This article was Original publicationCommon Edge
The new, online NYC Climate DashboardIt is confirmed New York CityIs not doing enough for climate goals. Worse, the goals don’t meet the challenges citizens face. Scientists are becoming more united in their belief that the world has only ten years to prevent catastrophic climate change. Our driving and buildings are the two biggest contributors to greenhouse gases in New York. John Massengale, an architect and urban planner, shares his views on the world and the important changes that can be made for the benefit of future generations.
Were Building Energy-Wasting Towers
New York City and New York State collaborate with the wealthiest developers to promote and subsidize with tax credits, upzonings and public-private partnerships, the construction of glass supertalls which pose triple threats to the environment. The towers are made of high-tech glass, which uses chemicals to reduce heat gain from the sun. It is very energy-intensive to make glass walls.
Second, despite all the high-tech glass, properly-insulated brick walls are far more efficient than any glass walls. A glass wall cannot be raised to the same insulation level as a solid wall with punched windows. The situation will get worse if the glass wall is raised in the air and exposed to the summer sun and winter winds from all sides. This can be seen in the Energy Star ratings New York CityGives new and old buildings a boost.
The Energy Star scale ranges from 1 to 100 with 100 being the most prestigious. A Tribeca landmark, the Jenga Building, was awarded a 3. My 116 year-old apartment building got 85. Many people I spoke to believed that every building should get at least a 30, similar to the SAT scores.
The most well-known rating system is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program, which was established in 1993. LEED is a rating system that measures more than energy use. It is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council and is based on ten categories. A building with a failing Energy Star System score can be a LEED certified building with enough points from different elements such as superior indoor quality and bicycle racks.
LEED does not penalize the third major problem with the glass towers still in New York. Because their design and composition are constantly updated, no one knows how long they will last. We won’t know how long these new composites will last until they stop working. However, they will eventually fail so much that the curtain wall and all its embodied energy will have to be removed.
It is becoming a more common phrase to say that the greenest building can be an old building. They use less energy (check the city ratings), and they contain embodied energie that we throw away. When it comes building, New York City needs new priorities. There is no reason to build these glass towers.
Stop Building Supertalls & Glass Towers
Stopping the construction of glass towers/supertalls is a low-hanging fruit if we look at all the facts. This may seem radical, but take a look back at what Mayor Bill de Blasio declared three years ago. Our Mayor declared on Earth Day 2019: “We are going to introduce legislation that bans the classic steel and glass skyscrapers which have contributed so much towards global warming.” They are not welcome in our city, or on our planet.
Unfortunately, that was the last time that we heard an elected official say that publicly. It is hard to imagine if de Blasio was called by representatives from Big Real Estate, important political donors. New York CityThe State. Big Real Estate loves glass walls because they are easy to design (the architects can choose them from a catalog), inexpensive to manufacture, and easy to install.
New York’s Supertalls are either Class-A office towers, super-luxury apartment building or buildings too large to be naturally lit. As I mentioned last month, only the most luxurious apartments can afford the high-end construction costs of tall towers. Supertalls also drive up land prices making it prohibitively expensive for housing, other than luxury housing. Supertalls are unnecessary. Post-Covid office buildings in New York will have a 20% rate of vacancy by 2022. It is unclear what the future holds. Chase and other large corporations plan to reduce their office space by at most 30%.
Supertall residential buildings ManhattanThey were once extremely profitable, but they were overbuilt, which created a glut on the market, which resulted in unsold units even after steep discounts. The two most profitable buildings in New York’s history are two super-luxury apartment towers that are neither high nor covered in glass.
Both buildings are clad using limestone rather than glass. Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the architects of both buildings (RAMSA), has decided to stop designing glass apartments in New York. Because their designs for 15 CPW, 220 Central Park South, were so successful, they can do this. RAMSA currently has 15 apartment buildings in New York.
We Drive Too Much
The average New York CityThe average household doesn’t have a car. In ManhattanOver three-quarters (37%) of households do not own a vehicle. We have a New York CityDepartment of Transportation that is primarily a Department of Traffic. Like all other DOTs in the country, NYC DOT tries to incite traffic more than it reduces it. They prioritize moving cars into, out, and through the city.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a congestion area Manhattan2007 with tolls to reduce car use and increase revenue for mass transit. The State Legislature voted against the proposal. It is difficult to pinpoint who is still holding it up fifteen years later. Governor Katherine Hochul might work with others to push the bill through, but she and MTA recently announced that they should continue to examine the situation for sixteen more months. We don’t need studies, but we need major changes in the status quo.
Eight years ago Mayor de Blasio committed to the city the Vision Zero programWith a promise to reduce traffic deaths New York CityZero by 2024 This was quietly changed to 2030. But the truth is that the streets that we build today will not lead to zero deaths. In 2022, traffic deaths and traffic traffic will be at an all-time high. New York CityThey are the worst they’ve been since Vision Zero began.
When it took road space at Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street away form cars, the NYC DOT was one of the most radical in America. It also brought in tables and chairs. Since then, the revolution has been slow.
These improvements are evident. CitiBike is available, as well as many protected bike lanes. Post-Covid, there are Open Streets and Open Restaurants. There are also parklets. Mayor Eric Adams has pledged nearly one billion dollars to improve bike lanes, sidewalks, curbside use, and other infrastructure. However, the city continues to tweak designs that seem outdated more than a decade back. We were moving too slowly, while our cars go too fast.
Chuck Marohn, an engineer, is the founder of the popular nationwide movement called Strong CitiesHis book proposes Confessions of a Traffic Engineer in RecoveryThat we take the design and construction of streets away traffic engineers.
Marohn explained in his book that the underlying values of transportation are not American publics values. They are not human values. They are unique to a profession that was given the task of reshaping a continent around a new and experimental idea about how to build a human habitat. He is being sued by the state Board of Engineering Licensure.
New York’s first people-first street is located on Broadway between 24th & 25th Streets. It is not a place where drivers are more comfortable than those who walk or cycle. Another example is located on University Place south side 14th Street. Five-thousand traffic engineers are the NYC DOT’s most prominent. Although it seems that they are not naturally skilled at designing streets for city living, this is not the case. These are the best street designs. New York CityThese districts were designed by architects and urban designers for Business Improvement Districts.
Streets for Living
Traffic engineers have a tendency to try to add things when there is a problem. This is the problem with traffic engineers, as Dutch traffic engineer Hans Mondermanonce stated. It is better to remove things, in my opinion. He is referring to traffic lights, crosswalks and turn arrows, as well as white and yellow elastomeric spray, red lanes and Fresh Kermit (green), lanes and all other traffic engineers that make drivers feel more comfortable going faster.
European cities are removing a lot more of this. The Netherlands and Denmark are decades ahead in reducing traffic and creating safer streets for pedestrians and cyclists. Every major European city responded to the pandemic with more livable streets after Covid was started.
London has Low Traffic Areas and a commitment for Europe to be the most walkable city. Paris is moving towards the 15 minute City, where all your daily needs can be met within a short walk or bike ride. The same is happening in Milan and Brussels. Helsinki and Oslo have reduced pedestrian deaths to zero. It is worth noting that most European streets are not designed by traffic engineers.
A New York non-profit called OpenPlansThis fund groups include StreetsblogAnd StreetopiaUWSA proposal was made for a New York CityThe Office of Public Space Management would collaborate with the NYC DOT to manage public spaces. Our streets account for seventy percent the public space in the City.
Why stop there European streets are safer for citizens and better for the environment because they don’t have traffic engineers. America’s DOTs have enormous budgets and are therefore powerful. The Biden administration sends billions of dollars to states and cities for infrastructure projects. New York’s Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is strong on transportation issues. He said that he wants New York to look more like Amsterdam. And our Senator secured what was called an effing lot money for street work.
I often hear the words, “Were not Amsterdam” from urban designers who do the work. New York was once called Nieuw Amsterdam. Lower Manhattan is where it all began. ManhattanThey were laid out by Dutch people in the 17th Century. I was part of a planning team that helped the Financial District Neighborhood Association Amsterdamize many streets below City Hall.
Change is needed now, as no other American city is more dependent on cars. We can reduce the number cars on our streets and almost all residential neighborhoods will be in better shape. Manhattancould have a network street system where people come first. It is easy to find places like the Financial District or Greenwich Village. Slow Streets. When people realized what was possible, Brooklyn and Bronx neighborhoods would soon call for their Slow Street plans.
Why stop there? All the old cities that have good public transportation are great places to transform from a life based upon driving. There are many cities that have walkable neighborhoods and where large numbers of residents live car-free, including New Orleans, Philadelphia. Chicago, San Francisco. Portland. Many American cities and towns have at least one or more walkable neighborhoods.
Time to Change
Norman Mailer ran in 1969 for the office of Mayor. Mailer believed that communities should control development. He also wanted housing to be rebuilt and not razed. It would also be beneficial if we stopped building glass supertalls, which no one except Big Real Estate wants. Mailers platform included a call for the death of private cars. Manhattan. Garages outside would have been connected by free transit and bicycle sharing Manhattan. Mailer claimed that it would reduce the island’s pollution by sixty percent.
Half a century later, the world is at the tipping point of turning around climate change. We are now causing irreparable harm to the earth’s life forms. We must reduce our dependence on automobiles for the good of the planet and the people living there, but we keep going with the status quo. We should be a model for the future, as we have the best mass transit system and the most walkable neighborhoods in North America.
New York City is home to some of America’s most successful policies and programs. We are punishing future generations if we don’t change the way that we use our streets and build. The good news is that there are changes that will make the future better. New York CityBetter now, for us.