Syracuse City Eagle, October 27, 2005
Sustainable Syracuse?
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for mayor of Syracuse, has offered his alternative to building Destiny USA. His proposal, called Sustainable Syracuse, is a 6,000-word treatise that can be found on the Syracuse Greens' website (www.syracusegreens.org)
"Whether we build Destiny USA or a Sustainable Syracuse is the most important issue facing the voters in this election," Hawkins writes. "The decisions around this issue will shape Syracuse for a generation. Both major party mayoral candidates, Driscoll and Mahoney, support the Destiny USA project. The Green Party opposes the Destiny USA project because it subsidizes a private developer to be the city's planner. Its marketing hype about powering it with renewables does not change its basic character as anti-ecological monument to sprawl and consumerism that depends on exploiting cheap labor and natural resources the world over. Destiny USA would make Syracuse itself a barracks for low-wage workers who service upscale tourists."
Sustainable Syracuse is not one big project but a large number of smaller projects that fit into an overall city plan. As "new urbanism" city planner Andres Duany has said, "What a city requires is slow, patient work by excellent government and many small investors."
The ideas in Sustainable Syracuse draw upon the County Settlements Plan drawn up by Duany as well as elements of the city's Comprehensive Plan, studies commissioned by the Metropolitan Development Association that promote developing the economy by building upon existing assets and industry clusters, and studies by SUNY ESF designers and architects, particularly the Onondaga Creek Corridor Studies led by Professor Emanuel Carter.
What the Greens have added to this mix is an emphasis on the need for democratic political and economic institutions that empower the people of Syracuse to make and carry out their city and neighborhood plans.
And because we believe the people of Syracuse should make the ultimate planning decisions, we present this vision of a Sustainable Syracuse as the beginning of a discussion, not the final word.
What follows is an edited version of the proposal:
Sustainable Syracuse: basic concepts
Sustainable Syracuse means neighborhood-directed development using green technologies and widespread community ownership to create living-wage jobs in a city that is ecologically and economically sustainable.
Sustainable Syracuse means good jobs. It means directing city resources toward the creation of thousands of $40,000 a year manufacturing and construction jobs - and not $14,000 a year jobs servicing tourists at Destiny USA
Sustainable Syracuse means widespread community ownership. It means creating dozens of new manufacturing plants in Syracuse where the wealth they create stays in Syracuse through various forms of community ownership - and not subsidizing one big private developer for Destiny USA and its absentee-owned chain store tenants to suck profits and wealth away to corporate headquarters. It means revitalizing downtown and the neighborhood business districts with locally owned retail businesses - and not subsidizing Destiny USA to compete against every other retail and entertainment business downtown and in the neighborhoods.
Sustainable Syracuse means environmental health and productivity as the basis for economic security. It means rebuilding Syracuse itself green by retrofitting its infrastructure, buildings, and enterprises for the efficient use of renewable energy and recyclable materials - and not putting a veneer of renewable energy on a Destiny USA development that remains dependent on unsustainable global transportation networks and production processes to support it.
Sustainable Syracuse means the people plan their city and neighborhoods and the developers bid to work on parts of that plan -and not making the private developer of Destiny USA the effective city planner for Syracuse.
A people's waterfront
Syracuse can become a sustainable city of neighborhoods based on green technologies, community ownership, and a vibrant neighborhood-based civic, commercial, and cultural life. The Inner Harbor/Oil City area is prime real estate that should be developed as a model of ecologically sustainable neighborhood development.
Here we call for a People's Waterfront instead of Destiny USA . The city should get back the development rights to the Inner Harbor/Oil City area and develop a model "new urbanism" neighborhood with high-density mixed-use development and mixed-income housing. The Inner Harbor waterfront areas should be a public park.
In the longer run, the shoreline should be developed as a park for the people of Syracuse to enjoy, with the sewage treatment plant, the industrial businesses, and shopping mall stores removed to an eco-industrial park along the Erie Canal corridor, with a Peace Park museum to commemorate the Haudenosaunee Peacemaker and celebrate the restoration of Onondaga Lake .
Greenway network
A sustainable city needs an energy-efficient, convenient system of public transportation. Sustainable Syracuse envisions replacing key streets with park-like corridors for pedestrians, bikes, and light rails that link homes to schools, parks, shopping districts, and workplaces. As the Greenway Network develops, neighborhood shopping district streets can become pedestrian malls and traffic calming measures in residential neighborhoods can further reduce the erosion community street life by traffic.
Sustainable Syracuse envisions taking down the elevated section of Interstate 81 and replacing it with a Greenway that includes light rail into downtown. A large parking structure would be built on surface lots near the Dome to accommodate downtown and university commuters. The elevated section of I-81 is too expensive to maintain due to road salt corroding concrete and steel structure. It has functioned as a barrier isolating Syracuse University from Downtown and the South Side. The Greenway will reconnect the university with Downtown and the South Side.
Erie Canal Corridor
Instead of building a phony Erie Canal inside the Destiny dome, Sustainable Syracuse envisions re-digging the Erie Canal from the Lake , through downtown and out Erie Boulevard to create a broad East-West linear eco-industrial park. The canal in Providence RI and the Avon-Kennet canal in England have been restored canals with great economic benefits. Buffalo is beginning to restore its section of the Erie Canal . New York State has money to develop the whole Erie Canal corridor. Syracuse should take advantage of the Erie Canal corridor that built the city.
As one of the drawings shows, a light rail line would run along one side of the canal and a bike and pedestrian path along the other side. Both ecological manufacturing plants and high-density urban village shopping districts would be developed along this new waterfront property.
The eco-industrial park would develop dozens of ecological manufacturing plants employing thousands of factory workers. The existing freight rail line and Interstate 690 would service shipping needs. Commuting workers could ride the light rail line along the canal.
Several high-density mixed-use urban villages along the canal, with ground-level retail and upstairs apartments, will provide a shopping district for nearby neighborhoods as well as factory workers, canal visitors, and shoppers taking light rail to the stores. This will create attractive "riverfront" shopping districts along the canal in place of the kind of mundane suburban-style shopping strip along Erie Boulevard that can be found anywhere in the U.S.
Renewable energy
Every building in Syracuse should be an energy producer with solar heating and panels producing electricity. Every building in Syracuse can improve its energy efficiency through better insulation and more efficient appliances. Syracuse can become energy self-sufficient through a mosaic of renewable sources including wind, solar, low-head hydro, and biofuels. Other cities are doing it. Syracuse should, too.
Powering Destiny USA with renewables when the whole project is dependent on shipping people and things to the mall through a transportation system thoroughly dependent of fossil fuels is not a sustainable model. Rather than centralized shopping and entertainment that brings people and products to central locations, sustainable economies will bring products, many more of them locally produced, to people in their neighborhoods.
Petrogeologists argue over whether gas and oil production are peaking now or, in the most optimistic projections, two or three decades from now. Either way, now is the time to get ahead of the curve and move a sustainable economic model. As energy prices rise, global supply chains and long metropolitan commutes become less viable economically. Syracuse should move toward a sustainable model before rising energy costs catch it in a bind.
An energy-efficient public transit system is central to the efficient use of renewable energy sources. The political moment has arrived to push for a Greenway Network, including light rails through out Syracuse and its suburbs. Seven out of 10 Americans said they want to put public investment into mass transit instead of highways in a mid-September AP poll. As high energy prices hammer us this winter, this point of view is likely to rise.
Posted by syracusegreens at October 27, 2005 12:28 PM