The Importance of City Management | Nov 7th at 1:46pm
In a mid-morning discussion about three global cities (Philadelphia, New York, Durban), the idea came up that city management is more important than city design. This isn’t something you’d expect to hear from a group of urban designers, but the message is important. Unless there is a framework for redefining city form, any significant progress is unlikely to happen.
PlaNYC, New York City’s sustainability plan, is one example. With a clear and segmented shopping list of goals and programs, PlaNYC takes a very exacted approach to defining how the city should go about becoming sustainable. Rohit Aggarwala is director of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability in the City of New York, and is in charge of undertaking the programs outlined in PlaNYC—127 separate initiatives. This plan is obviously geared towards an end-goal of a more sustainable city. But in discussing its implementation, Aggarwala says the piecemeal nature of the plan and its 127 initiatives is what makes it so effective.
Other cities seem to agree, and are looking to New York’s plan as a model. Mark Alan Hughes, Director of Sustainability for the City of Philadelphia, He says these environmental and urban issues are too often treated like puzzles. For cities to make action on these issues, the place to start is in turning those puzzles into decisions. Sounds pretty easy, huh? In reality, things may not be as simple to solve, but Hughes says this framework process is where that can happen. Better management of city programs, then, can lead to the implementation of more intelligent city design.
Nate Berg is the assistant editor of the urban planning news website Planetizen, where he reports, blogs and podcasts about urban planning issues. The topic areas he's most interested in right now are the environment, public space and event-based urbanism.
