 1992, over the past quarter century, they have lost substantial numbers while jobs were increasing primarily much farther out. A third of the jobs in the Tri-State Region are now in the outer ring of the Region's counties, at least 30 miles from the center, and inaccessible except by car. Half the households in New York City and 40% in Newark don't own cars (which would cost them about $3,000 a year to own, plus a parking and theft hassle). While the fringe counties also have the lowest housing costs, they are not low enough for underemployed households. With housing vouchers--subsidies to households allowing them to find their own housing--and help finding outlying housing, including breaking the way against racial discrimination, low-income city residents might find living in the outlying semi-rural parts of the Region feasible, and some are likely to want such a move.
The June 1997 Port Authority economic analysis said: "The regional labor market responded quickly to the improvement in jobs. For the first time since the end of the 1989-92 recession, the numbers of new entrants to the labor force kept pace with the job growth. As a result, the regional unemployment rate showed no improvement,...remaining at 6.8% While a growing labor force reinforces the region's economic expansion, the unemployment of 500,000 regional residents actively looking for work is unsettling. The region's 6.8% jobless rate far exceeded the nation's 5.4%. Of the major metropolitan areas in the U.S., only Los Angeles had a higher unemployment rate, 7.4%....The spatial distribution of new labor force and job growth affects the cost and ease with which the region taps its full productive capacity....Unemployment in New York City rose from 8.2% in 1995 to 8.8% in 1996 [as a result of a 2.8% increase in the labor force, "many more new job seekers than new jobs"]....Consequently, the City's labor force continues to have a more difficult time finding a job and typically faces a choice between lower wages or higher commuting costs, assuming that realistic transportation options are available." (p. 14)
In addition to the outmovement of jobs beyond their easy reach, low-income residents' job opportunities are further limited by: language barriers--literacy programs have long waiting lists; poor schools--usually having less money per pupil than wealthier districts; segregation in neighborhoods where not many adults have jobs and so offer few upwardly mobile models.
At a higher end of the job opportunity scale, racial segregation in suburban schools doubtless inhibits African-American progress up the economic ladder. Because suburban school districts are very small and racial integration programs have not occurred across school district lines, except small voluntary programs, this Region's schools are among the most racially segregated in America. Further, while there are many fine middle-income African-American neighborhoods in the Region, their viability is threatened by cutbacks in government and social services. Those are the employment sectors in which African-Americans received their first equal opportunities so their jobs are in large measure in those sectors.
One of the burdens on the economy and on low- and moderate-income households is the cost of housing. In 1990, 31.6% of the Region's households were paying more than 35% of their incomes in rent. The New York Times reported on July 13, 1997 (p. 6) that the average American household pays 17% of its income in rent!
Transportation and Land-Use
Transportation and land use are tightly connected. Doubtless many decisions to move corporate headquarters from Manhattan to the suburbs in the late 1960s and '70s were made on a cold commuter train platform waiting for a missing train. And waiting for a secretary in the '70s when the subway system was totally undependable. Now, subway and commuter rail service are reasonably dependable but constantly threatened by reduced subsidies and unable to invest in better service to meet the needs identified and planned for in 1967. Urban rail has been initiated or expanded with substantial federal financing in many other metropolitan areas of the U.S. in the past three decades. None of those projects comes anywhere near the benefit-cost ratio of any of the projects planned for New York City transit in 1967 and never completed.
This Region's commuter rail network is very extensive--and underused, because houses are scattered too widely to support convenient bus service, and municipalities limit parking at the stations.
Once a decision is made to locate in auto country, the expressway network is important. One reason jobs can grow rapidly far out--in addition to cheaper housing--is the network of limited access highways: 2,800 kilometers in the outer ring of counties compared to 1,265 in the older suburban counties and 184 in New York City and Hudson County.
Auto ownership naturally increases where development is widely spread so a car is needed for every trip; and vice versa, if everyone wants to use a car for every trip, development must be spread out enough to accommodate all that steel. People in New York City and Hudson County average two-thirds of a car per household; in the older suburban counties, households average one and two-thirds; and in the outer counties nearly two per household. (1994)
2. The Scan
Summary of Major Elements of the Region
Defining trends. The Region, and particularly Manhattan, are "up" now in the frequent cycle from ruling the world to New York is dead. The swings in the Region's economy and mood often obscure long-term trends and make it difficult to sustain corrective actions. This makes it particularly important to cast defining trends in terms of structural conditions that exist outside of the business cycle. Some of these are the result of globalization and technological change that are affecting all metropolitan regions; some are unique to the Tri-State Region by virtue of its status as the largest and densest region in the country; some could be influenced by public policy choices:
generations, there has been relatively little investment in new infrastructure and significant underinvestment in maintaining current systems.
Class, race and distribution issues. Low-income, low-skilled residents, especially African-Americans in old-city ghettos, are benefitting little from the current up-cycle. Along with a handful of other metropolitan areas, the Tri-State Region is absorbing the bulk of the nation's new immigrants. They contribute workforce and entrepreneurial talent but overflow the schools, housing supply and social services. Immigrants are increasing more every year: an average of 85,000 a year arrived in the 1970s, 125,000 a year in the 1980s and nearly 170,000 a year in the 1990s. An increasing number go directly to old cities and villages outside New York City, but two-thirds still come first to New York City--and tend to stay there.
Challenges and opportunities. The major challenge, Regional Plan Association concluded in formulating its Third Regional Plan, is to simultaneously restore the foundations of economic competitiveness, address persistent barriers to social equity and maintain the Region's environmental treasures. The fundamental challenge is to maintain a place that can satisfy the best and the brightest, because that's the kind of economy the Region has. Since they can find jobs anywhere, the Region must be a good place to live. And a good place to live is environmentally and socially pleasant--so the Region must solve its social, mobility and environmental problems. To do that, it must change some governance structure.
The opportunities are that New York is one of three global financial centers in a world economy increasingly global and that it's currently well loved by tourists and young people. Another opportunity is that the major information media--newspapers, radio and TV--cover the Region and so recognize the Region is real. They can be channels for communicating the concept of a region. (In 1973, every one of the then 17 television stations of the Region gave Regional Plan Association five one-hour periods to present the major issues of the Region for public understanding and response. About a million people watched each show, on the average, and some 125,000 questionnaires responded to the opinion questions asked on the TV programs. (See Regional Plan Association's Listening to the Metropolis and "The Metropolis Speaks.")
Finally, recent improvement in the economy and fiscal condition of both the Region and the nation create a period of opportunity to address long-term problems.
Goals. The Region's goals, if one is to believe the written plans of two states, several counties and Regional Plan Association, are to recentralize activities in the old downtowns and resuscitate old cities, depend more on walking and public transit, preserve natural countryside and assure opportunities for everyone. However, policy-makers frequently ignore those goals, which suggests that they don't believe the Region's population has bought into them.
Strategies. Regional Plan Association, our principal Tri-State regional organization, set out a strategy in its Third Plan. It is organized into five campaigns: greensward, centers, mobility, workforce development and governance. The Association, very small by regional planning standards, forms coalitions of like-minded organizations, issue by issue, and leads with its ideas. Each state and many localities have independent economic development strategies.
Achievements to date. Regional Plan has influenced events in the Tri-State Region remarkably for a very small civic organization, particularly in preserving open space, saving the commuter railroads and launching the three states on taking responsibility for public transit, strengthening several of the Region's old cities and educating the public on regional issues. The Port Authority, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New Jersey Transit have built and rebuilt regional transportation facilities so they are reasonably dependable. Private firms have restored ferry service in a way that suggests a future prominent role.
One of the most important developments of the past quarter century is the growth of strong community organizations in low-income city neighborhoods. They have transformed burned out areas into attractive communities with better housing, services and hope.
New York City's crime has been sharply reduced; it is now one of the nation's safest cities. That has helped bring a relaxed population outdoors and into the subways and doubtless helped the booming tourist trade.
Constraints and barriers. The governmental boundaries make any concerted policy difficult to achieve, but these barriers would be surmountable if political leaders were convinced that the public accepted the policy.
The Fundamental Issue
Many Americans are beginning to recognize that there is a fundamental issue governing the several urban problems that worry them: road congestion, rapid invasion of countryside, air pollution, racial and income segregation, job opportunities for low-income people, loss of sense of community. The issue is the settlement pattern in urban areas. Individual decisions of home- seekers, car owners, retailers, major businesses, and builders shape the settlement pattern into ever more spread and scattered development on open countryside, totally car dependent. Each individual choice is perfectly rational, but what it adds up to does not delight some metropolitan residents any more. An alternative pattern will require community action--local, state and federal.
State plans in New Jersey and Connecticut and Regional Plan Association's 1996 Plan set out the alternative: bring everyone in the community together in downtowns for business, services and enjoyment; array housing around those centers of activity as housing used to form around downtowns--in a "density gradient," high density in and around the downtown tapering off to lower and lower density as distance from the center increases. This pattern gives everyone a choice of space vs. access--trading off space in and around one's home for shorter, easier trips to where one needs or wants to go frequently--or vice versa, choosing space and long drives even to get the Sunday paper--or somewhere in between.
The pattern of strong compact downtowns surrounded by a density gradient of housing creates the strongest reason why people voluntarily choose to use public transit rather than their autos. (Pushkarev & Zupan, Public Transportation and Land-Use Policy, Indiana University Press, 1977)
Unlike most of the U.S., this Region still has a central business district with very strong magnetism, Manhattan; so we have
a demonstration of the way that downtown magnetism functions. The Region has, far and away, the most use of public transit in America. People of all incomes and ethnicity share Manhattan. New York City and those compact suburbs with good public transit to Manhattan continue to attract residents of all income levels.
By concentrating activities in the smaller downtowns surrounding Manhattan, e.g., Downtown Brooklyn, Newark, Jamaica (Queens), Stamford, White Plains, Bridgeport and others, a similar though smaller magnetism could be created there. A recent example is the new housing being built near Downtown Newark, adjacent to the four higher education institutions that were consciously clustered there to help regenerate the downtown. Now, a Performing Arts Center is being completed downtown, and people are getting together to strengthen downtown by organizing a Special Improvement District and exploring ways to increase interaction between the higher education institutions and downtown businesses.
The strong downtown pattern helps poor people in four ways: (1) bringing the best jobs and services within their reach, including good stores and higher education, (2) bringing back or keeping other people in cities and nearby suburbs to relieve growing isolation of poor households (3) keeping a mixed-income, mixed ethnic-racial society together in daily activities, and (4) increasing income available to old cities for public services by strengthening the cities' tax bases and restoring funds and volunteer services that major corporations typically provide their communities.
For everyone, strong downtowns offer these additional benefits:
Of course, after the flood of spread and scattered urbanization of the past half-century, we cannot opt for a bulldozer and wholesale reconstruction. But we can use the template as a measure of current public policies and private location decisions.
If we choose to.
It is a radical departure both from the way most Americans live and the way we make land-use and transportation decisions. And it may not be worth the trouble to most people. For many, the alternative to today's pattern would mean some loss of the convenience of having the auto always at hand (though the convenience is threatened by not knowing how long an auto trip will take). To many Americans, the car--though perhaps no longer a love object--is a security blanket. The alternative pattern also implies that people will be comfortable around "other" Americans; proliferating gated communities suggest otherwise. Spread and scattered development allows people to keep to themselves in a one-income neighborhood, widely separated from neighbors, doing business on an isolated site, shopping where only middle-income residents can conveniently reach, moving always in one's own steel box.
People may be even more resistant to the process required to change the settlement pattern: to the time required to participate in creating effective plans and to endowing agencies with authority to make them happen. Individual choice inevitably gets us spread and scatter and auto dependence. But individual choice is easy. The alternative will require us to decide together and trust that what we decide will be followed by everyone.
Over the past 35 years, governors of all three states have declared their allegiance to rebuilding in and on the old downtowns. President Clinton recently reinforced an Executive Order that has been extant since President Nixon: federal offices belong in downtowns. (Executive Order 12072) Both Connecticut and New Jersey have state plans that would require compact development based on old cities. The New Jersey plan was formulated through several years of public participation. Yet neither plan governs what municipalities do, and they have the land-use power; furthermore, state officials often ignore the state plan. There are many county plans, equally without authority, which call for the compact, downtown-centered pattern presented here as an alternative to the current trends. They fail to influence what happens either. So, the suggested change will require major mobilization of public support, and maybe people won't think it's worth the trouble.
There is a good example of government ambivalence in the Region right now, regarding the location of the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office. Jamaica once was the downtown for the Borough of Queens. It lost its central role to shopping centers in the nearby suburbs and to newer business areas in Queens, but the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation has energetically worked to regain a central role there. With tremendous effort, Greater Jamaica has won the location of York College of the City University and the regional offices of the U.S. Social Security Administration and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration there, as well the County's Civil and Family Courts, a new subway line replacing a blighting overhead "el," a new library, an arts center, refurbishment of a historic house museum, a farmer's market, new parking garages, and hundreds of apartment units in the area refurbished. It is three miles from Kennedy airport, and federal funds have been allocated for a rail connection from Jamaica Center to the airport, linking Jamaica Center's subway and Long Island Rail Road station to the airport. But the FAA wants to locate its office where employees would need cars to get to work and, from there, would have to drive to visit the airport. Plans at the preferred site call for a parking space for each employee. By contrast, in Jamaica Center, most employees could use convenient public transit. The City favors the FAA's preferred site because it would be on property the City wants to sell.
Were the principal of building in and around old downtowns firmly in everyone's mind, there would be no question that the office should locate in Jamaica Center, as the President's Executive Order seems to require. But now, a host of unimportant reasons might instead locate the FAA outside of Jamaica Center, despite all the critical social, economic and environmental arguments for strengthening downtowns.
That's the principal metropolitan issue.
Once the settlement pattern is agreed to, a regional capital investment strategy should fit it. Development and maintenance of world-class infrastructure systems are critical to the Region's continued prosperity and especially to a recentralized development pattern. The Third Regional Plan shows how funding strategies can produce long-term savings with preventive maintenance, new capacity with judicious investments, and service improvements with modernization and demand management. An infrastructure bank and real-cost pricing of public services, such as congestion pricing of roadways, could be part of the investment strategy. (Yaro & Hiss, pp. 212-217)
Such a strategy would produce immediate jobs from construction and long-term jobs from expanded capacity and productivity. However, concurrent investments in human capital and greater access to the expanded job base will be needed if low-income communities are to benefit. The need is acute in this Region, with its persistently high unemployment rates, continuing high levels of immigration and large numbers of public assistance recipients to absorb into the job market.
Another major issue for this Region is interstate seduction of jobs via monetary rewards for large corporations. Publicly, everyone acknowledges that the Tri-State Region is a single economy and the best strategy for all three states is to work together to strengthen the whole. But letting businesses shakedown governments by threatening to go elsewhere in the Region remains common practice. And there is less interstate economic development than ever with the Port Authority's reduction in its non-transportation activities.
Getting the Issues Onto the Public Agenda
The phenomenon of numerous public pronouncements in favor of changing the Region's settlement pattern followed by no consistent effective action suggests that political leaders do not think their constituents are ready to make the necessary changes. Lightly held public opinion must be transformed into conscious public judgment through a series of opportunities for people to understand the issue and discuss it in small groups with others. The goal of such meetings would be to provide comfort for elected officials to adopt and implement a new settlement policy--or decide there is insufficient public support and simply ameliorate individual problems at the margins, e.g., widen highways, connect inner city work force with outer-Region businesses as best they can and provide housing vouchers for as many low-income city residents as want to move to where jobs are. Now, we are going in both directions at once. We fight against highway widening, do little to connect jobs and work force, keep poor households in inner cities and do almost nothing to establish the alternative settlement pattern that would make those actions rational, i.e, strengthen old city downtowns and the neighborhoods around them, then relate improved public transit to the new pattern.
The people of Portland, Oregon, seem to have managed this transition from holding two conflicting views about metropolitan development to a consistent public judgment in favor of recentralization. Leaders there might advise on how to do this nationally. Dr. Daniel Yankelovich and his organization, Public Agenda, Inc., have successfully helped large groups accomplish the transition on many subjects.
Once a clear policy is set with broad public expectation that the governments mean it, institutional adjustments to smooth the transition will be necessary. For example, if local governments are not to compete fiercely for commercial and industrial tax base, much greater state school finance probably will be necessary or tax sharing among school districts. Transfer of development rights from property owners where development is to be discouraged to places where it is wanted would help to compensate private owners for the new policy.
A Comprehensive Approach: Concurrent Commitments
How can we possibly persuade a business to locate in a deteriorating downtown in the center of declining, low-income neighborhoods? New Brunswick, NJ, did it by securing "concurrent commitments." Johnson & Johnson, whose world headquarters was there, promised to rebuild it there IF other key organizations contributed what was necessary to make downtown New Brunswick a place fit for its headquarters. At that time, downtown New Brunswick was as dead as a downtown could be. The recently retired CEO of J&J, Richard Sellars, put his energy into the task. First a community organization was formed, New Brunswick Tomorrow, bringing together stakeholders, including the surrounding neighborhoods. The organization then set out to get the commitments needed to radically change downtown conditions.
Rutgers University had been shifting parts of the University out of downtown; Rutgers agreed to recentralize, installing parts of its Medical school adjacent to a downtown hospital, which the County government agreed to expand. The University's School of Creative and Performing Arts and gallery were installed in a department store that recently had closed. Within three years of its founding in 1974, New Brunswick Tomorrow had these achievements: The State completed improved highway access to downtown that had been a dormant plan for years. The federal government provided an Urban Development Action Grant to assure profitability of a new downtown hotel and conference center. Two office buildings were completed with plans for a third; J&J located a subsidiary in the new space. The City refurbished downtown and held festivals to attract people. Two neighborhoods formulated and accomplished improvement programs including transformation of an abandoned factory into new housing. Local banks committed $300,000 to finance housing rehabilitation to be sold to moderate-income families. Downtown parks were added; existing parks were refurbished.
The point is, without concurrent commitments of alot of players, no single player has reason to invest in a declining downtown. Downtown Newark, in which the State, the federal government, foundations and several corporations--particularly Prudential--have financed a spectacular Performing Arts Center, stands at a crossroad because several other steps needed to return Downtown to a major center of jobs and services have not yet been taken. Formal concurrent commitments for the remaining ingredients should be organized promptly.
The other city downtowns of the Region (including New York City's Downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica and a Bronx center) also would benefit from concurrent commitments.
Improving Regional Coordination
The three governors should form a Council of Economic Advisors to focus their thinking on the regional economy and provide a forum for discussing improved regional governance. (This should be part of a federal-state regional forum described below.)
3. The Possibilities: How the Federal Government Can Help
Past Federal Policies
The federal government has provided a major impetus to spread and scattered development. Its policies have encouraged racial segregation, discouraged investment in old cities and subsidized suburban housing and driving--meanwhile making periodic pronouncements about saving old cities. President Nixon issued an executive order to locate federal offices in downtowns. Little was done in response. Toward the end of President Carter's Administration, federal steps were taken to protect old cities from federally-subsidized development that would weaken city economies, but the program ended with his presidency. In the 1960s and '70s, the federal government provided incentives for regional planning-- in fact, required it if the area was to receive federal grants and loans. Some metropolitan areas used this leverage to focus their constituents on metropolitan needs, particularly affordable housing--notably Dayton, Ohio, and the Twin Cities. But in this Region, the official metropolitan planning agency, Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, failed to influence policies to conform to its plan, though its plan did favor compact development focused on the old cities and more affordable housing.
Today, ISTEA also requires metropolitan transportation plans, related to state transportation plans, and both related to land-use plans. But the requirement, though producing a lot of words, has not begun to change the basic settlement pattern or to resolve the irrationality of allowing spread and scattered development to continue but planning for little added highway space.
In short, federal encouragement of comprehensive regional planning has achieved effective planning only spottily, but with a clear public mandate, it could be effective.
Proposals for Federal Action
Achieving a settlement pattern mandate. The federal government cannot influence the development pattern unless it has a clearer public mandate. The Council on Sustainable Development, with the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services and Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, and with appropriate national civic organizations, should organize a public interchange that would lead to achievement of true public judgment on the settlement pattern issue. This Region is preparing land-use models under ISTEA, which can provide solid alternatives for the public consideration of the settlement pattern issue. Public Agenda would be a suitable manager of such a project. It has had long experience and some remarkable success in achieving public judgment on difficult issues.
Regarding the needed regional capital investment strategy, the federal government can either expand or constrain these efforts with both funding streams and spending mandates. To connect low- income communities to the capital investment strategy, federal programs and authority already exist to coordinate investments in infrastructure, community development and education and training, and to fund job initiatives that have regional dimensions such as reverse commuting.
Three demonstration projects. Another federal action to consider is a demonstration of the concurrent commitment process, bringing together stakeholders to make mutual commitments to substantially improve one or more of this Region's old cities. Good candidates would be Newark--taking advantage of the several downtown strengthening programs already going on; Jamaica, where the federal government has played an important role already and a decision about locating an FAA office that would greatly strengthen Jamaica Center is imminent; Bridgeport, which has many assets as a business and service center but needs concurrent commitments to overcome conditions that have discouraged investment in the past decade. Regional Plan Association would be an appropriate organizer of the concurrent commitment process.
A second demonstration would be coordination of federal activities in the Region with the three states in a regional forum. It would encourage regional and comprehensive thinking. Reintroduction of regular meetings of the regional heads of federal agencies, with representatives of the three states and City of New York, could formulate concerted attacks on regional problems. (Though Connecticut is in a different federal region from New York and New Jersey, its federal agencies should be represented at a Tri-State Region forum, too.) A Tri-State Council of Economic Advisors should be housed there.
A third demonstration would be a Regional Research Consortium now in embryo. With the devolution of many responsibilities from the federal to state governments, the need for good regional data and research is increased. First, the data the federal government collects should not be reduced. For example, the Census long form contained extremely important information for research people. Regionally, data must be reformulated to cover the whole Tri-State area, and data from the three states and their sub-state governments must be made compatible and vetted and put into usable form for organizations unequipped to use them, e.g., community organizations and small local governments. Forecasts should be formulated and agreed on for coordinated policy-making. Better quality-of-life measures should be formulated, including green accounting, as recommended nationally by the Council on Sustainable Development.
Six higher education institutions (a public and a private institution in each of the three states) are joining with the Institute of Public Administration to form the consortium, which also will promote interaction among researchers and policy-makers. Federal support and participation in this Consortium would produce an important demonstration, valuable for every metropolitan area.
Federal funds for the Region. Continuation of ISTEA also is important to this Region because it encourages transportation to be planned intermodally and is not biased against public transit, walking and bicycling, as previous federal financing was. In this Region, more dependent than any other on public transit and walking, ISTEA is important. Senator Moynihan's office has produced data showing that this Region exports a great deal of tax money to other parts of the country via the federal government. ISTEA is one federal financing mechanism that favors this Region-- because we don't burn as much gasoline as other regions. This Region subsidized the development of the West via the federal government; now, our economy is lagging and should not be asked to continue that subsidy.
Federal funds to help localities severely impacted by immigration also are appropriate. Spokespersons for this Region consider that the benefits of large-scale immigration far outweigh the drawbacks. Immigrants have recreated dynamic neighborhoods in many parts of New York City and suburban cities like Elizabeth. But long-term benefits don't relieve the short-term costs, and city school systems are especially burdened as are adult literacy programs. Financially shaky old cities need help to facilitate the transition of immigrants to Engish-speaking Americans. These cities deserve the help because immigration is a national policy that strongly affects only a half-dozen metropolitan areas. In an unusual way, serving the mass inflow of immigrants is a federal unfunded mandate.