Housing Starts: Gentrification In Toxic Waste | Happier in Suburbs | Roosevelt Island Transition

A rendering of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island. (Handel Architects)

1. Not Even Toxic Waste Can Stop Gentrification: NYC’s Superfund Neighborhoods Are Booming “In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund, which enables the federal government to not only clean up highly contaminated sites, but also to hold financially liable those it finds responsible for the pollution. In the past five years, the Environmental Protection Agency has found three sites in New York City that qualify for Superfund designation [...] All three sites, which at the height of their activity lay in highly industrial areas, now sit in neighborhoods taking on an increasingly residential character, with housing prices in some rising out of reach for many New Yorkers.” [Gothamist – 08/22/14]
2. Overall, Americans in the Suburbs Are Still the Happiest “City centers and downtowns across the United States may very well be in the midst of a comeback or a renaissance, be reaching a moment of triumph or successfully transforming themselves into magnets for millennials and retiring boomers. But according to the new Atlantic Media/Siemens State of the City Poll, when it comes to overall community satisfaction, the suburbs are still king. The State of the City Poll, which surveyed a representative sample of over 1,600 U.S. adults on a wide-ranging set of topics related to quality of life and local government policies, found that all things considered, Americans who live in suburban areas are the most satisfied with the places where they live.” [CityLab – 08/25/14]
3. Future Island “Today […] Roosevelt Island is in transition. By 2017, a large part of the southern end will be remade as one of the most modern academic settings in the nation, home to Cornell Tech, a graduate program built around the intersection of technology and business. It will eventually be built up, over several phases and decades, into a $2 billion facility where, ideally, students and entrepreneurs will brush shoulders daily, sharing space for learning and creating.” [Capital NY – 08/25/14]
4. Housing Restrictions Keep Sex Offenders in Prison Beyond Release Dates “Dozens of sex offenders who have satisfied their sentences in New York State are being held in prison beyond their release dates because of a new interpretation of a state law that governs where they can live. The law, which has been in effect since 2005, restricts many sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school. Those unable to find such accommodations often end up in homeless shelters. But in February, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prisons and parole system, said the 1,000-foot restriction also extended from homeless shelters, making most of them off limits because of the proximity of schools.” [New York Times – 08/21/14]
5. A Failed Public-Housing Project Could Be a Key to St. Louis’ Future “[T]he [Pruitt-Igoe] project was famously blown up in 1972, a symbol of bad planning […] Today the Pruitt-Igoe site is once again in the spotlight, but this time because of a new bid to “get the economic flywheel going in the right direction again,” in the words of private developer Paul McKee, the force behind the proposed NorthSide Regeneration project. The rubble-strewn forest is almost exactly at the center of 1,500 acres set for residential, commercial, and office space, plus a school and 50 acres of parks and trails. The lynchpin of it all would be to get the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency—the high-tech eyes and ears of the Defense Department—to relocate to where the towers of Pruitt-Igoe once stood.” [CityLab – 08/25/14]
6. Legal Woes of Owners Help Put the Plaza Back in Play “After four days of reports about the sale ricocheting from London to New York to Hollywood to Mumbai to the Middle East, a spokesman for the sultan issued a statement vehemently denying that he was “involved in any way with the purchase” of the hotels. The denial notwithstanding, this much is clear: The Plaza is in play, again, as part of a drama with an international cast of characters, two of whom are facing significant legal problems.” [New York Times – 08/22/14]
7. With Federal Funding at ‘Starvation Levels,’ the New York City Housing Authority Needs the City and State to Step in to Stem the Agency’s Recent Decline “A multi-billion dollar capital commitment, a change in NYCHA’s ‘paragovernmental’ status, and an independent annual audit of its financial condition need to happen to improve it for the next generation. [...] Mayor de Blasio and the new NYCHA chair, Shola Olatoye, have promised a comprehensive plan for NYCHA by year-end, one which must address several major challenges.” [NY Daily News – 08/25/14]
8. MAP: See Where Hundreds of Affordable Housing Units are Coming to NYC “Thousands of new affordable housing units are set to come to the city as part of a new $350 million fund meant to rehab thousands of apartments throughout the state. The 4,000 units are also part of the de Blasio administration’s Housing New York plan, a $41 billion, 10-year plan to build or preserve 200,000 affordable apartments throughout the city. Most of the nearly 500 apartments in 27 buildings that are the first to be renovated are concentrated in Brooklyn, which has 14, mainly in Bushwick, and The Bronx, which has seven. Several others are in Upper Manhattan and Jamaica.” [DNAinfo – 08/25/14]
9. The Power of Public-Private Partnerships: Mobile Phone Apps and Municipalities “The rise in smart phone applications addressing mobility has conspicuously targeted drivers, but cyclists, pedestrians, and public transit users are also benefitting from a growing collection of mobility-enhancing apps. Applications such as Waze, Strava, and RideScout cover the full spectrum of modes available to urbanites trying to get from point A to point B. As they route people, these applications simultaneously amass huge troves of anonymized information on the flow of transportation systems within cities. So, how do such private crowdsourcing applications share data with city municipalities? What are their terms of exchange? How do cities apply these information troves? Some cities are already forging these partnerships, but there are still steps to take before realizing a fully-optimized reality.” [Planetizen – 08/25/14]
10. Video: How the City is Changing for All Ages “Numbers affect New Yorkers at every stage of life, from a newborn in Brooklyn to a 102-year-old in the Bronx. Crain’s annual Stats and the City report provides a big-picture view of where New York has been and perhaps where it is going.” [Crain’s New York Business – 08/22/14]