The Outsiders

There's a lot of news in the world out there lately. Here in New York, Mayor Bloomberg's plan to bring "congestion pricing" to lower Manhattan fell on deaf ears in the state legislature. In addition, there was a big hubbub about a parking space that costs $225,000, and has a waiting list, in Manhattan's Chelsea's neighborhood. HBO Sports released a marvelous documentary on the Brooklyn Dodgers, which carefully charted how Power Broker Robert Moses prompted the move of the beloved baseball franchise to Los Angeles by denying Walter O'Malley access to the Atlantic Yards, which are currently being fought over again as the future site of a basketball arena. Beyond the confines of NYC, down South, atop the Florida aquifer system, development pressures are putting an intense stress on the underground water supply of the region. If current trends do not change, saltwater will begin to encroach on the dwindling freshwater supply. News from the post-Katrina Gulf coast indicates that despite, and evidence indicates because of, the slow pace of redevelopment occurring in this region after the devastating storm, the people that have returned to the region, left with little of the social institutions they once enjoyed, have turned to the casinos that line the Gulf for solace. Casino operators are reporting record revenues, largely due to locals turning to them for escape.

But out of the spotlight of these bigger stories comes a simple example of the American land use system working as it always has -- on the local level seeking to solve small, yet vital issues that mean most to communities and their residents. Recently, I found myself sitting in on a Town Board meeting on the east end of Long Island. I was there to monitor a topic on the Board's agenda relevant to my practice. Aside from learning the Board's thoughts on this issue, I left with a reminder as to why land use regulation exists, and the undercurrents that so often go unsaid. The item on the agenda that caught my attention involved the Town's problem with dealing with out-of-towners who are using the Town's beaches, to great ire of the locals. Although each of the people who weighed in on the issue carefully sidestepped the obvious implications of the proposed action, which would make it more difficult for the "outsiders" to use the Town's beaches, everyone could see the white elephant occupying its spot in the Board's chambers.

At the core of the issue, the residents, one after the other, voiced their complaints that these "out-of-towners," "none of whom had New York state license plates," were using their beaches, leaving behind garbage, using the sand as their personal toilets, cleaning their day's catch on the street outside their houses. The angry residents suggested to raise the price of day passes to their beaches, increase police presence around the beaches and generally discourage these unwelcome visitors from coming back. Sure, they prefaced their remarks with, "I don't see anything wrong with people using the beaches," but then they proceeded to express how to keep them away. Granted, the way these visitors were treating their destination was deplorable, and something should be done. But such comments as, "my grown children were appalled when they came back and saw what was happening," and "it's not how it used to be," suggests that deep down, if these residents could put a fence around their town, and require people to present photo I.D.s to get in (which is essentially what they were suggesting to the Town Board), they would do it. By the end of the discussion on the agenda item, I was fearful they would spot me as an interloper, and throw me out of Town.

This issue of providing public access to beaches is an age old problem. For instance, in Los Angeles, the owners of exclusive homes in the enclave of Malibu go through the never-ending struggle to discourage people from crossing through their community to reach the beach -- even though these beachgoers are within their rights under the "public trust doctrine." Going so far as hiring private goon squads to keep out the public, Malibu types constantly battle with public authorities seeking to strike a careful balance. What causes normally reasonable people to hire private security forces, or to take pictures of people using the beach (as in the case in this Long Island beach community) with their spare cash and free time? What kind of condition creates some of the most important land use cases that have come from the U.S. Supreme Court in the last few decades? (See Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), for instance). It is these seemingly innocuous matters that determine whether a community offers a good quality of life, or a burden on top of the other stresses of modern life. The land use system encroaches on the day-to-day lives of all of us, no matter how big or small, and every decision has consequences. Who knows what the ultimate outcome of the battle waging on the eastern end of Long Island will be. But in the end, another issue will no doubt come along to raise the ire of the locals, oftentimes caused by those pesky "outsiders."

The New, New Thing (Well, Not That New), Part II

Greenbelt, Maryland, a New Deal-era development twelve miles outside of Washington, DC, faces the need to modernize. Built in the 1930’s, Greenbelt was modeled on the “garden city” concept, which was pioneered by utopian thinker Ebenezer Howard back at the beginning of the twentieth century. Two other similar settlements exist outside Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Greenbelt was designed as a self-contained community separated from existing development by a green space buffer. Its architects advocated, and executed, a mixed-use environment whereby residents could live, work and play within a compact community. For the most part, the settlement has survived the pressures of creeping development. Nonetheless, the stream of traffic generated by the Beltway loop highway flows near the site, sucking the area into the orbit of sprawl. However, two new developments, if built, would reshape the town into a place with double the people. As one of the developers describes it, “You can live, work and shop there. . . . We’re basically building a new town.”

But are they really? Sure, they’ll be new stuff there, including thousands more residential units and oodles of square feet of commercial space. The existing Metro train station located next to one of the planned developments will no doubt receive a welcome facelift. There are some obvious benefits to the new. But in the end, it’s the same product stuffed into new packaging. Instead of “garden city,” we can call the new improvements to Greenbelt an example of “New Urbanism,” the current movement among a certain percentage of design professionals. But the two approaches, although separated by a century, resemble the same mixed-use, compact development, public-transit oriented principles to land use planning. What has worked before can work again, goes the mantra. And why shouldn’t it? Despite the revolutionary changes to daily life over the last century, people fundamentally want to have easy access to their work places, a safe neighborhood, and maybe even have a few things to do within close proximity. People, if given the option, would probably even walk more than most do. As a recent transplant to Brooklyn, I’m already finding that having ten restaurants within a block’s walk (for the delivery guy, too) is very good thing.

But aside from the polishing of the garden city concept in Greenbelt, another revision to long-held views appears to be developing up the coast here in New York. This week, there will be three exhibits around the city taking another look at the man who could fairly be called the Creator of Modern New York, the Power Broker himself, Robert Moses. Having control over the city’s parks department and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Moses constructed much of the current infrastructure that the region’s cars use as parking lots, and sometimes as highways. He also orchestrated the construction of such public jewels as Lincoln Center and the United Nations. Parks and housing he constructed still survive and thrive. He also displaced hundreds of thousands of people, ruined neighborhoods and exercised exclusionary tactics towards minorities. The new exhibits choose to take the long view, blurring the ugliness and highlight from afar the ballet-like qualities of traffic moving across his parkways, and the architectural accents of his structures. Just as Moses himself saw “the city” as a skyline rather than the people that stand dwarfed at street level, the new approach harkens back to the time when urban renewal wasn’t a bad word. Hopefully the exhibit organizers remember a bit from the lessons of the past.

Let enough time pass, and the old becomes new again. But like a pair of Jordache jeans from the ‘80’s, just because they’re back in style doesn’t mean you should pull that old pair back out and wear them with your favorite top from the era. The old is only new again if it changes with the times.