PennPraxis and the civic associations of the central Delaware riverfront would like to invite you to the public presentation of An Action Plan for the Central Delaware. Since the completion of the Civic Vision last November, PennPraxis has worked with the central Delaware riverfront civic associations to develop a series of recommendations for leaders to use to implement the civic vision. Together, they have produced An Action Plan for the Central Delaware, with ten steps over the next ten years to allow Philadelphia to realize a truly world-class riverfront.

Andy Altman, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, is expected to attend, and Mayor Michael Nutter has been invited as well.

Register for this event: www.planphilly.com/registration

When: Thursday, June 26, 2006

Where: Independence Seaport Museum, Penn's Landing (free parking is available courtesy of the Penn's Landing Corporation)

For the many YPP readers interested in planning and sustainability issues and urban development: Alex Steffen at WorldChanging has a terrific essay on city redevelopment titled "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." It's fairly long for a blog post, but well worth reading, as it summarizes a lot of the current thinking about green tech, density planning, and cities over the past couple of years. (See also David Owen's "Green Manhattan [PDF]," etc.)

A brief summary of Steffen:

1) Since most of the energy consumed and CO2 produced happens in the home, we should focus on how people live and work rather than (solely) the gas efficiency of the car they use to get there.

2) We need to act fast, not just because our lifestyles are out of control, but that the rest of the world emulates us.

3) This doesn't mean cars aren't important, just that tailpipes and MPG matters less than the enviro (and social!) costs of roads and infrastructure, commuting, etc.

4) If we want to turn this around, we have to promote and build denser housing developments and leverage existing high-density neighborhoods (i.e. cities and inner-ring suburbs.

5) We can do this faster and achieve higher energy gains than we can turn around the existing automotive fleet.

6) Goodies! Bike shares, transit-oriented development, New Urbanist neighborhoods. A green-city-geek's geekstuff.

Michael Nutter has named a director of the Office of Research, Planning, and Policy: Wendell Pritchett, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (so yeah, he had to deal with me and Dan in class).

During the primary campaign, I questioned--um, speaking delicately--Michael Nutter's emphasis on declaring a state of emergency, and wondered whether his commitment to tax cuts would limit him from really addressing the poverty and inequality that persists across many Philadelphia neighborhoods (as the recent Urban League Study glaringly showed).

But among the things that I did like and respect, the greatest were Nutter's positions on housing, community development, and city planning. I have quoted Nutter maybe twenty times now on the need for assertive and visionary city planning. His papers on zoning and planning reform and housing and community development are really pitch-perfect. I complain a lot (I am Jewish, it is my real birthright), but I have no complaints about the policies outlined in those papers. They include reworking the tax abatement so that it fosters development of affordable housing and development targeted to areas still needing revitalization; unifying related agencies; and creating a land bank for vacant property. The policies are attentive to the need to balance gentrification with neighborhood preservation. If we do half of what they propose, the landscape of housing and development in this city would be both more efficient and much fairer.

The man who was central to developing those policies was Wendell Pritchett. Professor Pritchett is a great academic and an expert on land use and fair housing law. More than that, though, he brings an engagement with progressive public policy. That means turning a critical eye towards how law and policy have served to reinforce poverty and segregation, and having a vision of how they could instead ameliorate it.

One of the most striking parts of the recent Daily News assessment of NTI was that NTI bond dollars were being used to substitute for missing federal money:

Over the years, NTI morphed into a dizzying array of programs. Demolition and acquisition activities remain the anchors, but there also are home-loan and repair programs, a retaining-wall program, programs to work with the issues of homelessness and predatory lending, and support for commercial corridors.

Many of these activities were pre-existing programs in city government, all financed by federal tax dollars. Trouble was, those dollars started to disappear, particularly after the Iraq war began.

Kevin Hanna, the city's housing secretary, said NTI bond money was used to "backfill" many of these existing programs.

Without the bond money, Smith said, many housing programs would have been cut in half. But even with the inflow of new NTI money, "we were basically treading water."

NTI was ambitious and it was unfinished, and that bond money is slated to run out in July. As the discussion around the recent "Inclusionary Housing" bill has shown (here and here) there is great need, made even starker by the lack of federal dollars for housing and urban redevelopment. But we are entering this new administration with someone who understands the problems and has knowledge and experience to bring to bear. Congratulations, Professor Pritchett, and thank you for taking the job.

Below is my piece in today's Inky. I really hope those of us who attend the Praxis event tomorrow night ALSO go back to their communities and spread the word, share information and begin to rally around the idea of taking the riverfront back from the people who have hurt it for generations. The plan will be available online by tomorrow night. We should use the net to inform and empower on this critical matter.

Of course, anyone who owns a home, is building a future, raises children, or dreams of doing any one of these things some day anywhere near the riverfront has a stake in this. But I don't like to balkanize this city. We ALL have a stake in what happens on the waterfront.

Let's take it back. Let's organize. Let's turn it up!
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Taking Back The Riverfront
It's time for the public to rally against the special interests.

By Vern Anastasio

As of today, over 900 people have registered for the "presentation of a civic vision for the central Delaware riverfront" Wednesday at the Convention Center.

The presentation comes at a pivotal point: after a year of an amazing design process, detailed charmingly and fascinatingly by Matt Blanchard here, and just as the city gets ready to welcome an exciting new mayor.

That mayor, Michael Nutter, spoke starkly during the primary of the need for Philadelphia to finally re-embrace large-scale civic planning. He said he intended to "re-establish the Planning Commission as the nation’s preeminent city planning agency," and used the sort of sweeping and inspiring language that marks Penn Praxis's plan.

"We plan in order to protect our future as well as our past."
-- Michael Nutter

The whole process of developing the plan to be presented Wednesday for our shared waterfront has been inspiring: resolutely participatory, and fueled by immense local as well as national talent. It is a good model for the future as we move into the exciting time of a new administration that has been laden with so much hope and expectation that it can reverse the things that had seemed to fatally plague our city, the things we no longer want to accept: underperforming schools, inadequate transit, isolated and economically suffering neighborhoods, and unharnessed development.

The last, unharnessed development, is a good place to start. As our new mayor said:

"Recent Mayors of Philadelphia have pursued unrelated transactions rather than followed a plan. We no longer need to chase growth; now we need to guide it."
-- Michael Nutter

These are words Philadelphia needs to hear, and to which the government needs to be held. They are at the heart of the fight over the waterfront.

We should all go Wednesday and join in a celebration of the civic life of our city: civic participation and civic vision. You can register here. Go and stand in the old Philadelphia (the Convention Center) and see the new Philadelphia (an ambitious and democratically planned waterfront) made visible.

And we should seek not only to advocate for the Penn Praxis plan, which is in many ways OUR plan, but we should seek to continue the inspiring process of participation and collaboration that they sparked and apply it to the other areas where we want change.