Complete Neighborhoods

1. 1.

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   Shape a proactive, long-term plan for every corner of the city.

   • Challenge: The City does not currently have a comprehensive plan. Previous strategic plans, like PlaNYC and OneNYC, did not specify a vision for neighborhood development and lacked a planning mandate.

   • Embrace comprehensive long-term planning that marries every neighborhood’s vision with a citywide approach for infrastructure and development.

     Read 3 Ideas

     • Re-empower a city office to lead long-term planning efforts that align every neighborhood’s needs to inform government spending.

     • In addition to defining numerical goals to address housing or job growth, name visionary outcomes like “ending homelessness” or ”ending poverty” that might prompt action across typically siloed city agencies in a single plan for development.

     • Define proximity metrics, like a 15-minute walk or bus ride, to assess excellent access to essential infrastructure like parks and public hospitals to guide the creation of complete neighborhoods.

   • Use people-focused data to inform fairer public investments and future development.

     Read 4 Ideas

     • Building off of NYC HPD’s Where We Live NYC Plan, ensure that demographic and historical data account for systemic racial inequalities and interact to shape a reparative framework for development.

     • Produce a physical needs assessment of all City buildings and services that evaluates maintenance needs, overconcentration of infrastructure, or vulnerabilities from climate change.

     • Develop “Equity Indicators” that measure both displacement risks and access to essential neighborhood opportunities such as affordable housing, good jobs, reliable transit, open space and a well-maintained public realm.

     • Drawing on Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development, create an Equitable Development Monitoring Program that grades community districts and boroughs to inform capital spending.

2. 2.

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   Marshal public investments to neighborhoods most in need.

   • Challenge: The City’s capital budget was dramatically cut during the pandemic by $2.3 billion, disproportionately underfunding housing initiatives and public realm revitalization in historically underinvested neighborhoods.

   • Develop a capital budget process informed by both community-driven needs assessments and a citywide physical needs assessment.

     Read 4 Ideas

     • Drawing on Paris and Seattle’s participatory budgeting, expand the capital budget dramatically and allocate the increased amount into an enhanced citywide participatory budgeting process. Ensure this process gives greater attention to historically underinvested neighborhoods and reduces barriers for participation.

     • Accelerate the delivery process of public capital projects by reforming burdensome oversight, especially for social infrastructure like libraries, health centers, and schools. (See Design Excellence for more details).

     • Improve how agencies interact with the public to ensure immediate on-the-ground support. Explore the expansion of 311 as an additional method of data collection to inform budget prioritization around public realm improvements.

     • Lead planning initiatives that focus on long-term funding and maintenance of the public realm in underinvested neighborhoods that lack Business Improvement Districts (BID) or park conservancies. (See Design Excellence for more details).

   Case Study

   Paris – Participatory Budgeting

3. 3.

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   Hold communities and elected officials accountable to building critical infrastructure in every neighborhood.

   • Challenge: The current planning process enables power and privilege in affluent white neighborhoods to obstruct difficult but essential development. In turn, this leads to an overconcentration of unwanted critical infrastructure like shelters, community jails, and waste plants in historically underinvested Black and brown communities.

   • Use the bully pulpit to balance neighborhood and citywide development goals and lift up voices that are under-represented.

     Read 3 Ideas

     • Fight to rebalance difficult facilities in every community district, using data framed on racial and economic justice to shape equitable growth and fair siting citywide.

     • Organize a broad coalition of Council Members around a more equitable distribution of essential facilities like shelters or supportive housing; conversely, hold City Council Members and Borough Presidents accountable when they are not supporting such uses.

     • Hold Borough Presidents and Council Members accountable for charter-mandated data collection on community board membership and leadership in order to shape accurate community representation.

   • Invest in ongoing community engagement infrastructure in all Community Boards in order to ensure that difficult facilities are welcomed assets.

     Read 3 Ideas

     • Drawing on London’s Public Practice program, launch a cohort-based program that embeds design and planning professionals in community boards to provide ongoing technical support, while collecting research and sharing back best practice models for city agencies. (See Community Engagement & Design Excellence for more details).

     • Drawing on the model of the Brownsville Partnership, build civic capacity in the ten communities with the highest concentration of poverty by investing real resources into launching multi-organizational neighborhood collaboratives.

     • Invest in expanding the NYC Civic Engagement Commission to enhance participation of community group networks in the design process as a way to recognize community expertise.

   Case Study

   London — Public Practice

Advisors

These recommendations are authored by Urban Design Forum. We thank our advisors who provided helpful insights, suggestions, and guidance throughout the working group process.