Richard Rogers’ desire to transform London into a more humanist city by millennium was highly ambitious for his given time frame, however not completely impractical concept-wise. It was interesting to learn that London was at one point the worst slum city in the world, but thanks to public outcry, press-covered campaigns, and an “irrepressible [surge of] Victorian self-confidence,” the London County Council was created and London became the first city to form a civic administration able to coordinate a “complex matrix of modern services” for its people. London then spiraled downwards once again when the elected council was abolished and the planning of the city became divided amongst a hoard of separate group entities, including five different government departments. This phenomenon illustrates a humanist city’s crucial need for an elected authority—an administrative body that will spur positive change by enabling all citizens to voice their opinions and ideas, so that they may contribute to the development of the city’s present and future. Rogers argued that in order for a city to be truly “for the people,” the masses should be active participants in city planning. I enjoyed his idea of building “architecture centers” which would provide more hands-on venues for citizens, architects, and planners to interact. As put by Rogers, “realizing the untapped wealth of knowledge and ideas which lie within the citizenry is key to solving urban problems.” Such centers would therefore act as a cumulative brainstorm, ultimately serving as powerful tools that will help shape a better future for the city. In order to effectively plan a brighter future for London (and any other city), there are three necessities: strong government direction, active involvement of the citizenry, and talented specialists and designers who can make the visions of the people come to life.

Prior to the new millennium, New York City was far from a humanist city. Much like London, the City is greatly market driven, making it less prone to being considerate of its citizens’ long-term needs. After Bloomberg’s announcement of PlaNYC in 2006, however, New Yorkers were given the opportunity to offer their thoughts and suggestions during a four-month public outreach event. This process entailed the government meeting with over a hundred advocacy organizations and holding a number of town hall gatherings with various neighborhood leaders. Similar to the “multi-media forums” suggested by Rogers in Cities for a Small Planet, these events allowed New Yorkers to have a say in the development of the City’s future. With the input of the people, government officials were able to draw a better sense of the challenges and obstacles the City will have to face over the next twenty-five years. This in turn made clear the goals NYC must aim to achieve in order to become more green and sustainable.

Besides calling for the participatory planning of citizens, many of Rogers’ other suggestions on how to improve London are echoed in PlaNYC, such as the idea to “streamline the metabolism” of the city in order to reduce its massive levels of consumption. If New York City manages to even reach its goal of dedicating 10% of the city’s annual energy bill to funding energy-saving investments in City workings, it will become that much more humanistic, for reducing the amount of waste generated by NYC will benefit its own citizens (through helping the environment) in the long run. If PlaNYC is executed as written, it will be a giant step in New York becoming a true humanist city—one that is considerate of its citizens, thanks to the joint efforts of its leaders and inhabitants alike.

There’s a fine line between humanism and sustainability, making it difficult to distinguish the difference between the two. Though both deal with the upkeep of human race, they possess definitions that are dissimilar to some extent. Humanism deals with the social aspect of humans–it champions the voice of the public, aiming to produce a system that incorporates the masses in the planning and construction of a city’s inner workings. The more humanist a city is, the more mindful it is of its citizenry. On the other hand, sustainability is a measure of a city’s ability to maintain and replenish natural resources essential to mankind’s survival, so as to ensure that future generations are not left without. One may then argue that humanism has to do with being considerate of people’s wants (convenience and efficiency, fairness and equality, and general smoothness of city operations for the sake of social order), in contrast to sustainability, which deals a bit more with their absolute needs (food, water, land, energy, etc.). Both are undeniably interconnected and overlapping, however, since it is impossible to have one and not the other; a city cannot be labeled humanistic if it is unable to deliver its society’s even most primitive needs. It also cannot argue its sustainability without admitting that, by working to preserve resources by implementing “greener” systems, it is automatically committing a humanist act.

In the process of bettering a city’s sustainability, however, sometimes authorities deem it necessary for its citizens to make some sacrifices. It is due to this that PlaNYC, though greatly humanistic in its quest to ameliorate the City’s deteriorating infrastructure, may also be seen as non-humanistic as well. The site’s list of Energy Initiatives, for example, calls for the creation of a NYC Energy Planning Board along with an energy efficiency authority. The establishment of such organizations would limit the participation of the masses in the decision-making on energy matters, as the introduction of such authorities would narrow the connection between ordinary New Yorkers and the officials put in power. Also, the list mentions usage of a series of mandates to reduce the demand for energy in the City. Stricter enforcement may be for the greater good, but it still “hurts” people to some degree with its limitations, in the sense that people will have to get rid of their habit of using immense amounts of energy, or else face the consequences of the law. In hoping to make NYC a more sustainable place, PlaNYC therefore does slightly contradict its otherwise seemingly wholly humanistic nature.