All city planners bring their own personal style into their policies; Robert Moses mostly focused on an automobile centered future, while Jane Jacobs preached diversity. Amanda Burden, New York City’s chief planner under the Bloomberg administration, approached city planning from an aesthetic point of view. Although her policies were a mix-and-match collection of Moses’s and Jacobs’s theories, Burden’s policies were much more concerned with how things looked, rather than their impact. One must address whether or not these seemingly superficial values were actually worth the trouble it took to implement them.

To summarize Amanda Burden’s policies, “Burden brought to her position an aesthetic imperative, a distinctly high-brow sense of what constitutes good design merged with an appreciation for the Jacobsian notion of street vitality and a commitment to enhancing the vibrancy of New York City’s streets and open spaces” (Larson 134). Despite her “Jacobsian” approach, Burden seems to have adopted quite a heavy helping of Moses-esque qualities, mainly in the scale of her projects and whom they would actually benefit. I will touch on this a little bit later.

As mentioned in Design as a Civic Virtue, the ninth chapter in Professor Scott Larson’s book, Building Like Moses With Jacobs In Mind, Burden seemed to go above and beyond her duties as chief planner. She “micromanaged” projects, “insist[ing] that benches be rearranged, specific types of paving stones be used, or that seat heights, depths, and widths conform to exacting measurements” (Larson 140). Her excessive attention to detail and insistence on “good design” not only delayed many projects, but they made the projects much more expensive than they needed to be as a result of these delays. She also appointed “starchitects” to design New York City’s projects, a decision that hiked up the cost of completing these projects. In this sense, I feel that Burden was extremely wasteful in her position as chief planner and unnecessarily cost the city money that could have been put into more meaningful projects, rather than choosing the perfect bench and positioning it at just the right angle. I could be a bit overly judgmental of Burden at this point, but it becomes hard to overlook her background as a rich white woman when she so carelessly tacks on extra costs to projects that seem so superficial.

In terms of Burden’s background and approach to money, it seems that Burden closely parallels Moses. To clarify, I mean that she seems to have chosen projects that would benefit the wealthy, much like Robert Moses did with the construction of highways. An example of this is with the High Line, a set of elevated freight tracks turned public park. Although it seems like Burden’s pitch for the repurposing of the tracks would be a good undertaking for all residents of the city, as it would provide a new public space in New York City, the project seems to have benefited the wealthy. Much like the creation of Central Park, the creation of the High Line as a public park raised property values and real estate costs greatly. This is supported in Patrick McGeehan’s New York Times article, entitled The High Line Isn’t Just a Sight to See; It’s Also an Economic Dynamo and a report by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). McGeehan wrote that “Amanda Burden, the city’s planning director, emphasized the boost to property values, saying that in one building that abuts the lower section of the High Line, the price of apartments had doubled since the park opened, to about $2,000 a square foot,” and the NYCEDC reports that, as of 2011, the median market value within five minutes of the High Line has increased one hundred three percent since 2003. So while the High Line served as a boost to the real estate of New York City, this project also seems to further separate New York City’s wealthy from the poor, as now only the wealthy can afford to live near the once decrepit High Line.

(NYCEDC)

            Of course, one cannot criticize Burden without acknowledging the positive impacts some of her projects. To relate this back to the High Line, it must be recognized that High Line has created a great deal of revenue for the city in terms of tourism and investment in the area surrounding the park. Furthermore, Burden’s sitting space policies should not be overlooked. While, yes, it seems like people in today’s age seem to go to any lengths to avoid interacting with one another, some instances of seating in public spaces contest this. For example, one can consider the Red Steps in Times Square. The “glowing red glass amphitheater-style staircase” (Chung) “allows [visitors to the city to have] an amazing view of Times Square from the top of the steps—16-feet above street level—for free” (Chung). From every time I have visited Times Square, I always notice that the steps are overflowing with tourists and city residents alike, all of whom are interacting with one another, sharing stories and offering to snap pictures of one another. Even though I do not agree with a great deal of what Burden stood for, I can definitely see the value in her sitting space policies, as they make the city a more closely knit and hospitable place.

Overall, I think Amanda Burden was a greater burden to the city that an asset. Some of her projects seem to have been very superficial, and her attention to detail did not allow her to look at the big picture of the city as a whole. Furthermore, she cost the city a lot of money with her vision of “good design.”

 

Outside Sources:

(Chung) http://gothamist.com/2008/10/17/stepping_up_new_times_square_tkts_b.php#photo-1

(McGeehan) http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/nyregion/with-next-phase-ready-area-around-high-line-is-flourishing.html?referer&_r=1

(NYCEDC) http://www.nycedc.com/podcast/19-economic-impact-parks