Rosensweig and Solecki focus on the programs created by Mayor Bloomberg to deal with climate change, namely PlaNYC and the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. Jacob mentions how the processes of city planning must consider the components of cities (cars, buildings, waste, etc) as real objects and not just abstractions.
Is Mayor Bloomberg aware that the problem with city planning is in the “physical sciences” or are his programs just a temporary patch that fails to provide a sustainable solution for the long run?
I don’t believe that Mayor Bloomberg’s programs are just a “temporary patch”. First and foremost, PlaNYC 2013 and the Climate Change Adaptation Task Froce are long-term initiatives. Yes, some problems of city planning do deal with the components of cities that Jacobs mentions. However, I see it as a bit unrealistic for the city to change cars, buildings, waste, and other physical objects because of the scope of the task and resources required. What the city has tried to do instead is focus their efforts on what they do have control over. For example, by giving more neighborhoods and residents access and options to transportation, they are lowering the need for cars in the city. In another example, the city is trying to make existing buildings and infrastructure more energy efficient. The Task Force is focused on adapting infrastructure and transit to climate changes that are happening now and through the future.
Although Mayor Bloomberg has taken many measures to fight the damaging effects of climate change in New York City, such as creating the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, I believe his actions contradict his words. I would not necessarily say that his programs are a “temporary patches” that do not provide a sustainable solutions for the long run, but I believe they are implemented after unrepairable damage has already occurred. For instance, the New York City Panel on Climate Change was designed to help New York City to prepare its infrastructure for hazardous climate events, yet the city is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy months later.
Mayor Bloomberg’s actions are based soundly on scientific research and are the next logical steps to take to further long term reductions of energy consumption and GHG emission . The goal is the reduce the city’s “annual output of GHGs by nearly 1.7 million metric tons and reduce peak demand for electricity by 220-megawatts” (21.Rosenweig).
These are not temporary at all, rather these plans will have lasting effect until 2030. The NYC Climate Change Adaptation Task Force seeks out these risks and develops strategies to combat them via proposing infrastructure solutions for “energy, transportation, water, and waste, natural resources, and communications” (22.Rosensweig).
In addition to the key points raised, I wanted to cite Jacobs’ criticism of urban planning in relation to vehicles. “The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing number of planners and designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have solved the major problem of cities.” Jacobs is essentially saying that we see traffic, and automatically blame the number of automobiles rather than incompetent urban planning. However, to revamp a city would be costly, and according to Jacobs, inadequate. In class, we learned about mitigation versus adaptation. PlanYC is clearly an effort to adapt to climate change by attempting to curtail our contribution to the problem. The effects of CFCs on the ozone seem virtually irreparable with available technology, so Bloomberg is approaching the issue from a policy standpoint rather than a scientific one that would work to mitigate the issue at hand. There are fundamental issues with the way our cities are built and powered, but perhaps the best option for now would be damage control. It is unfeasible to shut the financial capital of the world down for revamping, but our city continues to flourish at the peril of our environment. Policy makers are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to climate change.
I mean for sure we would have to wait and see if Mayor Bloomberg’s programs such as PlaNYC and the New York Climate Change Adaptation Task Force would be THE “sustainable solution” for the city’s efforts to adapt to the climate extremes the city has experienced in recent years, but they do not, as everyone mentioned above, seek to be a “temporary patch”. All of his programs are long-term that looks far into the future of the city as it adapts to the predicted climate changes. Scientists and experts of the New York Climate Change especially perform extensive scientific research and strive to understand the environment and how the city really works not just how it looks, which is a point Jacob emphasized as important again and again in his introduction. Rosensweig also mentions that the New York Climate Change has already made predictions of the city’s future flood zones by making projections that go as far as into the 2080s. His programs definitely seek to be effective for many years to come.