The Adams Administration recently announced the appointment of a “Director of the Public Realm,” a newly created position. The idea for this post was advanced in recent years through the advocacy of civic groups concerned about public design, like the Municipal Art Society and the Design Trust for Public Space. The creation of the office became something of a (quiet) rallying cry during the last Mayoral election. The Mayor has appointed Ya-Ting Liu to the job, who, while not someone I know (not that it matters), seems well qualified for the role, with degrees from Berkely and MIT, and time spent at Transportation Alternatives and City Hall. Presumably, in the eyes of the public design and placemaking communities this is a professional who is both for the right things and is knowledgeable about the workings of city government, reporting directly to a Deputy Mayor. As someone who has worked on improving public spaces, streets and sidewalks in New York City for 30 years, including as the long-time chair of the Streets and Sidewalks Committee of the MAS, I can only wish her well. 

            Unfortunately, though, having a Director of the Public Realm probably isn’t a particularly good idea. It’s unlikely to contribute much to making public spaces better. It does give the civic groups (which during the Bloomberg Administration became quiescent) someone they can talk to in City Hall, and who would presumably be receptive to their ideas. However, based on my experience in City government, the office has a low probability having much impact, and over time will add to the bureaucratic dysfunction of city government as senior officials in City Hall lose interest in the initiative and/or are replaced by people who don’t see it as the priority Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Joshi presumably do. 

  I experienced this firsthand in my time at the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT, now Office of Technology Innovation, OTI). DoITT was a relatively new City agency, established as a home for the once important city cable franchises (after the elimination of the discredited Bureau of Franchises as a result of a charter change) and the new and growing in importance technological support functions for other City agencies. It grew into a sizable bureaucracy that included the City’s 311 service, its procurement of hardware, software and telecommunications services, with its own capacity to code software to meet the City’s routine needs and with the capacity to house and support redundant servicer capacity for data and software. 

            A parallel Office of the Chief Technology Officer was created during the Bloomberg Administration. A key strategy of Mayor Bloomberg in accomplishing his administration’s goals appeared to be working around existing bureaucracies, by setting up offices in City Hall focused on the Mayor’s policy priorities, like sustainability and technology innovation. I speculate that Bloomberg and his staff decided that working through the existing agencies would frustrate their initiatives, and that life was too short to attempt to reform the deep dysfunction in City operations, particularly with respect to procurement and human resources. 

            While the CTO might have had some viability when it was first established in driving new ideas in municipal technology, it became just another bureaucratic power center. After Bloomberg, in the De Blasio Administration, it was staffed by smart, committed advocates dedicated to closing the digital divide (I have previously written here about my skepticism as to whether there actually is a digital divide https://www.theplacemaster.com/2022/07/31/expanding-the-reach-of-the-internet-in-new-york-city/). The Bloomberg priorities became orphans. The De Blasio CTO announced lots of grand plans that never came to much. But more significantly, the CTO spent much of its time sparring with DoITT over turf, credit for accomplishment and the Mayor’s attention. All three of the Commissioners whom I served made clear that the CTO was an adversary and encouraged ignoring them and engaging in parallel projects. There was much energy wasted in sniping at each other. Personally, I tried to leverage the resources available at the CTO, swiping my best staff member from them and trying to improve the CTO’s work product when and where I could (including spending two weeks editing and rewriting the Internet Master Plan, which when it came to me was drafted by a consulting firm the City had hired in a language that only remotely resembled English). Recently, that Master Plan, a signal achievement of De Blasio CTO’s office was abandoned by the Adams Administration (in my view no great loss, despite, or maybe even because, of my contribution). 

            In my experience, there is simply no substitute for hiring talented, dedicated, well-trained, right-thinking officials in the relevant agencies and empowering them to take risks and make decisions in order to enable the bureaucracies to “get stuff done.” Setting up offices in City Hall to coordinate policy and spearhead thoughtful new initiatives isn’t a thing that actually functions in the real world. It just doesn’t work, and over time because of the fighting over turf, makes the bureaucracy worse. Over time, the managerial vectors have moved in the wrong direction, with decision making power drifting up and being centralized in the Mayor. The order of the day in the agencies has become avoiding making mistakes and waiting for direction from City Hall. 

            In the design and public space realm in City government there have been agency staff who have had a positive impact on in making good design in public space a priority from both the top and middle management of agencies, some over and some under the radar. As Design and Construction Commissioner, David Burney created a Design Excellence Program, which has become partially embedded in the agency’s DNA – employing a wider range of architects and engineers, some of whom have established high design credentials. At the MTA, Wendy Feuer and now Sandra Bloodworth have made its Arts in Transit program a huge success. They created a gold standard selection process for artists that has produced outstanding results – most recently in the Times Square/Sixth Avenue subway connection and in the new Grand Central Madison. Wendy took her design sensibility to the City’s Department of Transportation’s Urban Design group, and, working with Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, successfully inserted design and public space management interests into DOT’s day to day work. 

            In my time at DoITT I sought out others in City government concerned about quality design in public projects and on the streets and sidewalks and tried to create an informal network of like-minded bureaucrats. At the same time, I attempted to imbue our DoITT team with a sensitivity to design issues and the impact of telecommunications infrastructure on public space. The first two commissioners for whom I worked were technologists who didn’t have design top of mind, and I was able to work under the radar. Later, we rammed through a number of utilitarian objects of streetscape, the implications of which are only now being realized (and resisted) and my ability to influence policy went to nil. Newly installed larger mobile telecom 5G transmitter enclosures on light and signal poles and very tall, utilitarian LinkNYC 5G structures (about which I have previously written) are now beginning to appear on the City’s streetscape.

            Best case, Ms. Liu seeks out those with design sensibility and expertise in public space programming in the agencies and provides support for their efforts, works to encourage the agencies to create centers of good design (and I can’t think of any agency that doesn’t have an impact on structures and streetscapes) and creates programs encouraging the incorporation of design and placemaking sensibilities in all of the City’s endeavors in public spaces and City facilities. To advance my own hobby horse, creating a striking, distinctive purpose-built telecommunications structure to replace the eyesores now going up all over town, would be a lay-up and great place to start. I’d also suggests securing resources to program DOT’s Open Streets initiative. The Administration’s excellent New New York Action Plan would be a good place to start to find worthwhile ideas for revitalizing commercial corridors and improving public spaces.

Ms. Liu’s initial assignment will probably to come up with rules institutionalizing the tremendously successful Open Restaurant and Open Streets programs created during COVID. As is typical with New York open space issues, there are loud voices seeking to shut those programs down, and to heavily regulate commercial activity on streets and sidewalks. Those forces need to be boldly resisted. My suggestion is to get rid of the dining sheds in the roadbeds, which have outlived their COVID pandemic usefulness, some of which have become derelict. Putting chairs and tables on sidewalks should be made as streamlined as possible – with the City getting a license fee per square feet occupied – calibrated by borough and neighborhood. Economic actors who use public space to generate revenue should pay for the privilege (that includes you, broadband providers!).