“Translating Talk to Action” 3/16 Recap

So what do we do now?

This event was the finale to our three-part series on Cultivating Recovery & Resilience in Small Cities. As I said in my intro, when I was planning this series way back in September, March seemed like a good time to schedule Part 3, knowing that while we would most likely not be out of the woods by then we would have at least gained some wisdom about how to forge the path ahead. So... have we gained wisdom? What does the path ahead look like?

In Part 1 of the series back in October, we looked at how collaborations and innovations organically arose during this pandemic, often out of necessity, and how businesses pivoted when they could though not every business had the capacity to do so. Public space and streets were reimagined, sometimes permanently so. In Part 2 in January, we looked at how the pandemic has exacerbated systemic inequities and heard from folks across New York State who are working in different ways to address equity issues. Coming out of the pandemic, this work is even more necessary in our fiscally-strained smaller cities.

And now, a year into Covid, we find ourselves at a really critical inflection point. The pandemic is by no means over, but we can perhaps see the beginning of the end. Vaccine distribution has accelerated. A giant stimulus bill has just been passed that contains a bunch of much-needed funding earmarked for state and local governments. All of the many aftereffects of the pandemic—economic, educational, health, emotional—are not yet known, of course. How will it affect the future of work, the housing market, how we view public space, density, policing, storefronts? What has changed forever? What will come back? What lessons have we learned? And can we come to any principles of resiliency moving forward?

To help us explore answers to these questions, our panelists included two planners—from a small and a midsize city—an urbanist who studies future trends in housing, mobility, and resiliency, and a developer who is trying to change the industry to embrace sustainable practices.

DAVID DIXON, Vice President and Senior Urban Fellow at Stantec, opened the conversation by making a case for the great potential of a "robust post-Covid urban recovery" in small and midsize cities like Morehead, MN, Reading, PA, Buffalo, NY, and Memphis, TN.

"There's a lot we don't know about the future, yes," said Mr. Dixon. "But there's also a lot we do know about the forces shaping cities in the post-Covid era."

For one, housing prices have risen faster in cities than in suburbs. "We've learned that Covid often correlates with poverty, not density," Mr. Dixon pointed out, which makes equity measures like community-centered workforce training all the more critical. Globally, there is shortage of skilled labor and a slowing of workforce growth. "Increasingly, jobs and investment will follow where the labor is," said Mr. Dizon. "Whereas in the past, labor used to follow the jobs." So small cities have an imperative to continue to development skilled, knowledge-industry employment opportunities—studies show that every knowledge-industry job attracts five other jobs in turn.

More and more, this new workforce has also shown a preference to live in urban areas with walkable main streets, said Mr. Dixon. Many of the projects that he's worked on in places like Dublin, OH have been to redevelop suburban office parks into mixed use urban centers.

Another key driver of the future urban boom is the dramatic shift in the housing market—60% of the housing demand now comes from singles and couples or single parents with children looking for smaller, more urban living solutions, which currently make up only 40% of the current housing availability. Smaller cities will have to adjust.

"1000 units of housing can bring a block of Main Street to life if you're within a five minute walk," said Mr. Dixon.

But this urban shift will continue to raise the question of equity and income distribution, as we've see the rise of suburban poverty, particularly coming out of Covid. So both opportunities and challenges await the often entangled urban/suburban/exurban communities surrounding our smaller cities.

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NADINE MARRERO, Director of Planning for the City of Buffalo, has had to juggle a lot over the past year. The City of Buffalo has always had a robust civic and neighborhood advocacy ecosystem, including organizations like PUSH Buffalo, Open Buffalo, and Partnership for the Public Good. During Covid, the city has had to lean into these partnerships even more than usual and meet an unfolding series of social and economic crises with flexibility and common sense. Government has had to adapt to requests in realtime, something it has not always been adept at doing, admits Ms. Marrero. Public space, small business support, and mobility prioritization have all had to radically evolve over time.

Equity has also risen to the forefront. "What's resonated with me is the concept of the twin pandemics," said. Ms Marrero. "The Covid pandemic has allowed us to identify the pandemic of systemic racism in our country. It's something we're starting to grapple with much more honestly."

Mr. Marrero describe how our current environment has forced us have difficult but critical conversations about equity that many upstate communities have long avoided. Any kind of cohesive resilience plan must therefor address underserved and marginalized populations and include equitable access to employment, mobility, capital for businesses, jobs training , broadband access, and quality, safe, and affordable housing.

"We reduce poverty in a neighborhood by helping people get out of poverty," said Ms. Marrero. "We don't make a neighborhood better to attract new residents into it. We make a neighborhood better to serve the people who are in it."

Ms. Marrero asked how can we continue to take lessons from the pandemic and prioritize innovative and equitable design and governance solutions not just in a time of crisis, but in times of growth as well.

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JEFF MIREL, Vice President of Rosenblum Company, one of the largest integrated development companies in the Capital Region, laid out the developer's dilemma during a climate crisis quite succinctly: Commercial and residential spaces produce 40% of all CO2 emissions while also utilizing 40% of our energy use. This is not just a new building problem—we also have to lower the carbon footprint of existing building stock by utilizing adaptive re-use and infill.

To begin to tackle this problem, Rosenblum has adopted a 10-year goal to make all of their new development projects net-zero carbon. They will do this by utilizing a three-prong approach:

1. Place, which is about choosing the right places to build, like up-cycling existing structures or building upon underdeveloped properties that offer walkability and access to mass transit.

2. Practice, which is about empowering tenants to be more sustainable by offering amenities like bike storage, EV charging stations, and subsidized CDTA bus access.

3. Performance, which is about building with more efficient, higher performing building materials and design.

This third area presents significant challenges for developers since the upfront costs can be higher and contractors don't always have experience with net-zero building practices. If the developer and construction field is going to undergo a significant transformation, then overall costs of sustainable building need to be comparable to conventional buildings, said Mr. Mirel.

One of Rosenblum's newest projects is Building 150, which was selected as a winner in Round 2 of NYSERDA's Buildings of Excellence competition. Building 150 is adjacent to a suburban office park which will also be redeveloped into an "Eco Park," and will include many amenities for residents such as access to a coworking space, gym facilities, walking trails, picnic areas, an elevated courtyard, and free mass transit.

"It's a challenge. There's a market education gap we have to unwind," said Mr. Mirel. "But we have to unwind it because the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates a 85% reduction in green house gas emissions by 2050." The funding from NYSERDA's Buildings of Excellence program is a key part of the equation as the development and construction sector adjusts to new ways of resilient building.

"It's our hope that projects like Building 150 become part of a comprehensive data collection effort that will determine how to cost effectively deliver these high performance buildings in New York.

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ALEXANDRA CHURCH, Director of Planning & Development for the City of Newburgh, began by discussing those frantic early months of the pandemic. At the city-level, long days were often dominated by "Community-Focused Incident Command" meetings, in which city leadership had to completely shift how they operated and focus wholly on the immediate, unfolding needs of the community, such as how to obtain and disperse scarce PPE.

Like Ms. Marrero, Ms. Church described how the past year was also marked by the parallel crisis of addressing systemic racism in her community, including deep conversations around defunding the police. Both Newburgh and Buffalo, though different in size, have struggled in the past to meaningfully address questions of equity, racism, and policing. In Newburgh, about 60% of the city's budget goes to public safety—but who are they keeping safe? "These conversations are critical," said Ms Church. "Luckily, we've had some solutions come in. We have these great grassroots local organizations that are founded by young people of color who are demanding that the conversations happen differently this time."

Despite these difficult realities, the pandemic has also offered a lot of positive opportunities for urban design and innovation.

"2020 was finally the year that small cities were able to do those amazing urban plans that we see big cities do all the time," said Ms. Church.

While closing down parts of Times Square to car traffic might be possible in New York City, in smaller cities, much of the mobility is still heavily car-centric and shopping is often on the periphery, so there is a distinctly different relationship with cars, streets, and public space. But during the pandemic, the community and restaurants demanded street closures... "And the world didn't end!" said Ms. Church. In fact, things often improved and now that the snow is melting, residents are already asking when the streets will close again.

The pandemic also brought other challenges to Newburgh, including rising housing costs and an influx of transplants from New York City. The year saw an unprecedented real estate boom for the entire Hudson Valley. On the one hand, the city of Newburgh is thrilled to see see such demographic shifts, as new residents buy up and renovate previously blighted buildings, especially since the city's budget relies heavily on depleted property taxes.

"That said, the city and our nonprofit partners have been unable to keep up with the construction of new affordable housing units," said Ms. Church. In some cases property prices are double what they used to be just a year ago, and when the current eviction moratorium ends, Ms. Church fears there will trendmous consequences on the community.

In general, the take away is that city governments must continue to be nimble, accessible, and receptive to the shifting needs of the community. "You can't have all of your government services located in a single building downtown; you need small, local responsive government that goes out into the community, into the streets," said Ms. Church.

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Following the presentations, our conversation (with audience Q&A) covered a lot of ground, including how to cultivate density and affordable housing, the relationship between the city and community groups, the redevelopment of city-adjacent vacant land, how to address land use in suburbs, the gift of waterfronts, shifting mobility behavior, and the health co-benefits of walkable neighborhood.

When the panelists were pushed to come up with resiliency principles for the path ahead, they mentioned the over-reliance on property taxes and home rule, the necessity for policies that eliminate childhood and generational poverty, and the intentionality of cultivating mixed-income housing opportunities in our communities.

To see the full video of the event, click on the video image below.