Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at the Regional Planning Association Luncheon

April 25, 2014

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Of course I was working, I was meeting my constituents. I was seeking the input of the young about what they needed for their bright futures. I was undercover actually, that’s why I was dressed down, so I could blend in with the populace.

Thank you to Susan Chapman Hughes for her very kind, very warm introduction. Thank you for being a board member of RPA and all you do to help this organization. I want to thank Elliot Sander, Bob Yaro, and Thomas Wright, all the folks who do such important work through the RPA for their leadership – thoughtful leadership, I’d like to add – this is one of the places where real critical thinking happens about the future of our city and our region, and we are all the better for it. So I’d like to thank all the leaders of this organization. Let’s give them a round of applause to thank them.

[Applause]

I know you heard this morning from Senator Murphy, who is a great leader of this region. I’m glad he was here to share with you. I’m also glad to say a number of key figures in our administration are here today, people who you’ll be working with a lot, who share your devotion to a thoughtful approach to our future – and I dare say, a futuristic vision. These include our First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris, our Commissioner of Transportation Polly Trottenberg, and our Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development Vicki Been. Let’s thank them all for what they do for this city.

[Applause]

I want to thank all my fellow mayors from the metropolitan area who are here, all of whom I look forward to working with in common cause. One of my theses today will be that we, at the local level, have to do so much more than might have been expected of us in the past because of, sadly, the absence of the federal government on so many of these issues that we care about – of planning, infrastructure, transportation, all the foundational dynamics that will determine our future, that – tragically – the federal government is often absent as a partner in. So to my fellow mayors, a lot of times we know we’re going to have to do it ourselves, and hopefully we can find ways to support each other in this effort. And finally – this is twice in one day I’ve had the pleasure of being in the pleasure of being in the presence of Dick Ravitch, who is an extraordinary voice of reason, of both fiscal responsibility and of a compassion view of what government can do for people, and I consider him one of the great consciences of this city and this state – and I’m glad he’s with us as well. Let’s thank all of them for what they do.

[Applause]

So, let me state something from the beginning. This may be one of the great instances of stating the obvious that I’ll get to do this week. Cities and regions should be planned, but they often are not. And we’re still struggling, I think, to truly think and act carefully and in unison in what we do. I don’t think it’s shocking in such a complicated environment – so many different actors, so many different forces at work, and in many ways, the entrepreneurial dynamic that allows each of the different players to make their own way – it’s not shocking that planning is hard to come by sometimes. It’s not shocking that coordination and unity of vision are hard to come by. I would argue that maybe in the past, we had a little more luxury, if you will, of not being as careful as we might have been. Maybe in the past, we lived in a more forgiving time because there was such extraordinary economic expansion, because we didn’t yet understand what we were doing to our environment, because we weren’t yet so crowded, because our infrastructure by definition wasn’t yet so old. And now we know that planning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. We see in some parts of this country and some parts of this world, still, unregulated development, unplanned actions that have very negative lasting consequences. We see what it is to have urban sprawl and how hard it is to turn back from it. We’re blessed, in a sense, to be a place – certainly New York City, so wonderfully concentrated already – that we haven’t fallen into the trap of thinking we can expand ever outward, and use up the land and the resources of the Earth in a never-ending pattern. We know here in New York City we have to be smart, we have to be efficient, we have to be environmentally conscious, we have to do things in a sustainable manner. And yet, at the same time, we know we’re growing. And the projections of our population reaching nine million now are more real than ever. We can feel the progress, we’re over 8.4 million for the first time in our history. We know we’re moving forward rapidly.

The good news always is we’re doing it in a consolidated area. We’re doing it in a wave – we’re smart – that connects people more and more to mass transit. We’re doing this ultimately, potentially, the way it should be done if we quickly catch up and focus on our planning needs more intently. A great 20th century urban designer, Daniel Vernon, said something I think really strikes this note, he says about a good plan, ‘Once recorded, it will never die. But long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.’

That’s the kind of work we want to do together. We want to lay down the markers and the expectations that then pull at us and demand of us action, and adherence to the kind of principles that will sustain us. And it’s so important no – ultimately, I’ll preach to the choir more than ever by saying this – it’s so important to think regionally. Because again, in a world where the challenges are greater than ever, and where the national dynamics are so strained, there’s a greater naturalness, there a greater organic regional imperative than ever before. I think we have the opportunity to think together and plan together in ways that are more pertinent than ever.

I’m going to talk in a moment about the focus in this organization on economic inequality. I want to thank you at the outset for making that a signature element of your current thinking. It’s the issue of our times, it’s the issue we have to confront. It can be addressed in each locality. I strongly urge each locality to use the tools available to address inequality of all kinds, starting with economic inequality. But it’s better addressed in a regional manner – and better still, in a national manner or international manner. We in New York City – and I’ll talk about this in a moment – are trying in every way we can to innovate and act in the fight against inequality. We look forward to regionalizing that effort in every way we can, with so many of our partners in this room, because we know that will have so much greater impact. Again, planning as a powerful tool, planning as a call to arms, as a conscience.

For 85 years, RPA has put forward the notion that plans have power, and that they’ll help us get where we need to, and that the absence of planning itself is dangerous. So we go back to the first RPA plan, 1929. A time of incredible upheaval, ever-changing, fast-paced growth in our society, right up to a certain point that year, and then a chaotic dynamic thereafter. The RPA plan was something that gave some rooting in a time of great change. The second RPA plan, 1969, was a plan – sadly – for a city at that moment assumed to be in long-term decline, and for a time when our suburbs were seen as the growth opportunity. The third RPA plan, 1996, the city had come back in so many ways; but at the same time, the region was gripped by economic challenges. And each of these plans spoke to the times we were living in and beyond. And each of these plans was enormously influential.

Now with the fourth plan, the RPA is once again assessing what the times call for. And because you’re one of the consciences of this city, we’re all going to be watching carefully as you help us all think about more deeply the times we’re living in and what’s around the corner. One of the phrases you use to discuss our moment is you say it’s a time of fragile success – I think that’s a powerful phrase. We look at the path we’re traveled, now there are some extraordinary examples of success: the ever-intensifying public safety of this city is an incredible good news story, the growth in our population is a good news story, the diversification of our economy. I’ve had my differences with the previous administration, but I give them a lot of credit for the focus on diversifying our economy and using the tools of government to facilitate that. And that’s been a great success story, with sectors like film and TV and tech and so many others growing and becoming more dynamic in this city.

We have obviously sustained great improvements in private sector employment. We’re still not, at the same time, reaching so many of our own residents who need economic opportunity. We’re not yet raising the floor sufficiently on wages and benefits. We’re not yet addressing the decline of the middle class. Which again, should be an issue being addressed – as we speak this moment – by our federal government across the board, President, Congress, all forces, both parties in unison – but the decline of the middle class has gone persistently unaddressed. So we in New York City know we’ve experienced real, tangible success; and we also know, at the same time, it is fragile because it is so fundamentally uneven. Because 46 percent of our people are living at or near the poverty level. Because the cost of living here has become so prohibitive and so difficult for so many of our citizens.

Fragile success defines our status. And you’ve put a point on this. And I appreciate what you’re doing, I’m a fan of what you’re doing, because you’re being so honest in a debate that needs more light shed. As you say, opportunities – for one of the phrases you’ve used recently – opportunities are limited for far too many people. It’s as simple as that. We can have full success, we can’t have holistic success until a real opportunity society is reasserted. Now, we have tools to do that, and the question is, how do we use those tools in a way that affects – from my perspective – all of the residents of our city, every neighborhood, every borough, but from the regional perspective. How do we think together to uplift the regional economy, but also make sure it has a deeper impact?

Obviously, and I think my fellow mayors would be the first to agree, any of us who are interested in addressing inequality fundamentally want to see greater economic growth. We want to foster these exciting sectors in our economy that are strong, and we see great opportunity ahead for this region, because we are one of the great intellectual and creative capitals of the Earth. We’re well situated for a lot more growth in a lot of ways. We know we need that growth to be able to reach more people effectively. But if that growth is not accompanied by a set of clear standards, and an imperative to ensure the benefits reach deeply and broadly, we won’t get the result we need. That’s where the crucial role of government comes into play with all the tools we have, and using each and every one of them in concert, and using them regionally. And that’s where the RPA, as a guide, becomes so important.

Everyone knows what’s happened with the decline of incomes for people who really make up the vast majority. Three-quarters of the region’s households had declining median incomes since 1990, inflation adjusted. Three-quarters of the households in this extraordinary, strong region have seen that decline. We all understand how unhealthy that is. We all understand that after decades of believing we were moving forward on education, we still see how far behind we are in a society and an economy that demands educational grounding more than at any time in previous human history. Talk about our own school system. Some very good things have been done over the years, some very powerful investments have been made. And yet, only about two-thirds of our kids are graduating on time. And of them, only about a quarter – only about a quarter of our graduates – are actually college-ready, in an economy that demands higher and higher levels of education. We understand that we can’t stay still. We stay still, we are essentially buying into – inadvertently – accepting, digging in structural inequalities that will only get worse.

We have to do transformative things. That’s why I’ve focused so much on the kinds of things that government can do, even the most local governments can do, that start to get at the heart of the inequality issue. You know, I said all through the last eighteen months that my first focus would be on full-day pre-K for every child in this city. And that’s so crucial because it allows us to build a foundation for each child that actually puts them on the pathway to the kind of education they’ll need for the 21st century economy. But it also has a profound impact on the lives of hard-working people. Because in the world of more and more uncertainty, in a world of fewer and fewer guarantees, something that uplifts people – universally, every New Yorker, every family, every income level, every neighborhood, every borough – something that gives a little more security, a little more certainty, makes it a little easier for parents to go to work or seek work, another thing that lightens the economic burden because there’s a crucial need that they don’t have to pay for, in a time where everywhere they turn there’s more and more they do have to pay for.

So pre-K and the companion piece, after school, help families across the spectrum. They increase academic achievement. By the way, I am certain they uplift our whole school system, something we’re only investing $25 billion in right now in New York City. Such a huge investment that we have to make work better, we are going to do that by building from the foundation with pre-K, by deepening student achievement and student ability to continue forward with their education through our after school programs, extending the learning day. These corrective actions are going to make all that money we spend work a lot better. They’re also going to give our young people a clear sense of their possibilities ahead. Remember, our society is based on very material things by definition, but it’s also based on ideas. People know if there’s opportunity or not. People know if there’s hope or not. People know if they belong or not, if they can see a path for themselves and their family. That used to be a truism for decades in this country, in this region, in this city – that you could be economically stable, and then the next generation would do even better. Today, so many people don’t know if they themselves will be economically stable. They don’t know what would happen if they were to lose a job later in their career, would they get a chance to get back on track? They certainly wonder if their children can do as well as them, let alone better.

So our job is to change that equation profoundly. And to show our young people, from the beginning, that the investments are being made in them, that they will succeed, that we are guaranteeing them a pathway. We’re showing them that we believe they’ll make it because we’re investing in them, we’re reinforcing them, we’re going to get them that education so they can be a part of the 21st century economy. That is an example of the most local government, at the most local level, trying to respond to a crisis that’s so much bigger. And I think, responding in a way that will really be tangibly felt.

Our paid sick leave legislation lightens peoples’ burdens just a little, but in a very helpful way. Helps people stay well, helps make sure they don’t have economic discontinuity simply because they’re sick. Gives them a little more hope they can make it in this economy. Our affordable housing plan, we’re going to come out with a plan on May 1 that has been called extraordinarily ambitious. Many people commend the goal, some people think we are right out there on the edge of crazy. But we, on purpose, chose a very ambitious goal and the one we thought was literally the highest we could reach. Using all the tools of city government, working with so many partners in this room, firing on all cylinders for ten years, we will create 200,000 units of affordable housing in this town. And that will have a transcendent impact for this town; and in many ways, for the region as well.

[Applause]

So as we move forward, I know in this room people have done so much important work for the city, for the region. If I was to say to you right now, let’s talk about sustainability – a topic I know there’d be a lot of enthusiasm and energy for – and the first imprint in your mind would be environmental sustainability. And it’s a key concern of mine, because I see what’s happening, like so many of us in our world. I see the impact of climate change. It came home so deeply to us during Sandy, the worst natural disaster in the history of this city. When you have my job or the jobs of my fellow mayors, we know one thing profoundly: another storm is coming someday. We don’t know what it looks like, we don’t know what kind of storm, we don’t know what day, we don’t know what magnitude, we just know it’s coming. We don’t get a memo telling us how and when. So we feel – I think those of us in local leadership – very deeply an obligation to address climate change. We know that – again, even though so much of the solutions should be happening internationally and nationally – what we can do is take every tool at our disposal and utilize it energetically. What we can do is start to work together regionally to show what responsible change looks like.

But sustainability can be thought of in more than one way. And I think of environmental sustainability in the same breath as economic sustainability. I think of environmental sustainability as a vision that includes addressing the other inequalities we face. I think of our efforts to strengthen our infrastructure, create more resiliency, retrofit buildings, restore wetlands, restore dunes, I think of all of these efforts in concert as not only the right thing to do to protect ourselves going forward, the right investments to make – I think of them as opportunities to create a little more economic fairness. To get economic opportunity for folks who have been left out, to have a double positive effect of helping people back on their feet in areas that have been affected, of helping people back on their feet who have been left out of this economy over too long a period of time. There’s more than one thing we can do – in fact, there’s more than one thing we must do with every action of government nowadays, because we’re in such a challenging dynamic. We don’t have the luxury of only achieving narrow goals or small steps. We have to maximize with every step we take.

But we can do it. I’m convinced we can do it. I’m so excited at the notion of what we can do to make this city stronger through our resiliency efforts. I’m so excited at the notion of retrofitting our public housing buildings, retrofitting our schools, the energy efficiency that helps our environment simultaneously, smart economic moves; simultaneously, an economic opportunity in the here and now for people who need work. There’s so much that can be achieved at once.

And again, we’ll do it locally, until the day comes when the paradigm shifts. And that’s something we should all work for. It’s something we should all work for. The Regional Plan Association, by its very definition is a hopeful construct that humans who sometimes resist plans and order and vision could be pulled toward their better impulses. And those of us who sometimes devolve down to the most local level and don’t tend toward unity could be unified in a regional sensibility. Let’s take that the next step. If we, in this region, can lead the way on sustainability, if we can lead the way on resiliency, if we can lead the way on fighting income inequality, maybe – just maybe – we can find other regions to work with us. Maybe if we can change the national dynamic from the bottom up. Maybe we can show something hopeful to our people about what cooperation looks like, what it’s like to say we actually will respond to the crying needs of our time.

I’ll finish by saying I think this city, this state has a very proud tradition of having looked squarely in the face of the challenges we face, and finding new ways to do something about it. We saw it with the New Deal, we saw it here in New York State leading the way for the country, we saw the country transformed by New Yorkers who found new ways to address economic crisis and help an entire nation back on its feet. We’ve seen it in so many areas related to civil and human rights, a very proud history in New York City and New York State of leading the way on women’s rights, on human rights, in so many ways. Even when it wasn’t the norm in our country, in our world – us, at the local level, showing a possibility, blazing a trail that others ultimately found the right path. We’ve seen it around this country, great credit to our friends in California for the way they’ve led the way on emissions standards; showing that even when the federal government wasn’t willing to be decisive or was paralyzed by different interests, localities could show the path we all need to take. That’s what excites me about our efforts together, that we can change the paradigm from the ground up, from the grassroots up.

I’ll conclude with a quote that I appreciate. Yes, I will tip my cap here to my Italian heritage. Italo Calvino, in his novel Invisible Cities, he wrote that, ‘Cities, like dreams are made of desires and fears.’ I think every one of us, every one of the mayors in the room immediately understands what that means. I think planners do too, in a different way. People flock to cities from all over the region, all over the country, all over the world. They flock to cities – particularly to this city – because of that desire, that idea they could get a better life, they could get economic stability, they could tap into a hope, they could get away from a dead end or from oppression. And they certainly believe it could mean even more for their children. But they fear, at the same time, that that might not be available to them. They fear that what they’ve seen in the world around them might come to pass for them too. They fear an ever-tougher economy, a challenging environmental dynamic. So our jobs, as public servants, are to protect people in every sense: economically, in terms of their health, their safety. We have to protect them from the things they fear. We have to show them a way to address the things they fear, we have to show them that we are working in concert to dispel those fears, not give into them; and at the same time, using the power of government, the power of our unity, the power of planning to show people that we will address their desires. That they’re not just vague dreams but things that we over time can make real for them. That’s how I interpret the work you do, that’s how important it is. And I want you to know it’s my honor to be your partner, and I thank you. I want to thank everyone who is a part of the Regional Plan Association for helping to show us the way. Thank you very much.