Smarter New York City

How City Agencies Innovate

André Corrêa Corrêa d'Almeida

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780231545112
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Innovation is often presented as being in the exclusive domain of the private sector. Yet despite widespread perceptions of public-sector inefficiency, government agencies have much to teach us about how technological and social advances occur. Improving governance at the municipal level is critical to the future of the twenty-first-century city, from environmental sustainability to education, economic development, public health, and beyond. In this age of acceleration and massive migration of people into cities around the world, this book explains how innovation from within city agencies and administrations makes urban systems smarter and shapes life in New York City.

Using a series of case studies, Smarter New York City describes the drivers and constraints behind urban innovation, including leadership and organization; networks and interagency collaboration; institutional context; technology and real-time data collection; responsiveness and decision making; and results and impact. Cases include residential organic-waste collection, an NYPD program that identifies the sound of gunshots in real time, and the Vision Zero attempt to end traffic casualties, among others. Challenging the usefulness of a tech-centric view of urban innovation, Smarter New York City brings together a multidisciplinary and integrated perspective to imagine new possibilities from within city agencies, with practical lessons for city officials, urban planners, policy makers, civil society, and potential private-sector partners.

PART I

DATA, ORGANIZATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

CHAPTER 1

OneNYC AND THE SDGs

A City Strategy with Global Relevance

JESSICA ESPEY, Sustainable Development Solutions Network

NILDA MESA, Columbia University

WITH

SANDRA M. RUCKSTUHL AND MIHIR PRAKASH, Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Executive Summary

In 2015, two new frameworks for sustainable development were launched in New York: New York City’s local long-term sustainability plan and the UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development. The city’s plan, One New York: A Plan for a Strong and Just City (“OneNYC”), covered New York’s unique environmental, resilience, economic, and social challenges, tailoring the then-draft global vision to a city-level scale for a more sustainable future. At the same time, information gained during the development of the city’s plan provided useful insights for the finalization of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”), agreed to by 193 heads of state and government as part of the global Agenda for Sustainable Development. OneNYC built on previous city plans—notably PlaNYC—in striving to make New York greener and more resilient, while adding an explicit focus on equity and inclusive economic growth. OneNYC provided a vision for the city’s future that acknowledged the interconnectedness of residents, the local economy, the built infrastructure, and the natural environment.

OneNYC is a groundbreaking approach to long-term city sustainability planning for five key reasons:

1. The OneNYC strategy integrates access to key public assets, environmental security, and economic growth, as well as social and economic inclusion and mobility.

2. The plan harmonizes with global efforts, providing input on best practices and metrics to inform implementation of the global development agenda.

3. The plan takes a long-term perspective, charging specific lead agencies with coordinated budget planning and monitoring to ensure funding and accountability.

4. The core design process involved nearly every city agency plus consultations with city elected officials, an advisory board, private sector representatives, and residents.

5. OneNYC is data- and metrics-oriented, using specific indicators to evaluate progress toward the city’s goals and reporting on this progress in an annual public update.

This chapter considers the innovative design of OneNYC. Although it is too early to assess the programmatic impact of the approach, we consider other cities’ attempts to replicate this kind of planning process, and tease out replicable lessons. Our intention is to show how a local strategy, developed in alignment with global ideals, can help cities and metropolitan areas drive progress toward sustainable development goals.

Key Takeaways

• OneNYC was the first city development strategy developed in concert with the SDGs, along with other then-nascent frameworks such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities.¹ As the largest city in the United States, New York wanted to lead the way in supporting these initiatives, while also providing a concrete model that other cities could replicate.

• OneNYC is an integrated, holistic plan that, like the SDGs, considers economic, social, and environmental concerns at once. Operationalizing such a broad framework can be challenging. OneNYC overcomes this challenge by using a vertical-tiered system, beginning with four broad value-based visions that branch into their own goals and initiatives. At the same time, it uses these visions as lenses to assess the sensitivity of other goals and initiatives and so promotes horizontal, cross-sectoral collaboration.

• OneNYC has a strong focus on both growth and the poorest and most vulnerable, aligning with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s priorities, as well as the global 2030 Agenda’s “leave no one behind” principle. At the same time, the plan is largely anchored in physical infrastructure such as buildings, transportation, and the equitable neighborhood distribution of investments, rather than broad qualitative measures such as curriculum development.

• OneNYC was devised using an inclusive design process, unique in its depth and breadth, echoing the global process for devising the SDGs. The cross-departmental and interdisciplinary working groups from more than seventy agencies helped break down silos and spur innovation.

• OneNYC takes a medium- to long-term perspective, and uses long-term modeling exercises, to come up with ambitious, forward-thinking goals for the city (even when these goals require the cooperation of state, federal, and nongovernment actors). It has created a clear narrative for city residents and policymakers, serving as a unifying document as programs are disaggregated to the agency level.

• Both OneNYC and the global SDG agenda focus on data and monitoring. OneNYC includes a detailed set of indicators to monitor progress. Where baseline data did not exist, programs were developed using the best available data and analysis, to minimize delay. The challenges associated with gathering these data suggested new approaches to data collection, consolidation, and integration to support implementation.

• OneNYC, and its alignment with the SDGs, is resonating with many cities across the United States (e.g., San Jose and Baltimore) and around the world (e.g., Bogota, Colombia) now seeking to learn from the process and to follow the blueprint.

Theoretical Background, Contextual Environment, and Problem Definition

In January 2014, Bill de Blasio took office as the mayor of New York City. The city was working to implement the ambitious resiliency plans outlined in A Stronger, More Resilient New York under PlaNYC,² released after Hurricane Sandy, but residents were also clamoring for a spotlight on inequality. As Mayor de Blasio described on the campaign trail, New York was a “Tale of Two Cities,” with enormous wealth alongside increasing poverty and inequality. The question of how to foster inclusive economic growth while also maintain housing affordability was therefore paramount to his campaign, alongside an environmental focus on climate, energy, and recycling (de Blasio 2014).

Up the road from City Hall, 193 member states, including the United States of America, were locked in fierce UN negotiations over a new global development agenda. The eight Millennium Development Goals agreed upon in 2002 were coming to a close in 2015, and there was strong support for a new, holistic framework that would consider global social needs alongside economic and environmental imperatives as well as rising inequalities.

In 2015, the world’s governments were set to establish the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2015–2030, focusing not only on ending extreme poverty and hunger but also on the challenges of ensuring more equitable economic growth and environmental sustainability. OneNYC follows the same path, recognizing the critical link between sustainable and inclusive growth moving forward, not only for our city, but for the world.

The parallels were clear. Both globally and locally, discussions focused on how to chart a developmental course that encourages economic growth, while ensuring no one is left behind, environmental resources are judiciously managed for equal benefit, and all segments of the population are prepared for the environmental shocks and stresses that are expected to affect coastal cities with greater frequency in the years to come.

Under New York City’s charter, the city is required to develop a long-term sustainability plan every four years, to include at a minimum consideration of housing, open space, brownfields, transportation, water quality, infrastructure (see chapter 6), air quality, energy, climate change, and population growth. The next report was due in time for Earth Day 2015, or April 22. Mayor de Blasio and his team at City Hall identified this as an opportunity to prepare a broader, more integrative strategy for the city that would consider economic and environmental challenges, but also social inclusion and equity; the effort was titled “OneNYC.”

In 2025, New York City will be celebrating its four hundredth anniversary. The OneNYC design process asked what the city would need over the next ten years and beyond to thrive and grow, to promote inclusivity and equity for its residents, to be sustainable environmentally, and to be resilient against future crises. It mirrored the long-term perspective in the global discussions, with questions such as where the world wants to be by 2030, and how 193 countries can pull in the same direction toward common goals and priorities. As the OneNYC and SDG processes unfolded, it became apparent that there was much to be gained by attempting to align their goals.

Designing and Operationalizing a Comprehensive Sustainable Development Strategy for New York

Establishing the Planning Process

A new team at City Hall began developing a strategy, updating the economic and population trends and current conditions, reporting on the ongoing PlaNYC efforts, and broadening the original sustainability definitions so as to reflect the new mayor’s priorities on fostering equity. The team was to solicit the input of residents and to consider regional perspectives, making it an extremely complex and broad undertaking. The group’s members were set to task in December 2014 and had to deliver the strategy by April 2015, giving them a mere four and a half months (figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 OneNYC timeline.

In order to proceed, the mayor fused two mayoral departments (the Office of Environmental Coordination and the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability) into a new Office of Sustainability (“NYMOS”), while separating the resilience functions into another office. The first deputy mayor chaired a steering committee of deputy mayors, the chief of operations, representatives from the budget office, the city planning head, the resiliency director, and the sustainability director. The sustainability director led the overall project.

Eight cross-agency thematic working groups were established to identify unmet needs and develop initial proposals. Senior agency officials chaired the working groups with input from City Hall. A core team of city staff and steering committee designees supported the intensive process of reconciling information and proposed initiatives from the city agencies in order to formulate the contents of the plan. In addition, a Sustainability Advisory Board, with members from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors, advised the steering committee. Mayor de Blasio designated three co-chairs: Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General and leading developmental economist; Larisa Ortiz of the City Planning Commission; and then-chair of the New York City Council’s Environment Committee, Council Member Donovan Richards. At the time of his appointment, Professor Sachs was deeply immersed in the global negotiations on the new sustainable development agenda and was eager to share information on that process to inspire the city-level discussions.

According to representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, there were three concurrent prongs to the planning process: (1) deep research, modeling, and analysis of the current population, economic, social, and environmental conditions in the city, along with a review of existing and proposed infrastructure; (2) broad stakeholder and community consultations; and (3) widespread commissioner and senior-level staff engagement with draft policy designs, with further dev...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Data, Organization, and Technology
• Part II: City Services and Domains of Life
• Part III: Safety and Mobility
• Part IV: Becoming a Smarter City
• Contributors
• Index