Urban Renewal

Pennsylvania has the most charming little towns, maybe because they are so backwards.

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Pennsylvania has the most charming little towns, maybe because they are so backwards. I am sure if a town like Wellsboro existed in New York, the state would have shown up with buckets of money to “tear out those polluting, old fashioned gas lights in favor of modern LED technology.”

Modernity has it’s benefits, but even our state has started to learn that urban renewal often leaves spaces cold and undesirable. The newest of technology might have impressive “environmental performance” but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s green or a good place to live.

Of course the biggest joke of it all is, now after the state has spent millions bulldozing downtowns, they’re spending millions to install quaint-styled park benches and decorative old-fashioned looking light fixtures (using LEDs, of course).

There are few downtowns left in New York that haven’t seen the aggressive hand of urban renewal, followed by the state trying to undo the damage from all the buildings they bulldozed and replaced with “modern structures”.

Main Street

A Sensible Alternative to Red Light Cameras

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Rather then adopting red lights cameras, a better solution would be to eliminate cross-intersections and transform Downtown Albany’s streets into a series of one-way streets with merge ramps, similar to the Uptown State Office Campus’s Ring Road.

Those of who you who are familiar with the Ring Road, note the lack of stoplights throughout the whole complex — despite servicing a major suburban office campus with massive parking lots. All access is done via the ring roads and a series of ramps that allow cars to turn around — all without stop signs or cross traffic. The ring-road is vastly safer and more efficient then stop-lights and traditional urban grids.

By eliminating wasteful and dangerous on-street parking, each street could be turned into a 3-lane one-way thoroughfare like the ring road. Major roads would be built on parallel blocks, with all traffic going one way or the other. There would be no cross traffic — all traffic would be prohibited crossing roads — only making right turns from roads, and occasional left turns onto “u”-turn ramps that allow traffic to turn around.

This progressive solution would speed traffic through the city, eliminating most serious head-on and t-bone collisions. While it would require a lot of traffic engineering, the long-term savings of reduced congestion and better traffic flow, would benefit all.

Urban Renewal is the Solution to Urban Violence

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I often see myself as progressive in the model of Robert Moses. I view cities as places on a map, that can be redrawn by a pencil to meet modern man’s needs — be it provide recreation, transportation  or housing needs. Progressives can’t be tied to past, they can’t get hung up on saving one historic building in removing a blighted 100 blocks to build a great new public space that will serve the needs of modern man.

Blighted Buildings

There was a time when every city had a planner, who wasn’t afraid to redraw the city, or build monumental public spaces. Who wasn’t afraid to remove substandard housing in favor of something more modern. To create new green spaces and parks for children to play in. To build modern universities, where all New Yorkers could go to for free or very litle money. A time when people weren’t afraid to build or dream big.

Blight On New Jersey Avenue

In the recent debates over gun violence, almost nobody has called for urban renewal as the solution. Yet, if we are going to serious about our urban problems we got to think big. We got to build cities where people have access to public transit and modern transportation systems to get around. We have to get rid of blighted neighborhoods and blighted housing, and break up clusters of poverty.

Morton Avenue

Many nowadays view urban renewal as unnecessarily brutal and destroying of ethnic communities. But do we want any more children to live in blighted neighborhoods, surrounded by urban violence?

Stack

Where would be today without the progress made through urban renewal? Not all projects were successful, and many were badly designed, but we have a moral obligation to help shatter the cycle of poverty, and if it means bulldozing a few crime infested neighborhoods, then so be it.

The Alternative to the Empire State Plaza was the W. Averell Harriman Suburban Office Campus

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It’s a popular thing to complain about the Empire State Plaza, and say the 1960s “modern” office complex in Downtown Albany is out of place or was overly destructive to the city. But was there really much of an alternative to building the Empire State Plaza? Could the state have just put up conventional office buildings along city streets in vacant lots?

Empire Plaza

But the reality is Nelson Rockefeller helped slow and ultimately reverse the decline of Downtown of Albany. By the early 1960s, state government was leaving downtown, as witnessed by the construction of the then modern W. Averell Harriman State Office Campus on lands of a former golf course on the outskirts of the city.


View Larger Map

The W. Averell Harriman State Office Campus was a perfect example of what many people saw as the future — an office campus where commuters came in their private automobiles via a series of ring roads where there were no stop lights — just ramps and merge lanes. At the W. Averell Harriman State Campus there was ample parking for the cars that most middle-class state workers possessed, and wanted to use to get back and forth to work.

Empire Plaza

Downtown was the opposite. There was few parking opportunities around the downtown office buildings. Traffic congestion was heavy, and commuters were forced to stop at every traffic light. There was no smooth flowing traffic, as even express traffic going in and around the city was forced to take city streets. Commuters who worked downtown, and the many people who came to the Capitol, didn’t want to have to fight traffic or spend hours looking for a parking spot — especially when such a convenient and sensible alternative as the W. Averell Harriman State Office Campus.

Stack

Nelson Rockefeller in many ways was visionary. He argued that State Government could build a modern, suburban style office campus, with limited access, stop light free convenience,  and parking lot parking, in the middle of a dense city. Parking would be hidden in an underground garage at the Empire State Plaza, and connected to an Expressway system, that by using bridges would allow cars to “fly-over” city streets.

Old Capitol and Less Old Plaza

There are those who say the state could have instead built a series of tower buildings along vacant lots on State Street and other locations. Parking garages could be built behind the office buildings. That is how it was done in later years, often decades after the Empire Plaza was built. But that ignores the competition that the Empire Plaza was up against in it’s early years — the W. Averell Harriman, with it’s suburban ring-road, and traffic-light free commuting, and acres of easy parking.

Impact of Air Pollution

The state could have chosen to abandon downtown Albany in the early 1960s. After the Governor’s Mansion burned in 1963, it was proposed that it be moved to the W. Averell Harriman State Office Campus. Likewise, had the W. Averell Harriman campus been fully built out, many if not most of the offices in downtown, would have been moved to campus — rather then investing in downtown, and bringing thousands of state workers downtown every day.