Bill de Blasio unveils a plan for the city too grand to be believed
By R.W. | NEW YORK
EVERY borough of New York City is growing. The city’s population has risen by 4% to 8.5m since 2010, and is expected to reach 9m by 2030. Housing and accommodating all these people is not easy. To meet this challenge, Michael Bloomberg introduced in 2007 PlaNYC, a 25-year blueprint for sustainably enlarging the city, which proved to be his crowning achievement as mayor. Before this plan, long-term visions for the Big Apple had been in short supply. Mr Bloomberg’s scheme called for new spending on infrastructure, more development along the waterfront and changes to zoning laws in around 40% of the city. The city expanded its recycling programme, cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 16% and planted 1m trees across the five boroughs.
The plan became a model for other cities around the world. Even Bill de Blasio, Mr Bloomberg’s successor in City Hall, called it “groundbreaking”. But the current mayor seems to think PlaNYC doesn’t go far enough. On April 22nd he unveiled his own grand design for “a strong and just city”, called “One New York”. Running at 332 pages, with more than 200 new initiatives, the plan is not short of ambition. The question, however, is how Mr de Blasio intends to pay for it all.
The new plan builds on many of Mr Bloomberg’s original commitments, such as reducing the city’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. It also calls for diverting all waste from landfills by 2030 and reducing the use of plastic bags. The big departure is Mr de Blasio’s pledge to move 800,000 New Yorkers—nearly 10% of the population—out of poverty by 2025. To achieve this, the mayor intends to create nearly 5m jobs and add 500,000 new units of housing by 2040. He wants to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 next year, and then link subsequent raises to inflation. He calls for more preventative health programmes in poor neighbourhoods, to reduce premature mortality by 25% by 2040. City officials boast this is the most comprehensive plan ever created to reduce urban poverty in America.
How all of this might happen, however, is anyone’s guess. Details on how the mayor intends to implement or pay for these schemes, which are expected to cost billions of dollars, are absent. Some of his proposals will need state and perhaps federal support. Increasing the minimum wage, for example, requires Albany’s blessing, yet state lawmakers have shown little inclination to increase it to even $11.50, as Andrew Cuomo, the governor, has requested. Mr de Blasio’s plan to add a subway line in Brooklyn seems particularly far-fetched, given the state’s decades-long struggle to complete a Second Avenue subway line in Manhattan. And the mayor makes no mention of congestion charging, even though such schemes are reliably effective ways to reduce traffic, lower pollution and raise money. Mr de Blasio says he will explain how he intends to pay for everything when he presents the budget next month.
The mayor has had some success with a few of his early initiatives, such as universal pre-kindergarten and paid sick-leave. This bodes well, but “One New York” offers a vision on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps it will one day confirm Mr de Blasio’s place among the great mayors of this still-nascent century. But it could also serve as a glowing example of mayoral hubris.
