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You
Gotta Believe
Last year when I was speaking with Judith Saidel about the
report she wrote on Austin and what Albany could learn from
it [Looking Up, Feb. 23, 2006], she made an observation that
stuck with me: She said that a consultant she’d worked with
who had worked in many Northeastern cities told her he just
fell in love with Albany. But, he added, he had “never run
into such negativism about problems that are persistent but
can be handled.”
It’s true. Albany has a pessimism problem.
Albany is a wonderful city. It has a superb location, wonderful
neighborhoods, awesome history, beautiful architecture and
parks, rocking businesses, a rich cultural life, and dynamite
people. But sometimes all of that gets lost.
Now, spiritedly fighting against the very real problems is
one of the things that makes our citizenry great. I would
never for an instant suggest that we sanitize, cover up, or
let go of anything that needs exposing.
In fact, it’s not actually complaining I’m thinking of at
all. I think the more troubling pessimism comes in a subtler
guise: plans for revitalizing or promoting the city, proposed
by supposed city boosters, that, upon closer examination,
are uncreative, unambitious, short-term, or even slightly
desperate-sounding.
There are a few examples of this in the ReCapitalize Albany
report released last week. I wouldn’t say the whole report
comes off that way. It has many good ideas and speaks highly
of Albany’s many assets. But that just makes the cop-outs
even more disappointing.
The issue of parking downtown is a good example. The development
subcommittee’s second recommendation is “Develop a Downtown
Parking Strategy and Incentive Program.” It is certainly true
that parking must be considered. This is not Manhattan and
everyone is not going to suddenly give up car ownership. It
is also true that the report is careful to note the pernicious
effects on a healthy downtown of surface lots and blank garage
walls and otherwise poorly planned parking.
However, expounding about structured parking-garage design
guidelines and incentives to offset the cost of parking and
then devoting one titchy, vague paragraph to “Oh yeah, and
we should, like, improve transit, too” is not only lame, it
shows a failure of the kind of ambitious vision we need if
we want a vibrant, urban, residential downtown.
Cities are not going to “compete” with the suburbs on the
cost of parking any time soon, and it’s silly to think that
we will. To think that we need to—and indeed, to formulate
a vision that barely thinks about how we might not need to—is
the height of pessimism about urban vitality. (Perhaps a symptom
of not putting enough actual city residents on your committee?)
Miserable parking situations don’t keep people out of Manhattan,
or San Francisco, or Boston. (Or Burlington, Vt. or Chattanooga,
Tenn., for that matter.) They either cough up, or they take
the train, or they move downtown so they can walk. They want
to be there because that’s where things are happening—culture,
innovation, commerce. They want to be there because they can
bump into colleagues and brainstorm projects in a WiFi-enabled
plaza over lunch, pop into the next building over for a strategy
meeting and drop off a job at the copy shop downstairs on
the way, grab dinner at a delicious unique restaurant without
having to get back on the highway, hear church bells and bustle
outside their window. . . .
Yes, people need to be able to get in and out or all this
will be somewhat less appealing. But the overarching vision
we need is not one of making it suck a little less to park
in downtown Albany, but rather one of making it 1) the place
to be and 2) fun and easy to travel to and within Albany,
with choices that match different needs and inclinations.
I don’t mean to say the latter would be easy. This could include
state-of-the-art stations, better Amtrak connections, bus
rapid transit (as is proposed for the Route 5 corridor), more
frequent bus service covering more of the day, bike lanes
and bike parking, car-sharing programs, and probably much
more I haven’t thought of.
A broader vision for Albany’s transportation is more in line
with the pro-city living stance ReCapitalize Albany takes
in the rest of its report. Remember those “empty nesters”
that are always being referred to as one of the prime targets
for a return to city living? Some of them are getting to the
point where they don’t want to be driving at night, or even
driving at all. Or, as noted in the education section of the
report, access to job shadowing, internships and summer jobs
can make a big difference to our high school students. But
most of them don’t drive either. People who are moving back
into cities are looking for urban. Some of them (gasp!)
want to be able to not own a car. We can provide, if we decide
to.
Yes, transit infrastructure is expensive, but so are parking
garages. If we’re going to subsidize something, providing
a jolt to break the transit-funding catch-22 of not getting
increased ridership until you’ve already paid for increased
service sounds like a better long-term investment to me than
underwriting a company’s parking bill.
Similarly, the report suggests that the Nanotech companies
getting tons of dough from the state to come here might be
given “additional” incentives to put back office facilities
downtown. After all this, they need more incentives? How about
a community benefits agreement: a contract in which developers
or businesses receiving substantial public money promises
certain community goods in return: local hiring, job training,
a new park, etc. The refusal to ask for any commitments in
return for the subsidies implies that we don’t really think
that they want to be here. It implies that we don’t think
it’s the strength and lure of the awesome nanotech program
at UAlbany that they’re coming for, but just the cold, hard
cash, and if we look at them cross-eyed they might change
their minds. This is not only unlikely, but it’s offensive
to the folks at UAlbany and Albany Nanotech.
So by all means, let’s launch a marketing campaign promoting
how awesome Albany is to the world. But while we’re at it,
let’s plan, and act, like we believe it.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
Check out Miriam’s new blog, The Big Questions: The Path to
Albany’s First Comprehensive Plan, at: http://metroland.typepad.com/the_big_questions/
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