THE BEST LAID PLANS FOR FREE WI-FI (Part 1 of 3)

[The first in a series of three]

FROM TO THE 19^TH TO THE 21^ST CENTURY IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The idea of replacing the city’s sidewalk public pay telephones with Wi-Fi kiosks, providing free access to high-speed internet service was, and remains, an excellent one. The Wi-Fi kiosks that the City ended up deploying on its sidewalks in the 2010’s, LinkNYC, were spectacularly well designed for the task, and the financial deal the City arranged for itself with the CityBridge, the company contracted with to supply them, was a handsome one. I regarded the kiosks themselves as the street furniture analog of a Bentley – with more capacity than anyone could ever use. But in many, many respects, the franchise was poorly conceived, executed and managed. I was hired by the City in 2017 to manage it – so a good deal of this sticks to me. The program still has the capacity of being an asset for New York City.

In the mid-90’s, when I was working for business improvement districts to improve the midtown streetscape, upgrading the appearance of payphones were one of my assignments. At their peak, there were more than 35,000 public pay telephones on the New York City sidewalks at the curb, for which New York Telephone had a franchise from the City. The franchise did not include indoor phones (in restaurants, airports and transit centers) or phones built at the building line (like the ones in front of bodegas). For decades, public pay telephones were an embedded part of New York and American culture, frequently turning up in crucial dramatic scenes in film and other aspects of popular culture. Payphones were the way we communicated with each other away from home or office, particularly in emergencies – and, in fact, the New York City Police and Fire Department regarded payphones as an important supplement to their dedicated (red) call boxes (which are still around and equally obsolete. Another long story).

When I arrived at Bryant Park in 1991, as part of its deal with the Parks Department, Bryant Park Restoration Corporation was assigned the revenue from the pay phones on the block between 40^th and 42^nd Streets and 5^th and 6^th Avenues. My recollection is that the annual revenue was an important part of our then skimpy budget, in the tens of thousands of dollars a year.

At one point in the second half of the 20^th Century, Verizon (or one of its predecessor entities) asked the City for permission to place advertisements on the phone kiosks, and the City granted Verizon a franchise for that, in consideration for a percentage of the income. By the 1990’s phone kiosk advertising had turned into a very big business. At the same time, mobile phones were beginning to develop a market, and as they proliferated, the need for stationary phones in public places became obsolete. As a result, the pay phone kiosks became more valuable as advertising vehicles than as telecommunications devices. With the breakup of AT&T, New York Telephone (whatever it was called at the time) deaccessioned its payphone business and sold pieces of its franchise to a number of independent companies, which had obtained their own telecommunications franchises from the City. Those companies and a number of other new entrants continued to deploy new phone/advertising kiosks. Ultimately, there were a couple of dozen independent “payphone” franchisees, which were principally in the outdoor advertising business – and a feisty, independent bunch they were. In the 90’s the “out-of-home” advertising business exploded, and the bigger of these small independents, found themselves to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of the valuable sidewalk real estate they controlled.

But at the same time phones without advertising, kiosks the locations of which weren’t terribly valuable for advertising purposes, and even some high-value location kiosks weren’t being well maintained. Verizon was particularly derelict in maintaining its remaining fleet. In order to make things better in mid-town, my talented colleague, Ignacio Ciocchini, who was on the staff of Bryant Park Restoration Corporation/Grand Central Partnership/34^th Street Partnership, designed a really good looking new phone kiosk, which he and I took through the various approval processes at the City’s Department of Transportation (which regulated the sidewalks), Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (which regulated pay phones) and Art Commission (which had to approve the aesthetics). We were able to garner all of those approvals, but we were unable to persuade Verizon or any of the independent companies to use the design (of which we had a prototype built and installed by a company called Telebeam on 34^th Street near 5^thAvenue,). Then, Verizon and a couple of the larger independent payphone companies did, however, knock off Ignacio’s design and widely deployed it, which we regarded as a major win.

As a side note, there was an interesting cast of characters involved in the payphone industry and in regulating pay phones and design at the City, many of whom I became friendly with over the years. A guy named Larry Allison was the Assistant Commissioner for Franchise Administration at DoITT. Larry was an old school pol and a great storyteller. He was succeeded by Stanley Shor, a dedicated long-time public servant, who after two decades preceded me in that job. The folks at Telebeam, who became a substantial irritant to the City (in a protraccted lawsuit over the termination of the payphone franchises), also became good friends and colleagues, particularly its entrepreneurial president, Ray Mastroianni. The then Executive Director of the Art Commission, Deborah Bershad, and her, now, husband, Frank Addeo, who represented DOT at the Art Commission, and I remain close to this day. Frank was doing pedestrianization at DOT before the term was even coined. He promoted public art on the sidewalks and plazas. He advocated for well-regulated sidewalks. Frank was decades ahead of the “open streets” curve, later promoted by Mayor Bloomberg’s DOT Commissioner, Janet Sadik-Kahn, who became internationally acclaimed for advancing the policies Frank was doing for decades under the radar at DOT.

But even with a large number of improved structures, with the turn of the millennium and the ubiquity of handheld devices, the presence of payphones on the sidewalks as telecommunication centers became obsolete. In the 00’s the Bloomberg Administration began to brainstorm as to what to do about them. City officials were wary about the litigiousness of the independent payphone operators, who had been vigorous in prosecuting their perceived rights in court under both their franchises and the Federal Telecommunications Act (which covered payphones as well as cable and broadband). The City decided that it wanted to replace the pay telephones with kiosks providing free Wi-Fi service in public spaces. It also decided to site them by replacing payphones with Wi-Fi kiosks at the same locations, with the costs for the program to be paid for by a franchise for electronic advertising on the kiosks. First, it was thought that the existing electrical and conduit to the payphones would make installing new infrastructure at those locations a breeze. Second, using payphone locations would make citing the kiosks easier, as the payphone sites had already been vetted under the City’s payphone streetscape regulations. And finally, and most importantly, using the payphone regulatory structure meant a new regulatory structure would not have to be adopted by the New York City Council – something that any administration regards as a major advantage. The City’s executive branch likes to control things. When the Council gets involved, politics and negotiation (horse-trading) become inevitable. That process does tend to be a break on unrestrained executive power (and a forum for the vetting of bad ideas). But the Mayor and his Commissioners bend over backward in avoiding having to negotiate with the Council over policy. The Administration was not entirely home free, as a new franchise would have to be created for the Wi-Fi program, which would require Council approval – but that was a well-trod and much narrower path, with the Council playing a much more limited role.

The City began the hunt for a program and a partner, which, with any new program, especially one involving a city franchise (permission for the private use of streets or sidewalks for profit) is a complex, multi-year affair.

THE FRANCHISE AGREEMENT WITH CITY BRIDGE

By the early teens, the City had selected a consortium called CityBridge to be awarded the public Wi-Fi franchise. CityBridge’s proposal was in every way superior to the other proposals the City received in response to a formal request for proposals (I had nothing to do with the evaluation of the proposals, as when I joined city government, the franchisee had already been selected and the franchise agreement was fully negotiated, approved and executed). It was financially generous, promising hundreds of millions of dollars to the City from the sale of kiosk advertising over the life of the contract. CityBridge promised the City to deploy a minimum of 7,500 of its highly designed, multiple use kiosks during the first six years of the franchise. It also promised speed and privacy protection for Wi-Fi users at a higher standard that was then being provided by the wired broadband providers to people’s homes. The franchise included a schedule of significant minimum annual guaranteed payments. The City also got 10% of the advertising for its own use, which it gave to the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau to program. CityBridge also agreed to remove all of the existing payphones on an accelerated schedule.

The LinkNYC kiosks provided free Wi-Fi service up to a couple of hundred yards from each structure. The plan was for them to be placed with sufficient consistency along pedestrian thoroughfares to provide continuous, uninterpreted service. In my field testing, I found the service to be steady, reliable and high speed. The kiosks also included tablets with access to the internet, free phone service for anywhere within the US, two charging stations and a sophisticated system for calling for emergency service. The emergency service functionality had to be multiply redundant and accessible to individuals with a range of disabilities. It was able to send exact locations to the 311 call centers. It worked off of a fiber optic network, a back-up fiber optic network, with a third level of wireless redundancy. It had access to sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired. It had features that made it easier to use for the visually impaired. It was a lot of firepower and cost for a service that mobile telephone service effectively made obsolete the moment it went live; but such was the influence of the Police, Fire Department and disability rights community, as well as the comprehensiveness of the Americans With Disabilities Act. At one point we did some research and found that prior to the Link program, payphones were almost never used to report legitimate emergencies (and were used quite a bit for false alarms).

The kiosks also included two electronic ad panels, one on either side, that could broadcast changing electronic messages. The panels were a non-standard size for outdoor advertising but could be targeted to be programed down to the individual panel. So, for example, ads for Broadway shows could be sent only to kiosks in the theater district. But it quickly became clear that Intersection, the national advertising member of the consortium was looking to do the easy work of including the Link network into its national advertising sales program and wasn’t at all interested in selling the ads to local users, which was a much more labor-intensive process. The non-standard ad panel size was also probably a serious obstacle to the success of such a strategy.

The kiosks were well hardened to withstand the abuse they were likely to take on New York City sidewalks and performed remarkably well. They included a number of fans to keep their operations cool in the summer (and in my field testing, the surface of the kiosks got really hot on hot New York summer days). Of course, they also had to function in snow and ice. They had three cameras and a battery of sensors for a range of environmental factors. The design was elegant, and I regarded them as a positive addition to the city’s streetscape.

The public face of CityBridge, at least at the outset, was former Bloomberg economic development Deputy Mayor, Daniel Doctoroff, who was the CEO of a Google subsidiary called Sidewalk Labs. LinkNYC, as the program was called, was to be the signature initiative of Sidewalk Labs. Sidewalk Labs had an outdoor advertising subsidiary called Intersection, which was to be a partner in the CityBridge consortium. The members of the consortium shifted over time but included at one time or another the manufacturer of the kiosk, a private equity investor, a fiber optic infrastructure provider, a silicon chip manufacturer and an outdoor advertising company. CityBridge was to be the franchisee and was essentially a shell company. None of the consortium members were willing to provide a financial guarantee of CityBridge’s substantial obligations under the agreement – so instead the City agreed to sizeable financial security – a $25 million letter of credit (essentially a cash deposit) and $75 million performance bond (an agreement by an insurance company to complete construction of the project up to the bond amount in the event of a default by CityBridge).

In certain essential aspects, the program was a tremendous success. The kiosks provided high quality free Wi-Fi service and CityBridge was making its minimum guaranteed monthly payments. I was particularly interested in the communications capacity of the screens on the kiosks – they were capable of transmitting block by block targeted messages, either as advertisements for local businesses, or information the City wanted to communicate to local communities. Such was not to be.

Commencement of the franchise was delayed by lawsuits from the independent pay phone operators who were as mad as hornets that they weren’t awarded pieces of the franchise and that CityBridge was given a city-wide (if non-exclusive) franchise. With the end of their franchises, payphone operators weren’t too thrilled about the decimation of their businesses (which they had milked for high profits for a couple of decades). Finally, they wanted to be paid for their worthless physical payphone inventory, which they claimed had residual value. The enjoining of the implementation of the franchise was resolved relatively quickly, but the lawsuits, particularly one involving my old friends at Telebeam (with whom I hadn’t been in touch for at least ten years), went on for years more.

A key component of the agreement was that CityBridge was to remove all of the remaining payphone kiosks by the fourth year of the agreement and either replace them with a Link kiosk or restore the sidewalk.

There was one glaring exception. A guy named Allen Flax, who was something of a village character on the Upper West Side in the 100’s, in fact my very neighborhood, had an obsession with the several remaining “Superman” style payphones, ones with doors and little roofs. Flax had that special UWS ability of drawing attention to himself with the media, and to local elected officials, which regarded his ideocracies as endearing. He was a particular favorite of the local electeds because of his prodigious capacity for collecting signatures on nominating petitions, an essential, and arcane, requirement to get on the ballot in New York State. Flax is the champion signature collector for the Three Parks Independent Democratic Club. He has the ear of once Borough President and once again City Council Member Gale Brewer. CM Brewer championed the requirement in the agreement that the franchisee renovate and maintain four phone traditional booths on West End Avenue during the term of the contract. As the booths are obsolete and no longer manufactured, the franchisee had to have four new booths custom fabricated. Flax checks the dial tone on the phones in the booths on a regular basis and calls the City (me, at the time), and then the media to complain when they weren’t functioning. After a few of these calls, I got in touch with then Borough President Brewer, whom I consider a friend, to beg her to let us get rid of the booths. She made clear she thought they were charming and that they were going to stay. And there they stay, but thank goodness are now someone else’s problem.

ONLINE PORN, GAMBLING AND 5G

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To put the recent hyperbole regarding the fifth generation of mobile phone technology (5G) in context, a rough estimate puts porn and gaming at 40% of internet data. So, increasing the speed and capacity of internet infrastructure will largely go to improving the experience of those uses. My flip evaluation of the utility of 5G technology has been that it is great if you want to do robotic surgery or download all of Game of Thrones on a street corner.

5G is the latest iteration of mobile phone and data transmission technology that is now being rolled out around the country and the world. In fact, one often reads ominously that the US is “falling behind” on the implementation of 5G. The value of the new technology is essentially that more information can be pushed through fiber optic lines and wireless transmission at higher speeds as a result of how the packages of electrons carrying digital data are bundled. The result is a higher capacity for traffic, significantly faster speeds and importantly, less latency in the transmission. Latency is the time between a user pushing the “enter” key and the time the information being requested fully loads on a screen.

The reduction in latency is not only important because it keeps people from throwing their mobile devices against walls out of frustration, but more critically, it enables a whole range of new internet applications that demand effectively simultaneous real time responses in order to be effective – like self-driving cars (which also aren’t coming any time soon). A graphic example of the problems arising out of latency delay is the inability of musicians to play together using zoom. Because of latency, using existing technology, it is impossible for participants to play music together over the internet (without additional compensating software). Low latency would also, for example, make possible robotic surgery, because the visual and vital sign information being conveyed to the surgeon on one end would be instant with a doctor’s surgical procedures on the other.

This brings to the fore an important fact about 5G transmission – many of the most useful aspects of its increased speed having nothing to do with mobile phone transmission – as they would be used inside – like surgery or improved efficiency in warehouse operations. A lot of the claims being made about the commercial value of 5G have nothing to do with mobile phone service in public spaces.

Right now, as far as I can tell, the most important use of 5G service in New York City is to expand system capacity at high use times and places – where the current transmission system is nearly maxed out. The highest use, densest locations for mobile phones I understand to be in Times Square (42^nd Street), at 34^th Street and 7^th Avenue and at Broad Street and Wall Street. Apparently, the highest use times are during the early afternoon rush hour, particularly on Fridays (“honey, (i) should I pick up a loaf of bread on the way home” and/or (ii) “I’m gonna be late. I’m having a drink with the team after work” or (iii) “my train/bus is late.”). In order for the system to accommodate the increased traffic at those times and places, the pipe needs to be wider, and 5G information bundling creates a wider pipe.

It’s worth noting that the high visibility of the perceived lack of “technological equity” has added a political dimension to the public discussion of mobile telecom infrastructure. Frankly, given the way in which mobile telephones are used, there isn’t much of an immediate need for additional capacity in New York City outside of the Manhattan core (that’s not to say there won’t be in the future – and any 5G build would likely ultimately need to be city-wide). But because of immediate concerns about “equity,” the industry is going to be required to distribute its equipment across the five boroughs, in order to be given the green light to build the additional transmitters the system really needs in Manhattan.

A typical New York City mobile telecom installation

Mobile phone signals are transmitted by macro transmitters (those towers you see along highways and on building roofs) and more recently, and more widely via micro transmitters, which in most cities are glommed on to municipal light and signal poles. This is a huge pain for the mobile telecommunications industry, as there are tens of thousands of municipalities across the country, and each of the three national wireless companies has to make their own deals with each of them. You probably haven’t noticed the installations in New York City, because here they have been pretty well designed to blend in. They are painted the same color as the pole to which they are attached. They consist of a rectangular box near the top of the pole and a “whip” antenna sticking up from the top of the pole. Needless to say, the poles weren’t originally designed to carry telecommunications infrastructure, and it not being essential to their mission, the City’s Department of Transportation is less than thrilled with having this stuff attached to their poles and being responsible for their safety. DOT’s job is to keep the lights on at night and the signals working 24/7. In addition, City agencies have their own use for this aerial real estate – particularly DOT and the NYPD. The police use the poles, for example, for surveillance cameras and speed monitors. This is highly contested real estate. Until recently, only one of the three mobile companies’ equipment could be accommodated on each pole.

As with all telecommunications regulation, the base layer is Federal – and the outdated 1996 Cable Act governs the interaction of municipalities of mobile telecommunications infrastructure in the public way. When one thinks of mobile telecommunications, one thinks of wireless transmission, but for every mobile transmitter there must be a wired connection to the network. There is a mostly separate (from cable, except for Verizon) system of fiber optic cable supporting the mobile phone network under New York streets and hanging from utility poles. Companies providing mobile telecommunications infrastructure (and there are a number of companies who provide this as a service to the Big Three, in addition to the mobile companies themselves) need to have a franchise from the City both to lay their wires under the streets and across utility poles, as well as to place their transmitters on City poles.

During the Trump administration, the industry friendly Federal Communications Commission adopted rules that constrained the regulation of the deployment of mobile infrastructure in the public way by municipalities, just as it did with cable regulation. In the case of mobile telecom, the FCC limited what local government could charge for the use of its space to essentially the cost of administering the licensing program, and created accelerated maximum timelines for approval of the location of transmitters. The latter was certainly required, as many local governments out of a concern for aesthetics, or bureaucratic lethargy, stood in the way of the mobile telecom deployment.

However, this was not at all true in New York City, which, about 20 years ago, set up an efficient system for fairly allocating and licensing pole use to the mobile telecom infrastructure companies. The industry saw the City’s system as a national model and were (mostly) happy with how things were, and especially with the City’s experienced and highly responsive team that administered the program. To put this in context, NYC has about 300,000 light and signal poles (although there is no complete inventory of poles), and the last time I looked about fewer than 10,000 were being used as hosts for mobile phone transmitters. But, because of the preemption of Federal law, the City has been cast in the same boat as all other local governments. Of course, the FCC’s newish rules are the subject of continuing litigation. The industry has not sued the City to attempt to make it conform with the new rules, presumably because they are reasonably satisfied with the status quo – and they are in a rush to deploy their transmitters and don’t want to delay the process by initiating a lawsuit here.

This is particularly the case because Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, given the publicity they’ve created about the benefits of 5G service, want to deploy 5G transmitters quickly. The companies have each based a good deal of their national advertising to hyping the competitive advantage of each of their 5G systems. Again, those systems aren’t all that useful to consumers yet because mobile customers mostly have access to quite high speeds all over New York City (except at peak locations at peak times) and because not many people have bought phones that have the capacity to process the 5G signal. This is in part because of the additional expense associated with 5G phones and in part for technological limitations on the handheld devices themselves (particularly with respect to battery life and reliability). It will take several years for adoption of affordable, practical 5G handheld devices to catch up with deployment of transmitter technology.

The real fly in the soup here is that wireless 5G transmission needs many more transmitters than a 4G/LTE system. The 5G micromillimeter wave system, which is the backbone (and the high-speed part) for much of the 5G networks, has a shorter signal length and is more easily blocked than the medium wave 4G/LTE networks we’re all using now. There is an inverse relationship between wavelength and signal power/distance. The shorter the wave, the less far it goes and the more easily it is interfered with. That is, for example, why AM radio signals can be picked up across the country – they use a very long wave signal. 5G needs a couple of orders of magnitude more transmitters – thousands more. Human bodies and leaves have the capacity to block micromillimeter wave signals.

That deployment of more transmitters requires more City real estate and given that up until recently only one transmitter could be placed on a pole, that meant a push was on for the City to ramp up the distribution of poles. This ran into a number of logistical roadblocks. First, corner signal poles were more valuable to industry, as they logistically had a larger radius of transmission for the short micromillimeter wave transmission. As a result of a consent decree being negotiated by the City in Federal Court having to do with the City’s dilatoriness in making its tens of thousands of street corners comply with Federal accessibility requirements, the City began requiring anyone moving a light pole near a corner to replace all four corners at an intersection.

Industry has proposed to the City designs that carry more than one transmitter – as the future standard. These installations are heavier and require the replacement of the pole and the construction of a new foundation for it – triggering the accessibility retrofit requirement for corner poles – making such an installation cost prohibitive. For the time being, the mobile telecom industry is avoiding the coveted corner poles and sticking with midblock poles so as to avoid triggering the six figure cost associated with corner ramps. Also, in the highest need locations there simply aren’t enough poles to accommodate the required transmitters. On 42^nd Street and 34^th Street the local business improvement districts objected to the erection of transmitters on distinctive poles they had erected in the 90’s in those essential locations. There simply are not enough available poles.

This is something like what a New York City cable pedestal looks like. Searching the internet I couldn’t find photos of either an actual NYC pedestal or a Verizon “refrigerator box” cable splicing enclosure. That tells you something.

When I was in City government, I advocated for a purpose-built telecommunications structure for sidewalks all over the city. Principally, this got DOT out of the telecommunications business that they didn’t want to be in – and their inspection of poles and installations had become a pinch point in the approval process, given available resources. This would be a structure licensed and regulated solely by the City’s technology agency – making the process simpler. The structure would be designed to accommodate all of the City’s telecommunications needs – mobile, Wi-Fi, cable and 911 – much like the LinkNYC program, but without advertising. The program would be financed by renting out space to telecommunications companies in this telecom condo. The structure would also replace ugly, refrigerator sized cable splicing boxes which exist all of the city outside Manhattan. The Altice and Spectrum boxes, called pedestals, have been around for decades and are generally located in the space between the street and sidewalk. Worse are the Verizon boxes, that hang from telephone pole – on some as many as four, two of which were hung at eye level. That equipment would all go into the proposed telecom structure.

The structure would need to be 32 feet high, in order to meet the needs of the mobile telecom industry. This would lower the number of needed structures (the higher the structure, the further the signal could be transmitted). Yeah, that’s tall. And yeah, that’s another big piece of stuff on the sidewalks. But my idea was that this structure could be designed by the best and become a symbol of 21^st Century New York City, much as the Art Nouveau Paris Metro entrances have become a symbol of Paris. Also, I thought for initial locations, the City could replace the 6,000 DOT wayfinding kiosks, that look like the obelisk from “2001, A Space Odyssey,” and, thanks to the ubiquity of GPS and mobile phone maps, became obsolete nearly as soon as they were constructed. They were a good idea in the 90’s. The would be replaced with the telecom structure – using their sidewalk space. The idea got some, but not enough, traction.

BUT, along came the alleged economic failure of the LinkNYC program (which I plan to discuss in detail in my next post). Part of the solution to creating a new “sustainable business model” for the free public Wi-Fi program was to allow the company that built the system to partner with a telecom infrastructure provider, replace the Wi-Fi kiosks with new 32-foot-tall kiosks, and permit them to (exclusively) host multiple mobile telecom transmitters in the structure. That structure, pictured above, has been approved by the Public Design Commission and is beginning to be deployed. Given the equity issues, the City is requiring that it be built first disproportionately outside Manhattan (despite the fact that the need for additional mobile telecom capacity is in the Manhattan core). I’m not personally fond of the design – and think it could be a lot better – but I do recognize the need for the height – and the need for a structure of this sort, particularly in the high demand spots in Manhattan. This part of the story is only beginning to be played out – as I doubt that the implications of the deployment have been fully understood by elected officials, the public and the other industry players.

New York City will get 5G service in a timely fashion. It will be as fast, available and reliable as anywhere in the world. Given the competition between the big three and other discount providers that use their network infrastructure the prices will remain highly competitive (I have Altice Mobile service, for example, that uses the T-Mobile system and get unlimited talk and text for $30 per month. The price (for 4G LTE service) is guaranteed forever (whatever that means)). You aren’t likely to notice the difference any time soon – unless you’re planning to step out to the corner to download all of “Better Call Saul.” With a little luck, you won’t notice most of the transmission infrastructure.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CABLE EMPIRE

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The New York City cable television companies at one time paid the City almost $200 million a year. That number is now less than $125 million and rapidly declining as a result of the trend of “wire-cutting,” that is consumers cancelling their cable TV subscriptions and obtaining their programming over the internet. Significantly, that internet programming is delivered over the same fiber optic or coaxial cable as the cable signal, but the City receives no revenue from the provision of broadband service by cable companies to consumers.

I remember when cable television came to my hometown, West Orange, New Jersey in the 1960’s. As we lived on the side of the first hill to the west of New York City, with line-of-site to New York City’s broadcast stations antennae on the Empire State Building and in the New Jersey Meadowlands, we got pretty good reception. But, Suburban Cablevision promised the residents of West Orange better picture quality, franchise fee payments to the town for the use of its right-of-way for the stringing of the cables on utility poles in town and a much ballyhooed public access television channel for broadcasting town council meetings, educational programming and other local amazements.

Cable TV initially came to New York City at about the same time and came into its own in the late 1980’s when Time Warner was created as the successor to early market entrants. As in West Orange, TWC (Time Warner Cable) agreed to pay the City a franchise fee, to provide universal service to Manhattan, brownstone Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens and to create public access channels for each of those three boroughs. Later, the City obtained from TWC free access for to cable infrastructure for its own telecommunications and internet access needs.

From its inception, TWC was led by Richard Aurelio, a former Deputy Mayor in the Lindsey Administration, who saw the company’s cable franchise as a public trust and created NY1 News, as a provider as 24/7 local news coverage – much like the then-recently established and highly successful Cable News Network from Ted Turner’s Turner Networks (later also acquired by Time Warner). Therefore, the negotiations between the City and TWC, while spirited and arms-length, were something of a friendly arrangement. The City’s cable franchise negotiations were led from the creation of the franchise by Bruce Regal, a college friend of mine. As a result of this experience, Bruce was for decades the City’s telecommunications expert – and a nationally recognized authority on the municipal regulation of telecommunications.

Cable television regulations is a hybrid of Federal, state and local regulation, with the Federal Government’s role, under the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 (47 U.S.C. ch. 5, subch. V-A), predominant. The Cable Act sets as a maximum franchise fee from a cable provider to the local municipal government 5% of gross revenues from cable television services. The Cable Act also requires cable companies to capitalize and support public access channels for municipalities, and to provide such other services as are mutually agreed to between the provider and the city. Operating support for the public access channels is based on a per subscriber payment negotiated between the cable company and the municipality.

Later, Cablevision, the Long Island cable provider (a predecessor of which was an early cable provider in Manhattan), and an owner of a number of significant content providers, successfully sought a franchise for the Bronx and Brooklyn. Cable TV service was seen as a natural monopoly because the large capital investment involved – and therefore only one cable company could be profitable in any geographic area. Cable companies were given an exclusive franchise in consideration for providing universal service (as well as the other statutory benefits). Under the Cable Act, interestingly, states and municipalities were not given the authority to regulate cable prices, unlike the decades long regulation of telephone pricing by the states of the American Telephone and Telephone Company and its Bell System affiliates (like, in New York City, New York Telephone, later Bell Atlantic, then NYNEX, and ultimately Verizon). It was the City’s position that breaking up service among two providers, with exclusive geographic service would create a certain kind of competition and provide the City with multiple options, in the event of the failure or monopolistic behavior by one of the franchisees.

As I discussed in my last post, in the 2000’s Verizon sought and received a franchise for the entire city, providing another degree of competition in service (although a recent study by students at Columbia University concluded not significant price competition).

It is worth noting that when I was the City’s telecommunications franchise administrator, we approached Comcast, one of the country’s largest cable providers (as well as the owner of NBC Universal) about entering the New York City market in order to provide an additional market participant. A senior Comcast executive told me that while Comcast was interested in purchasing TWC, at the time it was sold to Charter Communications, it was not interested in being a fourth player in New York City under any set of regulatory or technological circumstances (for example sharing existing fiber optic cable, so as to drastically reduce the required capital investment) however favorable.

It should also be noted that Charter’s (the successor to TWC) business model, while highly favorable to its investors, is probably not in the best interest of New York City cable customers. Charter is in the business of generating a maximum amount of revenue with the minimum amount of expense from its New York City franchise, and is very good at it. It is not significantly upgrading its infrastructure to fiber to the home, instead relying on its legacy coaxial cable-based system. It has broken the union representing its field employees by hiring non-union contractors to maintain its infrastructure and in-home customer service. At the same time, it controls Spectrum NY1, which has become an essential source of local coverage, where it has also alleged to be an abusive employer by older, female on-air staff. Charter could turn out the lights at NY1 on a whim.

Each borough of New York City has a public access cable programming provider, set up as an independent not-for-profit corporation, the board of directors of which is appointed by each borough president. As result, channels have become creatures of the borough presidents, who have become among their most prominent supporters. As of 2021, the combined budgets of the public access channels were over $30 million, paid for by the cable companies. Each of the channels, except, perhaps, for BRIC, the Brooklyn channels, has become something a sinecure for its executives, for a service that very few New Yorkers watch or know about.

At one time, the public access channels, particularly Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, were seen as quirky vehicles of free speech, allowing just about anyone access to the “airwaves.” MNN had its own star in Robin Byrd who as I recall from my youth, who had a talk show where she interviewed guests in a crocheted string bikini. The public access channels claim that they train New Yorkers in video production, provide an alternative news and programming outlet, as well as video coverage of borough events – particularly those sponsored by the borough presidents. Unfortunately, none of the channels has data about how many people watch them – and likely very few people do. In addition, given today’s technology, public access television is at least equally accessible via the internet, and the use of the still valuable cable channels for their programming is not very important or useful, particularly given the lack of viewership data.

The channels have become minor fiefdoms. MNN has a wonderful, state-of-the-art, but underused facility on East 104^thStreet in a former firehouse. The Bronx channels have been aggressive in advocating for an upgrade of all of its signals to High-Definition quality. BRIC, also has an excellent facility in downtown Brooklyn. However, BRIC’s studios, unlike those in the other boroughs, are a beehive of activity, as BRIC has used the payments it receives from the cable companies to broaden its reach to being a community-based arts organization with youth programs and visual and performing arts presentations.

The cable franchise paradigm, which provided cable programming to New Yorkers for several decades, is breaking down,as a result of wire-cutting, and the migration of cable customers to the internet. Most significantly, the Cable Act does not allow municipalities to charge franchise fees against cable companies’ broadband businesses, so as dollars from consumers switch from cable to internet, the City’s franchise fees decline. That $200 million has been reduced to about $120 million and is declining rapidly. Similarly, funds for the public access channels, levied on a per-subscriber basis, are also being reduced with the decline in subscriber numbers. Worse yet for the municipal coffers, during the Trump Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, which implements the Cable Act, led at the time by the former chief lobbyist for Verizon, used its rulemaking as wish fulfillment for the telecommunications industry under the banner of incentivizing increased private investment in telecommunications infrastructure. The FCC adopted a rule that made the value of the operating income provided by cable companies to the public access channels, as well as the dollar value of all non-cash benefits provided by the cable companies to municipalities as a credit against the 5% franchise fee cap with very few exceptions – potentially further reducing franchise fee income. This ruling has been upheld by the courts, but in New York City, the cable companies have not yet moved to implement it.

All of New York City’s cable franchise agreements with Charter and Altice (the successor to Cablevision) expired in 2020 and are now operating by automatic annual extensions, and Verizon’s agreement expires in 2023. There is little doubt that if and when those agreements are renegotiated, the already declining benefits from the cable companies to the City, in the absence of aggressive changes by the FCC, will be slashed. The City’s capacity in any negotiation has been seriously compromised by Bruce Regal’s untimely passing in 2016 and the retirement of one of its other senior telecommunications attorneys. The most recent two General Counsels at the recently renamed Office of Technology and Innovation are the first ones in the agency’s history without significant prior telecommunications expertise.

Where does that leave the City? Not in a very good place with respect to the regulation of cable television and the provision of internet service. Certainly, it should be a high priority of the City’s Washington, D.C. lobbying office, to lobby the FCC to reverse out of the rule-making favorable to industry adopted during the Trump Administration, and to go further to the maximum extent permitted under the Cable Act to impose franchise fees on internet service providers.

One of the challenges in the area of technology regulation – as we have seen with Facebook and Google – is the inability of Congress to adopt legislation that keeps up with technological changes. This is a problem as much for the telecommunications industry as it is for states, municipalities and consumers. While this regulatory lag is true under the best of circumstances, with a factious, divided Congress and a newly ascendent Supreme Court working to limit the power of administrative agencies, it has made the situation for all practical purposes impossible. The Cable Act has not been substantially revised since 1984 and is seriously antiquated and difficult to apply to current technologies. This is all equally true with respect to municipal regulation of mobile telecommunications (cell phone service), which I hope to write about shortly. But New York City should be in the forefront of looking for opportunities to revise and update the Federal telecommunications regulatory framework.

In the absence of changes at the Federal level, the City will have to be incredibly aggressive and smart in order to maximize what little leverage it has with the cable companies. While the City has an excellent two person staff to “audit” the cable companies, it should engage outside auditors to review cable company payments for as far back as the regulatory scheme and franchise agreements allowed. Audit firms are prepared to provide these services, in exchange for a percentage of any amounts they might recover from the cable providers. This is a no risk, high return proposition for the City, that is likely to reap tens of millions of dollars in cash, while sending a signal to the providers that there is a new sheriff in town that means business. But at the same time, the City is smart not to begin negotiations with the cable companies to enter into new franchise agreements, because under current circumstances any new agreements can only be on terms inferior to those of the expired agreements which are now being operated under by extension.

The issue of the public access channels will also need to be seriously addressed. They continue to advocate for increased resources, in a declining revenue environment. Any such increase in resources will have to come from the City budget, particularly given the current situation with FCC rules. With the exception of BRIC, any such increase would be hard to justify without hard evidence of a significant number of viewers that the public access channels might be reaching, and a thorough examination of the governance of the channel operators ([MNN was recent the subject of a Supreme Court decision regarding the first amendment rights of public access programming producers that arose out of the chaotic situation arising out of a fist fight between a disgruntled producer and MNN leadership at an MNN public meeting some years ago (Manhattan Community Access Corp. V. Halleck, 882 F. 3d 300 (2019).)].

In an ideal world, the City would be deriving increased resources from the utilization of its rights of way by the cable company/internet service providers for their cables; it should be able to encourage new entrants into the cable/ISP market utilizing the city’s extensively overbuilt fiber optic network in order to drive down prices; work to make sure that all ISP customers are obtaining the highest quality service from fiber to the home networks; and that all of the city’s low income customers take advantage of the Federal subsidies available to buy down cable and broadband prices to $15 per month.

EXPANDING THE REACH OF THE INTERNET IN NEW YORK CITY

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A sign in rural France announcing fiber optic broadband service

It has become part of the city’s progressive conventional wisdom that there are digital deserts in neighborhoods across the boroughs, and this contributes to a widely assumed “digital divide.” However, like with so much else of the political conventional wisdom, these accepted truths have a problem. They don’t happen to reflect the actual facts.

The truth is that the city has an abundance of fiber optic cable that reaches across the five boroughs. In particular, Verizon is obligated under its franchise with the City to provide internet and cable service to just about every home in town. Altice, formerly Cablevision, which operates under the brand Optimum and is another one of the city’s cable providers also has a growing fiber optic network. The city’s third cable company, Charter Communications, operating under the name Spectrum, offers inferior copper wire internet service to a large number of New York City homes. But in addition, there are about two dozen other companies who have laid fiber around the city for purposes other than selling cable and broadband service to residential customers.

One of those is Transit Wireless, which now has a network providing mobile telephone and Wi-Fi internet service to the MTA’s underground subway stations. Transit Wireless, a division of BAI, an Australian telecommunications giant, owned in turn by Canadian pension funds, has just contracted with the MTA to provide the same services to all of the subway system’s tunnels and above ground stations (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/nyregion/mta-cellphone-service-subway-tunnels.html). In order to run this service, Transit Wireless will have a high-capacity fiber optic network that mirrors the subway map.

Another is a company called Zen-Fi, which has been in the business of providing telecommunications infrastructure to the mobile telephone companies – T-Mobile and AT&T (BAI has apparently recently announced its intention to acquire ZenFi). Last year ZenFi entered into a deal with the City of New York to expand its fiber network, which included service to the LinkNYC public Wi-Fi kiosks, to a newly designed sidewalk kiosk that has the capacity to carry mobile telephone transmitters to support the latest iteration of mobile telephone technology called “5G.” Both Transit Wireless’ and ZenFi’s networks could be leveraged to provide more competitively priced home broadband service.

Fiber optic cable is pretty amazing stuff (in “Fiber,” Yale: 2018, Susan Crawford lays all of this out). Most importantly, the electronic pulses it carries are the backbone of all telecommunications transmissions for the foreseeable future. Phone calls went over copper wires for decades. Now, fiber can carry land line phone calls, cable signals, high speed broadband internet service, commercial data transmission and mobile phone service. While mobile phone service is called “wireless,” for much of its journey, mobile phone signals have to travel along a fiber optic pathway – it could be thousands of miles under vast oceans, or around the corner. But the signal goes from your phone – wirelessly to a receiver, then to a fiber cable, then to a transmitter, and then wirelessly to the destination phone (with lots of switches in between). The infrastructure is mostly wired, despite the nomenclature.

Fiber optic cable, which is made up of a bundle of thin glass strands through which light is transmitted carrying electronic information, has a couple of other nifty features. First, because there is no friction in the transmission of light through the glass strands, it doesn’t degrade. As far as we know now it lasts forever. A fiber cable may get accidentally cut (as in New York City it is either buried under streets or suspended from poles), or the insulation around it may get damaged (from water or heat), but the strands themselves stay calm and carry on indefinitely. Fiber optic cable also has a theoretically boundless capacity to carry information. A tremendous amount of information can be pushed through the fiber at the same time. What the much ballyhooed 5G mobile service is about is changing the way in which the light pulses are organized, transmitted, switched and read in the cable (and wirelessly), so that more data (including voice) can be pushed through the same amount of cable.

Also interesting is the role that Verizon plays in all this in New York City. Verizon is the successor to New York City’s telephone company, New York Telephone – a part of the old American Telephone & Telegraph Company, the nationally regulated telephone monopoly. In addition, for many years New York City had two cable companies, Time Warner Cable (now Charter) and Cablevision (now Altice) – also somewhat regulated monopolies. The cable companies later used their copper-based cable signal transmission system to provide internet service, as that became a thing (Remember when you used to call AOL over the phone to get on the internet?). The cable companies replaced that function – and over time some upgraded their systems to provide high speed broadband service). About twenty years ago, Verizon successfully petitioned the City to get into the cable and internet provider service. The City made Verizon’s entry into the market conditional upon its providing their service to every home in the city, in order to create some level of competition for Time Warner and Cablevision, each of which had an obligation to provide service to a designated potion of the city (and between the two of them provided service to the entire city).

Verizon initially competed on internet service with what was called Digital Subscriber Line service (DSL) which used its pre-exiting copper wire phone system to provide internet service. The legacy cable providers transmitted their signals over a coaxial cable system. A coax system still uses copper as the transmission medium, but coaxial cable is specially built with a metal shield and other components engineered to block signal interference and is generally faster than DSL. But neither is a patch on fiber optic cable, and at some point Verizon decided to switch it’s entire system to fiber in order to be able to advertise and provide real broadband service at faster speeds than the cable companies.

That turned out to be a terrific business decision, because of the versatility of fiber. As Verizon expanded its mobile telephone business (a complicated story in itself), it found itself with a competitive advantage because in New York City it was already building the city’s most extensive system of fiber optic cable that could be used as the backbone for its mobile telecom system. Ultimately, it also began eliminating its copper wires and even sending land line transmissions over its fiber cable. Therefore, Verizon is a highly efficient user of its fiber lines. No other competitor is in a position to make such extensive use of its fiber optic network. The gold standard for high-speed broadband service is a fiber network that goes right to a users’ front door (Altice and Charter generally deliver fiber to an apartment building, and then distribute the signal within the building via aging copper wire). Verizon is rapidly attempting to provide fiber to the home over its entire system.

In addition, it is essential to point out that the leading telecommunications financial analyst, Moffat Nathanson (https://www.moffettnathanson.com/research.aspx), has opined that fiber optic networks are natural monopolies and that given their capacity and expense, only one fiber optic network can be profitable in any given market. New York has multiple such networks, some of which are quite extensive.

All of that being said, why isn’t high speed broadband service ubiquitous? I have come to the conclusion that there are two reasons. First is the obvious one that many low-income families find highspeed broadband service too expensive. While there are some national programs to provide lower quality service at lower prices to low-income families, those programs have not been widely adopted. Layered on top of that appears to be a consumer preference among low-income families to access the internet via their mobile devices. During COVID, this turned out to be a problem for families with children accessing school via the internet from home. Participating in Zoom and doing homework from a cell phone is far from optimal (particularly with multiple children in the household). Interestingly, just prior to the COVID pandemic, Altice offered families with school age children in their service area (all the of the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn) a free tablet and $15 per month high speed broad band service. Only a few hundred families accepted the highly publicized deal.

In addition, we don’t really know how many families don’t have high speed internet service. The information used in the City’s Internet Master Plan (https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cto/downloads/internet-master-plan/NYC_IMP_1.7.20_FINAL-2.pdf) (all of which was extensively rewritten and edited by me before its publication), comes from Federal Communications Commission data, which I believe to be badly flawed (FCC data is based on aggregated information by census tract from the internet service providers that appears on its face to be inaccurate. The City has an incomplete, but far more accurate, set of fiber optic cable network maps showing the extent of the networks.). I suspect, based on my experience, that the number of families without high-speed internet access is much lower than that advertised in the Internet Master Plan. And this is the source of the apparent misinformation about a digital divide.

In addition, City Hall in the De Blasio administration had a highly antagonist view of the cable companies, particularly Verizon. In fact, during that administration, the City brought a law suit against Verizon, which failed to fulfill its obligation to provide ubiquitous city-wide service (although is service was quite extensive, there were blocks where it proved expensive to wire including, surprisingly, on the Upper East Side, that Verizon decided not to provide infrastructure for)( https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/nyc-vs-verizon-complaint.pdf). Two years ago, the City settled that suit after years of unproductive litigation.

The Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer was focused on doing an end run around the cable companies by creating its own network of internet service providers – ideally through community-based organizations. The CTO’s position was that the cable companies’ internet service was too expensive, unreliable and of insufficient speed. In my opinion, given the already extensive network of fiber optic cable, that was an idea that was both inefficient and impractical. It hasn’t happened, and it is never going to happen. The real solution is finding a way to use the existing network, buy down the cost of high speed internet for low-income families, and engage in an extensive community-based campaign to get broader adoption of high speed home internet.

One example of the combination of misinformation and resistance to adoption was the lack of service in the buildings of the New York City Housing Authority. The CTO’s office went to great trouble and expense to create a high-speed internet service at Queensbridge Houses, NYCHA’s largest development. That project was a technical, market and economic failure. What my team and I found when trying to get NYCHA wired up was opposition from residents and staff to having Verizon technicians in NYCHA buildings for reasons running from a lack of trust in anyone coming into residents’ apartments to sheer bureaucratic obstructionism on the part of NYCHA facilities staff. Thanks to increased cooperation between NYCHA and Verizon arising out of the settlement of the litigation, most of NYCHA’s facilities will have fiber to the home. But that still leaves the issues of price and adoption.

However, as a result of the American Rescue Plan adopted by the Federal government in response to the COVID pandemic, that problem should be mostly solved under its Affordable Connectivity Program.

“The Affordable Connectivity Program is an FCC benefit program that helps ensure that households can afford the broadband they need for work, school, healthcare and more. The benefit provides a discount of up to $30 per month toward internet service for eligible households and up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price.”

The eligibility for the program includes families receiving a range of Federal assistance, including the widely accessed school lunch program. Almost no low-income family should be left behind.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, very few New York families know about the availability of this subsidy. The customer service staff at the City’s technology agency who deal with cable customers and complaints have not been trained to encourage residents to sign up for the program. I frankly fail to understand why the City and State aren’t shouting about this program from the rooftops, and enlisting staff to encourage New York City residents to sign up. It may have something to do with the fact that the program is designed to utilize the services of the disfavored existing cable providers, who will be paid by the Federal government to deliver the service. [The Adams administration just implemented a version of buying down free internet service for NYCHA residents at two of its sites. https://www.optimum.com/big-apple-connect. It does not take advantage of the Federal funds].

While in rural areas, getting fiber optic service into remote homes may be prohibitively expensive, in New York City almost every home has access to at least two internet service providers, one of which has infrastructure that provides high speed fiber to the home in the street. Access to high-speed internet service in New York City for low-income families can be a near-term reality.

LEARN FROM THE BEST — CINCINNATI

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If you want to learn about best practices in downtown revitalization, you couldn’t do better than to just walk around Cincinnati. They seem to do most things right there. I hadn’t intended to write again about the Queen City, as my most recent trip was a quick overnight one, but the continued marked apparent improvement in economic conditions there merits notice. Both the downtown commercial center and the adjacent Over-the-Rhine neighborhood continue to expand their blocks of economic vitality. More blocks seem to have new stores, new adaptative reuses of structures with high quality vernacular architecture and new residential construction and conversion.

Residential new construction on Vine Street

Cincinnati and Des Moines are actually comparatively sized cities. Cincinnati has a population of about 300,000. But its metro is substantially larger, at 2.5 million, the 30^th in the country. Interestingly, while Des Moines is about at its peak population, Cincinnati is considerably smaller than its population of 500,000 in 1960. Cincinnati is 42% Black. While the Black population is only 12% of the metro.

The strength of Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) sets Cincinnati apart. 3CDC strikes me as the most aggressive and effective organization of its kind in country. Up until recently, 3CDC kept a low profile – but on this recent trip their brand was all over its many properties – on parking lots it operates, on empty storefronts it leases and on parcels it is seeking to develop. The thing that differentiates 3CDC from its peers is its balance sheet. Based on 2019 data, it has gross assets of over $400 million, debt of a little less than $400 million and an annual operating budget of about $20 million. That is a scale of operations and a leveraging of resources that is unmatched. 3CDC purchases property using debt financing. It repositions those properties though adaptive reuse and it carefully curates their occupants. Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine is the most dramatic and fastest commercial corridor revitalization case study of which I am aware. Vine Street and Main Street in Over-the-Rhine are now lined with interesting looking shops, bars and restaurants. A key component of their capital stack is an internally operated low-interest revolving loan fund.

Downtown Cincinnati shows similar attributes of growth. We stayed in the 21CMuseum Hotel – part of a Kentucky-based chain (https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com). The facility was the reuse of an office structure into over 300 rooms (beautifully designed by Yale architecture dean, Deborah Berke). The hotel displays an extensive art collection, focused on Black artists. As you walk into the lobby, your experience is flooded by the image of Morpheus by Kahinde Wiley from 2008 at 108 by 180 inches (https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com/cincinnati/blog/2020/morpheus-by-kehinde-wiley/), which is behind the front desk. This is not art by the yard. Our stay was very impressive. Downtown Cincinnati has more street level retail, bars and restaurants than most other mid-western cities (although the retail on many block is far from continuous). There are very few totally blank block fronts. Downtown is connected to Over-the-Rhine by a tram, which is free and runs every ten minutes or so (not quite enough, but close to it). Unlike many other such projects, it appears to be well-used.

(I also note that we had breakfasts in both St. Louis and Cincinnati in First Watch restaurants, a chain that has almost 500 locations, with which I was previously unfamiliar. The quality of food and service in both places was superb. Quite remarkable for such a large chain.)

Too many economic development entities are ineffective because their boards are averse to property ownership, operation and debt financing. Those organizations are resigning themselves to unsuccessfulness – particularly in today’s real estate environment where downtowns need more than “clean and safe.” Downtown revitalization requires risk taking and rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty in real estate brokerage and construction. Downtown economic development organizations need to be in the business of revenue generation (through parking, if nothing else) and leading the real estate market with high quality repositioning of derelict property. Nothing else works as well. The 3CDC financial statement is a lesson in itself in how to do this.

I know nothing of the politics of 3CDC, or how it is viewed in the community. I also don’t know anything about its community engagement practices. While those things are important, the results speak for themselves. Cincinnati’s quality of life is better as a result of 3CDC’s work. I would like to see an income distribution chart for Black families in the city and metro for 2000 and 2020. If 3CDC’s efforts are not bringing substantial benefit to the city’s least well off, then that’s a problem. I noticed a considerable amount of residential new construction in Over-the-Rhine. 3CDC has developed 416 affordable units, with 70% of them designated as affordable. Given where Cincinnati now is, and 3CDC’s financial strength and expertise, if they were to ask me (which they haven’t), I would advise that they focus their efforts on mixed income (with no more than 30% of residents below 50% of AMI), mixed-use projects as a means to improve the circumstances of the worst well off and improve the quality of the local public schools.

***

Our trip to Cincinnati was to see the world premiere of “Castor and Patience,” at the Cincinnati Opera, with music by Gregory Spears and libretto by Tracy K. Smith. Spears is the composer of the highly successful “Fellow Travelers,” also premiered in Cincinnati, and Smith is a Princeton professor, former poet laureate of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize winner. It is my practice not to discuss the musical or dramatic aspects of the operas I hear, since that’s not my department (“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department!” says Wernher von Braun”. Heidi’s review will be found here: andymanshel.nyc), the theme of the opera was of particular interest to me.

The opera is about an inter-racial family from Buffalo, New York, who, during the home mortgage debacle of 2008, are in danger of losing their house. They travel to an island off the coast of the Southeast where the family’s father (Castor) grew up, and where he and his cousin (Patience) (both Black) own thirty acres, which are valued in the story at over $20 million.) Patience sees her role as protecting the family’s legacy in the property – highlighting the importance and rarity of property ownership to Black folks. She is opposed to selling even one acre of the twenty – which would eliminate the father’s debt problems.

This story interested me because as a real estate lawyer I have always advised clients that the first rule of success in real estate is to never develop an emotional attachment to a parcel. Also, in the 00’s I joined the Queens County Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyer’s Project representing families in foreclosure. The membership of the Queens County Bar pledged to represent, on a pro bono basis, any Queens family during conferences with the Court’s Special Master dealing with foreclosures in Queens. This project was so successful that ultimately families were represented by highly skilled, full-time staff from the project with extensive experience with foreclosure, rather than by the pro bono volunteers.

I represented more than a half dozen families over the course of five or six years – all of them were eager/desperate to remain in their homes despite the fact that the houses were worth less than their mortgages. My clients’ best economic move would certainly have been to walk away from their homes. While staying was not necessarily a canny business decision, ultimately all were able to remain in their homes with monthly payments well within their means. The actual facts of these cases were very different from the prevailing narrative regarding the “mortgage crisis” that began in 2008, and that narrative underlies the story line of “Castor and Patience.” Southeast Queens, New York, generally regarded as the Jamaica neighborhoods, is one of the largest communities of Black homeowners in the United States. I was told that in the 2010 census, Queens was the only county in the country where African American household income exceeded that of white households.

My clients ran the gamut from a family on public assistance to a barber to a laid off nursing assistant. All had refinanced their homes in order to generate cash – all of which they had spent or lost. In some cases, the refinancing produced upfront lower monthly payments which later either ballooned or reset to a high variable interest rate. All of their homes market values were substantially less than (generally 2/3) than the principal of the mortgage on them. In almost every case, a local mortgage broker – someone they knew from the community – had sold them on the refinancing. None of those mortgage brokers were anywhere to be found by the time the families came to me. In one case, I believe the mortgage broker stole most of the cash generated by the refinance – taking advantage of the borrower’s lack of financial sophistication.

The most obvious thing to me as an attorney representing these families was that the banks and mortgage servicers were in chaos. Their attorneys would show up in court with a list of properties on the docket for that day. Most were unprepared. None had the supporting documentation required to sustain their claims – much of which had been lost in the shuffling between the mortgage originators, the creators of the collateral debt obligations (CDO), the buyers of the CDO’s and the servicers which were on the front lines doing the administrative work for the holders of the CDO’s. Also, the Courts were loath to kick people out of their homes – and made every appropriate effort to protect homeowners’ rights. It was easy for me to throw sand in the gears of the process to keep people in their homes. It was much more difficult to actually work out payment arrangements which would be manageable by my clients.

A home in Southeast Queens — not one of my clients’. Just an example.

It is important to know that while these properties were in foreclosures, their owners continued to live in them and weren’t paying any occupancy costs – not mortgage, not insurance and not taxes. The CDO holders were on the hook for all of these and were adding them to the borrowers’ principal. My clients dealt with this situation in different ways. My lowest income clients took two trips to Disney with their grandchildren during my representation of them. Another of my clients took the opportunity of six years of essentially free housing to get a BA in nursing – and ultimately secured a near six figure entry level hospital job.

The Obama administration had set up a program called the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP), which, at the time, none of the mortgage servers knew much about accessing. This lack of knowledge (or interest) served to prolong the foreclosure process. It was in the mortgage servicers’ interest to keep the process going – as fees were generated by each Court appearance and each action taken by the servicer – charged to the holders of the CDOs. It was not in the financial interest of the servicer or the CDO holders to bring the matters to closure. An actual foreclosure or settlement would almost always result in the banks having to immediately book a loss, which was definitely not in their interest.

At one point, I got the quasi-governmental agency that has a guarantor’s interest in most home mortgages involved in order to bring my cases to settlement (they have the ultimate authority to approve mortgage restructurings). All of my clients stayed in their homes and got monthly payments they could live with. The downside for all of them was that the restructured payments, the defaulted amounts, deferred interest and penalties were all added to the value of the principal – which, in practical terms, meant the principal would never be paid down. When the owners passed away, the CDO holder would be left with an underwater property, which it would sell and then book the loss – hopefully many years in the future. This was the ultimate in kicking a can down the road. So, at the end of the day the holders of the CDOs were left holding the bag.

This wasn’t the story of “Castor and Patience,” and it would make a pretty terrible, long, complicated, boring theater piece. But it is what happened in my experience, and probably what happened with the majority of people caught up with homes with deflated values and defaulted, inflated mortgages. In the real world, if Castor has adequate legal counsel in Buffalo, he probably could have held on to his home. Better yet, Castor and Patience could have obtained a small debt consolidation loan (at very low interest rates during the turmoil in the markets), using the island property as security, to eliminate Castor’s financial problems. While that alternate story isn’t particularly important to the opera audience, it is important to how we understand home ownership and race in America.

IMPRESSIONS OF IOWA

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We stayed at a hipsterish hotel in Des Moines, Iowa (The Surety) that had an excellent restaurant (The Mulberry Street Tavern). The hotel lobby had a pool table and the room mini-bar offered condoms. As we drove from the airport in Cedar Rapids to Des Moines (we missed our connections in both directions at Charlotte and had to scramble), we drove passed scores of wind turbines. We were there for Heidi to cover the opera (https://andymanshel.nyc/2022/07/13/review-arias-over-the-fields-at-des-moines-metro-opera/), which I don’t usually independently comment on, but which was excellent. The “Porgy and Bess” was the best of my experience, and the production values of each of the two shows I thought were higher than any of the other summer festivals (Santa Fe, Glimmerglass, Opera Theater of Saint Louis). Despite the conventional wisdom, there is a progressive, sophisticated national culture, which has reached deeply into the medium sized cities of the mid-West. This is a non-trivial change.

As a child in the sixties, I can recall our annual trips by car to French Lick, Indiana for a business conference that my father attended. We stayed in some pretty dismal motels along the way and ate some pretty awful food in local greasy spoons. The food at the fancy resort where the conference was held was of the mid-century modern American sort – a silver colored bucket with ice and raw vegetables on the table when we arrived and well-done roast beef as the signature menu item. We’ve come a long way from that. Food culture is everywhere. Social media spreads trends and fads like lightening. Almost anything can be delivered by UPS and Fed Ex – from bagels and pastrami to esoteric books and high design furniture. You don’t have to drive to the nearest university town to see art house movies – they’re on Netflix and Amazon Prime – or you can subscribe to what seem to be dozens of more specialized services like Sundance and BBC America to get even more exotic fare.

Des Moines is a city of about 200,000, in a metro of about 400,000. It has long been a center of the insurance industry and its largest private sector employers are Wells Fargo and Principal Financial. It has only a half dozen office towers of more than 20 floors, the tallest of which is the Principal HQ at 45 stories. Many of the downtown buildings are high quality art deco/city beautiful buildings of less than 20 storeys. The post war period, as in so many places, was not as architecturally kind to Des Moines as prior decades, but most of those buildings are mid-rise. The downtown streets and sidewalks are wide, and there isn’t much street level retail and there are many, many parking structures. There is a large, active farmers’ market in the downtown on Saturdays. The downtown’s scale feels more human than Kansas City, because there are fewer tall buildings and there are wider streets. There also seem to be more downtown restaurants. But there still isn’t much pedestrian activity (other than the farmers’ market). The main arteries leading into downtown are lined with the usual low to medium income retailers and fast food brands.

Des Moines is the Iowa state capital, with an impressive capital building that unusually has five domes. The capital sits on a hill overlooking the city that has a large collection of public sculpture, the most impressive of which is a civil war monument. In the chaos of today’s political order it is easy to forget Iowa’s important place in American history as a free state, with John Brown having used Iowa as a base for his anti-slavery campaign of 1856-1859. While Barak Obama won Iowa in 2012, Donald Trump took the state by 9% in both 2016 and 2020. Iowa’s current senators are Republicans Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst. Their predecessors were Democrats Tom Harkin and John Culver. Des Moines is 15% Black. The state is 4% Black. It is certainly interesting to contemplate Iowa’s place in the national culture. This is a place with a sophisticated history, including one of the country’s great state universities, particularly known on the coasts for its writing program. Retired, 40-year U.S. Navy veteran and former Rear Admiral Mike Franken is running against the 88-year-old Grassley this year as a Democrat and has turned up on my social media feeds. He seems impressive, and some polls have put him within striking distance. But Grassley is a formidable opponent with a very high profile. If Franken were to get any traction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s hard right turn, that would be a big deal.

The local airport is small, and most of the flights are to midwest hubs, Minneapolis, Chicago and Saint Louis. I also noticed a direct flight on a small airline to New York, and other flights to Phoenix (a Southwest hub) and Charlotte (an American hub). The airports in Cedar Rapids (even smaller) and Omaha are driving distance – providing more options. We found it difficult to get to from New York. I didn’t notice any flights to Los Angeles or San Francisco. But who needs the coasts, really?

I suspect Iowans know how good they have it. The state’s mean family income is about $80,000. I would conjecture that if a Phillips curve (demonstrating income distribution) were drawn for Iowa, it would be pretty flat. Des Moines seems to have adopted a lot of the best of the urban renaissance of the 90’s – with restaurants, a market and quite a few downtown loft conversions. The weather was pretty intensely hot while we were there. But life there seems excellent – with lots of amenities for a small city (this listing caught my eye: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/10307-Grimes-St-Indianola-IA-50125/87084714_zpid/. $540,000 for 4 acres and a pool). I would go on to speculate that the most important vector moving Iowa’s political needle is Iowans wanting to preserve what they have – and isn’t that the very definition of conservatism.

THE REST IS HISTORY

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The first class of Urban Park Rangers, with Mayor Koch and Gordon Davis at the center. In the lower right, with the tie, is my friend, neighbor, collaborator and future Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe.

“New York, New York, New York; Four Decades of Succuss, Excess, and Transformation” Thomas Dyja (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

The great goal of social science is to amass large amounts of data relating to a social phenomenon, and then organize and synthesize that data in order to explain how that phenomenon works – essentially separating the out the signal from the noise. In “New York, New York, New York; Four Decades of Succuss, Excess, and Transformation,” Thomas Dyja sets out for himself that extremely high bar. He pulls together an overwhelming amount of information about the governance and culture of New York City from 1978 to the present and attempts to tease out what actually happened. It is nearly impossible to believe that one author could accumulate and one mind could retain and come to an understanding such an avalanche of facts. In telling this story, he succeeds beyond any reasonable expectation.

I came to New York in 1978 and have lived here continuously ever since. I began working in the public sphere in 1991. So, in a very material sense, this is my (along with a great many other peoples’) story. I was in, or near, the room where some of the stuff he describes happened. I worked with or knew a significant double-digit percentage of the people he talks about. I generally come out where he does in his broadest conclusions, but as is absolutely inevitable in the blizzard of information Dyja has digested, some of the “facts” and figures he cites either are incorrect or can’t be right (There have never been 50,000 people sleeping on the streets of New York. There have been 50,000 people receiving services for the homeless from the City – mostly living in shelters, most of them families – and not the single adult men who most New Yorkers have in mind when they think of the homeless. While he cite’s Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis, can it be true that 50% of gay baby boomers died of AIDs?). Dyja also accepts as true a number of the basic assumptions that constitute the conventional wisdom regarding public policy in the city over the last forty years, some of which are just aren’t true or are gross over simplifications (gentrification leads to displacement, homelessness is caused by lack of housing). But, certainly, Dyja’s heart is in the right place, and he is willing to call “bullshit” on a good many self-serving and false claims. I certainly can’t argue with his placing our work on the Bryant Park restoration, and the thinkers we relied on like Holly Whyte and George Kelling, at the dead center of his epic.

The book relies on press reports and interviews with high profile players for much of its factual foundation. Unfortunately, the New York press often gets the details of local coverage wrong (and more than occasionally gets the entire story wrong), taking the press releases of public officials at face value – and while newspaper reporting may be the first draft of history, it constitutes an unreliable basis on which to write its later versions when it comes to New York City government. It has also been my experience that folks in public life in New York tend to gild their lilies – they take credit for stuff they didn’t do and they seem to remember that positive results they stumbled into were things they planned. Relying on those sources without questioning them will lead to false positives. But when bringing together so many stories, checking them all out would be a lot to ask.

The book’s great accomplishment is to highlight the policies of the Koch administration that laid the groundwork for New York’s revitalization (particularly in housing and public space) that continues through today, and the cadre of smart, effective professionals that Koch attracted to government the like of which has not been seen since (unfortunately). My personal recollection of third term Ed Koch was of a bullying narcissist. As the New York Times recently reported on at length, Koch remained in the closest during the AIDs crisis and actively worked to cover his personal tracks. Koch also deployed racially inflammatory rhetoric, amping up the city’s most debilitating division. To put it mildly, he consciously failed to attempt to understand, and even dismissed, the concerns of New York City’s large Black community. But, at the end of the day that didn’t drive Koch Administration policy, which, using clever financing mechanisms, built tens of thousands of new affordable housing units (which over decades ultimately became hundreds of thousands), transforming the city’s most neglected, abandoned and disinvested neighborhoods into desirable places. And speaking of places, Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis thought up the idea of private non-profit entities to secure resources for and improve the management of parks – leading to the restoration of Central, Bryant (in which I was directly involved) and Prospect Parks. I am convinced that those two programs, in housing and parks, were the key elements that changed the perception of cities and sparked the return to urban centers across the country – a force so powerful that it has continued through 9/11, the financial turbulence of 2008, hurricane Sandy and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dyja’s writing about 9/11 is particularly beautiful; capturing the moment perfectly. He avoids the solipsism and self pity that infects so many other attempts to describe that horrific day. It was a primary election day, on which I was working the polls for mayoral candidate Mark Green in the northeast Bronx. I ended up in a four hour walk to the Upper West Side, with a non-functional transit system, limited information and an inability to get through to home on the phone. All along the walk home I had a view of smoke rising from lower Manhattan as I moved south. When I got home and turned on the television, the video of the time between the planes’ flying into the buildings and their collapse was the worst thing I have experienced before or since. Dyja bravely and frankly identifies the forces that made the return to normal at the former World Trade Center site impossible and that have left us with a permanent, disheartening gash in New York’s side (which will never be remedied), and a collection of inhumanely scaled towers.

It was interesting to read of the yin and yang during the Bloomberg Administration of Amanda Burden and Dan Doctoroff, which I didn’t understand at the time, while I was toiling ten miles away from City Hall in the neighborhood development fields of Jamaica, Queens: Burden having worked for William H. (Holly) Whyte, the advocate for small scale urbanism and close observation, and Doctoroff being the purveyor of grand plans (like the failed New York Olympics) and big ideas (like the failed Hudson Yards). The bastard child of this dynamic is the hugely popular tourist attraction of the High Line, which isn’t really a successful public space (because it is mostly a place to walk through, rather than linger in) but has been a powerful engine for real estate development along its flanks, and a model for similar projects across the country.

There is a lot in the book about the commercial worlds of hip hop and the art market, which may be useful scene setting – but about which I, personally, don’t very much care and think aren’t particularly culturally important. The New York of the late 1970’s and early-to-mid 1980’s may have been one of urban decline, but it was also a uniquely yeasty and important era for high culture here – particularly in music and dance. To me, it would have been much better to use the work of people like Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp as the cultural yard stick against which to measure changes in the city over the period. The transformation of Carnegie Hall from an overheated place where paint chips fell from the ceiling on to your head during classical concerts to the glamourous outpost of European high culture fostered by Sandy Weill is a story worth telling. The book has no mention of other cultural innovators like Stephanie French. But, Dyja wrote his book, not mine.

On the homelessness front, Dyja only briefly quotes Rosanne Haggerty, my social entrepreneurial heroine, and instead relies on testimony from the crafty, sly fox of the unhoused, Bob Hayes. I would like to know more about the Haggerty’s departure from the path-breaking Common Ground and that organization’s transformation into Breaking Ground, now a central institution in what Haggerty calls the homeless/industrial complex. The current state of services for the homeless in New York is the result of bad data, misinformation and worse public policy, which Dyja doesn’t clearly explain.

Oddly, NY x 3, provides more detail and moves more slowly through the early Koch years and accelerates the narrative pace during DeBlasio Administration. It’s the opposite of how history is usually recounted – with the past receding and the present in the forefront. As a result, the beginning of the book is a rewarding slog, and the end of the book feels rushed and less detailed. There is a great deal about David Rockefeller (Chase) and Walter Wriston (Citi), but nothing about Jamie Dimon (Chase) and Dick Parsons (Citi) (another one of my heroes). That, notwithstanding, Dyja provides the most telling analysis of the eight years of DeBlasio’s mayoralty of which I am aware; which is impressive, given that we’re it is only months behind us. While I was a middling official in City government during DeBlasio’s last four years, I wasn’t sure of what was hitting me. I was a believer in DeBlasio’s attempts to improve the situation of the city’s worst well off, but was mystified by the chaos, lack of direction and just plain bad decision making that seemed to be trickling down from above. Dyja sympathetically explains DeBlasio’s lack of managerial skills, diffidence and indecisiveness.

Typical of the kind of small inaccuracies that creep into daily journalism, I was counsel to all three BIDs. Taken by the *Times* at a City Council hearing in 1996.

The book made me long for the New York of my youth. Not because the era was more fun or interesting, but because City government during the 80’s effectively implemented policies that made a difference – and the Mayor and Deputy Mayors (like Ken Lipper, Nat Leventhal and John Zuccotti) backing up risked taking innovative managers like Gordon Davis at Parks and Paul Crotty at Housing. What we are now left with is a sclerotic, risk averse local government that is strangled by its outdated, dysfunctional personnel, legal and contracting procedures. What we have inherited is ineffectual public administration by press release. I was privileged to be a part of the private sector effectiveness of New York’s largest business improvement districts, which Dyja also focuses on (although, in a small detail that perhaps only matters to me, he glancingly misses why Rudy Giuliani had Dan Biederman and me fired from Grand Central Partnership). So, I don’t really have much to complain about on that score.

The book’s epigraph is a quote from the wonderful and underappreciated Whyte, whom I also knew and tremendously admired. Whyte was the father or godfather of Bryant Park. Perhaps Dyja’s recognition of Holly, whom he cites through out the book, and Richard Rein’s revelatory recent biography, will give Holly his day. As Deja makes clear, Holly Whyte has given us the tools to create create great urban places. I, for one, will ever be grateful to Dyja for his superhuman research and telling this story with so much elan and passion. I’m assigning New York, New York, New York to my children, who take a safe and vibrant New York City for granted, so that they can get something of a feel for what Dad was doing while they were growing up.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH TARN-ET-GARONNE?

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The week after the national election in France we walked from Cahors to Moissac in southeast France along the Way of St. James (the GR 65, Le Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostelle), a distance of about 80 kms (50 miles) over four days. The walk went from the department of the Lot to the department of the Tarn-et-Garonne. Cahors includes a beautifully preserved medieval district, and some very good places to eat. Moissac is famous for its 12^th Century cloister with over 70 beautifully carved capitals and an imposing tympanum over the door to the abbey church. In between, we walked through handsome, rolling, agricultural countryside, planted in vines, fruit trees and grain. Along the way are the lovely towns of Montcuq and Lauzerte. The food was uniformly very good (of course). Both the built and natural environments are wonderful. The residential real estate is inexpensive (I would guestimate at around $150 per square foot, from my perusal of the listings in the windows of the real estate agent offices along the way). So, what’s the problem?

I write this, against the background of the ground war in Eastern Europe not 2,000 land miles away. As we walked, the war could have been on another planet. I did have a nagging concern about being vaporized without warning while on the pilgrimage. But it didn’t happen. And the peace of the French countryside was yet another thing about which to be grateful.

We walked from Cahors to Moissac as shown as the bottom half of the route above.

Before leaving for our trip, I followed the French national election in the New York Times. One read of a tremendous public personal dislike for the winner, Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, who leads a political party he founded for the purpose of advancing his career. His opponent in the final round of the election was Marie La Pen, the scion of the nationalist, anti-immigrant party, who he defeated handily, after a great deal of advance media hand ringing. The traditional Socialist and Christian Democratic parties are no longer factors. Perhaps the most powerful political vector in France of recent years was the mouvement des gilets jaunes, the yellow vests – catalyzed by an increase in gas prices four years ago (and, of course, they hadn’t seen anything yet, with even higher fuel prices yet to come as Russian gas gets turned off). The yellow vests had a list of grievances familiar to Americans – rising prices, resistance to perceived cultural changes, particularly thought to be due to immigration, anger at a powerful political and cultural elite seemingly out of touch and disdainful of “ordinary” French citizens, and a sense of declining economic fortunes.

Personally, Macron is a clear winner in the French national meritocratic sweepstakes. He a graduate of elite schools. He worked in international investment banking. His economic/technocratic strength is that he gets what that institutional restraints are on future French economic growth and has tried to reform them – sclerotic labor and pension systems in particular. Changing those expensive, inflexible systems certainly gores the ox of the non-elite, rural French family – in the name of long-run economic dynamism. Most recently he proposed raising the national retirement age to 65 from 62. Quelle horreur!

The one thing we heard from people we talked with in La France Profonde (the French heartland), in the person mostly of hotel, restaurant and business operators (the people with whom a tourist would tend to come into contact) was the difficulty in getting people to work for them. One hotel-restaurant we ate at and stayed in converted to take out only, because of the difficulty the owners found in keeping service and kitchen staff. We were told that employees tended to be cavalier about attendance, wanted to set their own hours and often quit without notice when the spirit moved them.

Moissac, the destination of the walk (population 13,000), struck me as a somewhat gritty little town, with a larger immigrant population than any of the places through which we had previously walked. On a Sunday and Monday of the weekend of May 1 (the French labor day), the town had only one open place to eat. Because of the Abbey and Cloister, it is a major stop on the Way of Saint James, so quite a few walkers come through the town. It didn’t have much charm, although the riverfront and canal du midi are nice features.

This is in contrast with Lauzerte, only 23 km (17 miles) away; a very attractive, highly manicured medieval hilltop village – advertised as one of the fifty most beautiful villages in France (pop. 1,500). There were fancy renovations going on throughout the town. The well-maintained facades were nearly uniformly medieval and renaissance. The retail district lay outside and below the historic district, which was located on the top of a hill. From peering through gates and looking at photos in real estate offices (with English names), the houses seemed to be stylishly decorated and to be either second or retirement homes. Montcuq (pop 1,200), about 13 km (8 miles) from Lauzerte, was another well maintained hilltop village, which we found to be more authentic – with cafes, bakeries and butcher shops actually in the town. It also had a very charming English language bookstore (https://www.livresbooksandcompany.com) and a tall 13^th century keep. Both appeared to be great places and superb towns in which to live.

So, what’s the problem? Why so cranky? I would argue that the French have it pretty good! And, it’s important to point out, immigration is essential to the French labor market and economy – because the French have a birthrate of 1.87, against a generally acknowledged replacement rate of 2.1. Part of the it may be the discontent caused by the increasing wage and wealth inequality of the West, amplified by the media ubiquity of the wealthy and their stuff. You see these other people with their private planes and yachts and wonder why they have them and you don’t. This is especially obvious in France, the very home of luxury goods. Two of the highest profile billionaires in France are François-Henri Pinault and Bernard Arnault (the third wealthiest person in the world and the wealthiest in Euope), both of whom are highly visible in French media and derive their wealth from the sale of luxury goods.

Also, contributing the dissatisfaction is sense of loss of traditional French culture, generated by media about both immigration and the growing distance between a perceived, internationalist cultural elite, exemplified by Macron, Pinault and Arnault. But as an American spending time outside of Paris, that perception seems exaggerated. What’s great about provincial France (and I use that term without the intent of any pejorative connotation), is its cultural uniqueness expressed through food, wine, language and the built environment. Walking the GR 65 (part of a system of walking paths through France called Les Grandes Randonnée [the great routes]) gives the pilgrim a deep sense of history, and particularly religion and spirituality. It comes simply from being in the space. The feelings are inchoate, but powerful. I would advise the French not to worry. Their cultural “brand” is secure, unique and important (as well as marketable). An outsider does not perceive its being diluted.

In sum, from a ten-day visit by a tourist, the French seem to have it pretty good, and they should (like our fellow similarly aggrieved Americans) stop whining. This is true particularly in light of what’s going on in Ukraine. Now, no one likes to be called a whiner and being a card-carrying member of the international elite, advice from such as me to the French working class is sure to be unwelcome, to say the least. But we need to figure out the messaging as to how to make the culturally discontented feel more positive about their lot. This is worth a great deal more thought. I suspect it has something to do with asking people how they are doing, right at this moment, as opposed to about abstract problems other people might seem to have, or hypothetical problems off into the future. I’d be interested to ask a member of the yellow vests: “How is your life. How are your food, housing, health care? What do you enjoy on television and the internet? What else do you do in your spare time?”

Two other brief notes. Things also seemed pretty great in Paris. I saw very few empty retail storefronts. The streets were clean. The presence of the clochards (homeless) was minimal, and non-existent in the crowded Metro. Lots of young people are riding bikes and scooters in the protected bike lanes built by the much loathed Mayor Anne Hidalgo (who is said to be more popular in New York than in Paris) all over central Paris. The city was hopping in many places at night, with kids jamming bars and restaurants. I particularly enjoyed seeing a diverse group of a couple of dozen young people who had set up a speaker in a plaza in a commercial area on the right bank to dance (traditional social dancing, at that) very late at night. We ate in a new restaurant run by the famous Bras family in former stock exchange building restored and developed by Pinault. Our visit to the Louvre was marred by the lines and crowds on entering and leaving the building and in the Italian Renaissance galleries (thank you brother Leonardo). Paris generally struck me as clean, safe, vibrant and fun. And, in the past, I have generally not been a fan of the place, preferring the French countryside.

I would be remiss in not highlighting the night we spent in Le Clos de Gamel, in Lascabanes slightly off of the Chemin. We ended up there because we split one of the usual walking days set by our excellent travel agent (https://followthecamino.com/en/), in order to attempt to keep each day’s walking to less than 25km, and they had to find a place between their usual accomodations – particularly challenging as we made our arrangements late in the season. They found Le Clos de Gamel, which is the family farm of David and Christelle Bernadou, to which they have added over the years. It has accommodations in several buildings and features a pool and hot tub – much appreciated after a long day of walking – and not a regular feature of places to stay along The Way. The Bernadous were gracious hosts, served us a wonderful house-made aperitive and red wine (from their vineyard) – along with a delicious dinner. It was quite a find, and is much recommended – even as a destination in itself, for those not traveling on the Chemin.

THAT’S ALL RIGHT, YOU CAN HAVE HIM – LOS ANGELES

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Gustuvo Dudamel has never done much for me. I’m actually more a fan of his avatar played by Gael García Bernal in the TV series “Mozart in the Jungle” (which, admittedly takes place in NYC). I’ve also long thought that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is at best a second rate band, which is remarkable because it’s recent conductors have included top shelfers Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen (not to mention the storied Carlo Maria Guilini in the more distant past) and its managers have been industry legends Ernest Fleischman and Deborah Borda. Why are those people so well-recognized when the orchestra has never been better than pedestrian?

We were in LA for Du Yun’s “Our Daughter’s Eyes” presented at REDCAT by Beth Morrison Projects and the LA Opera. We also took in Fidelio at the Philharmonic while we were there. I will tread lightly about the LA Phil, as the house professional critic has written about both for the Wall Street Journal. It was also interesting to be in Disney Hall after recently experiencing its acoustic doppelganger in Kansas City. While we were settling in to seats about three quarters of the way back in the hall, the bassoonist was warming up on stage and sounded like he was sitting in our laps. But once the performance started it seemed really far away. Not that the orchestra offers much to hear. The strings of the LA Phil can be accurately described as scrappy for a supposedly world class band, and the ensemble was almost disorganized. Maybe because of Gustavo’s jetting around (he’s also the cappo di cappo at the Paris Opera) rehearsal time may have at a premium for a complicated production, but that seems unlikely given the show’s high profile.

Gustavo Dudamel - YouTube — This photo of Maestro Dudamel appears several stories high on the facade of Disney Hall.

The New York critical fraternity spent a good deal of time this spring panting for Dudamel to replace the unsuccessful Jaap van Zweden at the New York Philharmonic after van Sweden’s contract comes to an ignominious close next year. Dudamel spent two weeks with the NY orchestra in March playing Schumann, and the New York press went into a frenzy. OK, the guy has terrific hair, a gleaming smile and an interesting life story. But, to these ears, he just isn’t that interesting a musician. In any event, my money is on the exciting Finn, Susanna Mälkki taking the reins at the NYP (you read it here first).

The show’s raison d’être was the involvement of deaf actors doubling the singers and the involvement of a signing chorus from Dudamel’s home of Venezuela. The musical aspects of the evening were disappointing from top to bottom, except for the fine performance of Ryan Speedo Green, who this year has become the Met’s reliable all round utility bass. Dudamel pushed the band to break-neck speed, at which they were incapable of playing beautifully. Once upon a time, the LA Phil was known as an outstanding group of LA studio musicians, moonlighting as classical players. Now, as a full-time orchestra with a 52 week contract, they aren’t even that. I’d rather watch reruns of MITJ.

I would be remiss not to crab about how Disney Hall doesn’t relate to the street and is anti-urban. I will also please my readers by avoiding the opportunity to once again crab about Pershing Square which continues to suck.

A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term, about 1632–33, Nicolas Poussin, oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1826. Image © The National Gallery, London — *A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term*, about 1632–33, Nicolas Poussin, oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1826. Image © The National Gallery, London.

But here is the headline – Downtown LA has become almost walkable over the course of the pandemic. Across the street from the loathed (by me) Disney Hall, Gehry has designed a nearly completed massive mixed-use development (1.2 million sq ft, 500 apartments, 20% affordable) that DOES relate well to the street and is massed in a fascinating manner that breaks up its bulk. The building is broken up into two towers of offsetting rectangular forms that humanize it’s scale. It’s mixed uses, including a good deal of street level retail, should seriously animate that stretch of Grand. A hearty bravo to Mr. Greenburg and his patrons at Related. There is lots of other residential development activity that has been recently completed within walking distance.

I chose not to rent a car for the first time in a trip to La La Land. We took Ubers from Manhattan Beach to Downtown, as well as round trip to The Getty Center from our downtown hotel. All three trips were shit shows. I just can’t understand how Angelenos can put up with it. The trip back from Malibu to DTLA was almost two hours. The Getty Center is magnificent – and its public spaces are uplifting (which is surprising given the extensive use of hardscape. Water features and movable chairs and table soften the experience. The special exhibit of Poussin we visited was lavishly presented. While it goes without saying, it is good to have unlimited money.). But how am I ever going to go there again unless I sleep over or take a helicopter.

The rest of the visit we walked around downtown. We breakfasted at Grand Central Market and walked along Broadway in historic DTLA. Broadway has made only some progress since the onset of the pandemic. It’s still more than a little rough around the edges. Yes, there is considerable loft conversion, and lots of interesting architecture. The many former movie palaces convey a sense of what tinsel town once was. However, there are still many, many empty, or underutilized, poorly maintained architecturally significant structures. The potential is tremendous.

By contrast, the Arts District near downtown appears to be a happening place (who knew that LA had an arts district?). The neighborhood is small, and the amount of adaptive reuse is patchy, but apartments are being developed there and there are some cool other uses. We had an excellent meal at a rooftop restaurant, with a rather obscurely marked door at street level. The place (La Cha Cha Cha) was large, entirely outdoors, comfortable and landscaped with cacti. Next door was a club ominously named Death & Co. that we were assured was super cool and had great drinks. The neighborhood was walking distance from downtown.

I should note that, yes, downtown Los Angeles has a noticeable homeless population, like many other American cities. There are interesting signs around downtown designating special enforcement zones, prohibiting camping and sleeping on the sidewalk. I can’t say the issue appears to be worse than other big U.S. cities or that we ever felt overwhelmed or unsafe. I suppose this has become something of the new urban normal. But by no means did we feel that DTLA was apocalyptic or a set for a new installment of Bladerunner (as I have argued elsewhere, this is a problem that is not principally about housing and is solvable if the political will and data driven social services can be mustered).

A view down Grand Avenue. The Broad is on the left.

Downtown is brimming with newly built and converted residential developments. The streets still aren’t very active, but the plazas at 1 and 2 Cal have water features, retail, movable chairs and tables and lots of potential. Grand Avenue now has an attractive string of cultural institutions (including Disney Hall, the newish Broad Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the expanding Colburn School facilities), even if nobody appears to much walk between them. You can have a pleasant walk from the towers of Bunker Hill through the Civic Center, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Little Tokyo through China Town. On my first trip to LA in about 1976, Olvera Street in the Pueblo was regarded as a tourist trap. Today it is rather charming. We had lunch at El Paseo (which has been there for decades) and the other diners were wearing Dodger regalia and appeared not to be tourists but locals pre-gaming (it was opening day, albeit not for five hours).

A note to Christopher Hawthorne, LA’s Chief Design Officer (and the Time’s former architecture critic): how about paying some attention to the landscaping in the area around City Hall? There are decrepit planters and garden beds among the brutalist 60’s municipal buildings. The plazas are strewn with trash and poorly maintained. I’m sure the Mayor, being a serious Angeleno, never gets out of his car when going between municipal structures, but if LA is serious about design, it really ought to start with its front yard.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, as we lawyers say, DTLA is actually getting to be walkable. Who have thunk it. Joel Kotkin must be shocked. Between the cultural institutions, the street level retail, the varied neighborhood offerings and the improved landscaping, someone might actually live downtown and rarely need access to their car (which, under the circumstances, would be advantageous). Grand Avenue is a happening place. And you can go hear Gustavo Dudamel conduct the LA Philharmonic as often as you want – which is fine with me.

Musical Group on a Balcony. Gerritt van Honthorst. 1622. The Getty Center. A theorbo and two lutes.

ABOVE THE FRUITED PLAIN – KANSAS CITY

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After parking my car at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and leaving the elevator from the garage to go to Helzberg Hall to hear the Kansas City Symphony, I noticed something that I found odd. The outdoor temperature was in the mid 40’s and yet none of the men going to the concert were wearing overcoats. How could that be? It was cold. I was wearing a coat, a hat, a scarf and gloves. At intermission it dawned on me – people went from the garages in their homes in the suburbs, into their cars, to the garage at the Kauffman Center and up into the concert hall via escalator. Why would they need a coat? They never went outside to get from home to the concert. It was all very comfortably and conveniently arranged. This, in nutshell was my experience in Kansas City, Missouri.

An entrance to an office building parking garage. Note the roll down gate, which rolls up when you put your ticket in the gate.

Kansas City defied my expectations of what successful cities are supposed to be all about. The city seems to work for most of its citizens. The downtown, while dense, has no street life. The downtown’s public spaces were deserted when I visited. There is hardly any street level retail downtown. And yet, the city, the largest in the state, has consistently grown over the years to a population of 500,000, its highest ever; in a metro of about 2.3 million. It is the country’s 31^st largest city andits 26th largest metro. It has a symphony, an opera company, a ballet, a notably well funded public library and an important art museum (the Nelson-Atkins). Unlike most other successful cities, it does not have an important university or medical center. Notwithstanding its representation in the U.S. Senate by the loathsome anti-government, Joshua Hawley, its largest employer is the Federal Government. It’s the home of Hallmark, Commerce Bank, and T-Mobile is a major employer.

It isn’t the way an Upper West Sider would choose to live, but it appears to be very pleasant. Certainly, it is tough to make an argument that waiting for a subway, crowding into a train car and being hustled for money by someone on every ride from my apartment to Lincoln Center is a superior way of life. What’s wrong with living comfortably, prosperously and conveniently? (The Helzberg family, after whom the hall is named, by the way, sold their regional jewelry store chain twenty years ago to Berkshire Hathaway in an all stock transaction. That tells you what you need to know about the hall’s name. Mr. and Mrs. Helzberg were at the concert I attended, and I am pleased to report that they are hale and hardy.)

Before my first visit, I knew very little about the city. What I did know was that it is the home of Country Club Plaza, built by the legendary J.C. Nichols and considered to be, perhaps, the most visionary real estate development project in American history. Country Club Plaza is an open air shopping mall, allegedly designed in the Moorish Revival style covering 55 acres and completed in 1923. Country Club Plaza is whimsical in design and high end in its retail offerings. While it is sort of walkable, it has copious free structured parking, wide streets (more like boulevards) and narrow sidewalks. It is echt Kansas City – in that it is a shopping experience not in the downtown, designed to be driven to. The architecture and landscaping (with many fountains) is however completely entertaining. Unfortunately, COVID has had a seriously deleterious impact on its retail leasing. It appeared to me about 15% of the storefronts were vacant. I was told that the stores that closed were the international high end brands. The stores that remain are familiar national high middle market chains.

Downtown Kansas City has dozens of blocks of office towers, ranging from art deco to glass and steel. There are block after block of high rise buildings, with little to no street level retail. It was not clear to me where office workers grab lunch. Whatever single story or less than, say, ten story structures ever existed in downtown were demolished long ago. The most high end suburbs are about a half hour drive from downtown. It appears that the city’s commercial center was designed to be driven to. You park in a garage, most conveniently in the office building in which you work, you spend your day toiling in that building, and you drive home at the end of the day.

From 2007 to 2017, downtown residential population in Kansas City quadrupled and continues to grow. The area has grown from almost 4,000 residents in the early 2000s to nearly 30,000 as of 2017. A significant number of office towers of all vintages are empty (including, unlike in most other cities, some post war buildings) and are being converted to residential lofts. There is strong demand for downtown living – even without much street life, downtown restaurants or shopping. The appeal must be large, light spaces with views, and not having to worry about shoveling the snow or fixing the roof.

Main Street, which traverses the downtown, has a futuristic looking streetcar, which I didn’t see many people riding. Main Street had almost no pedestrian activity on the early spring day of my trip. I visited two large downtown public spaces, one in the civic center and the other across the street from the convention center. Both were unprogrammed and entirely devoid of people. The civic center lawn featured rows of movable chairs (perhaps for an event). It is the only occasion on which I have been in a space with movable chairs with no one sitting in them. The convention center space was entirely comprised of concrete surfaces, with some very stern signs about behavior at the entrances. It was March. It was cold. But still, no people? Not one?

Same deal with other urban functions. The city has a humongous convention center, a number of downtown theaters, as well as the ten year old, Moshe Safdie designed, Kauffman Center. All of these amenities were designed to be driven to. At the Kauffman Center, I couldn’t find a major entrance to the street. Everyone appeared to enter and exit though the garage. The lobby faces a more than triple height wall of windows with an expansive view south (not of the downtown). When you look immediately down out of those windows, you see a line of parked, high end vehicles. There is no relationship between the Center and the street, and Kansas City residents seem to like it that way.

The Kansas City Symphony pays its players for 42 weeks of service and has a budget of almost $20 million. It is in solid financial shape, with a substantial endowment, and generous annual giving (about 40% of total revenue). It plays fourteen pairs of classical concerts a year, with the balance of its season made up of pops concerts and pit band duty for the ballet and opera. Its music director for 18 years has been the avuncular Harvard and Curtis educated Michael Stern, son of legendary violinist and man of the world (and Upper West Side resident), Isaac Stern. The orchestra plays in a 1,600 seat hall with “vineyard seating,” much like Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and, indeed, shared Disney’s acoustician. The stage juts out into the auditorium, and the seats are steeply raked – from the front of the stage to the back of the hall is apparently less than 100 feet. The audience member certainly feels like he or she is in on the action. The sound of the orchestra in the space is forward and bright – not necessarily ideal for this group of talented and rambunctious young players. The program I heard included This Midnight Hour by British composer Anna Clyne as well as two crowd pleasers, Debussy’s La Mer and the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Midori as soloist.

Music director Stern projects the affect of a regular guy. To my effete eye, his jacket and trousers didn’t match, and the jacket most obviously didn’t fit properly. Some (many) might find that endearing. He also wore a yellow tie and started the concert with a few appropriate words and the Ukrainian national Anthem. The Clyne piece was an atmospheric curtain raiser based on two poems, by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire, which were printed in the program. The most effective moment of the work featured two mournful antiphonal trumpets on either side of the stage. Stern conducted the Debussy from an obviously well-used study score, with yellowed-brittle pages, some of them ragged. This is one of the most difficult pieces in the orchestral repertoire to get right. There are temptations galore for the brass (particularly trombone and tuba) to go for the gold, which are best avoided. The piece depicts the restless churning of ocean water and the constant rhythm of surf, with an overlay of a broad range of orchestral colors. It demands restraint and subtlety, as I heard last fall in San Francisco under Esa-Pekka Salonen. The KCS caught the bright colors and pounding rhythms (but, as Richard Strauss once said, “Schauen Sie sich niemals die Posaunen an, es ermutigt sie nur”).

I haven’t heard Midori play in decades. She has long been one of the most popular and acclaimed artists in the classical music world, and while there were surprisingly quite a few empty seats in Helzberg Hall (given the soloist’s popularity and celebrity), Midori delivered. This is one of the two or three most played violin concertos, and Midori must have been called on to perform it in public hundreds of times during her career – but her performance was fresh, committed and perfectly beautiful – in the best sense. The more classical sized orchestra (read: no trombones) provided a supportive accompaniment. The concert was enjoyable experience.

The orchestra must be something of a way station for orchestral musicians on the way up, as a number of the principal chairs were open, and most of its members appeared to be early in their careers. The concertmistress was a visitor from Dallas, trying out for the position. That the country’s 31^st largest city sports an orchestra of this quality, speaks (generally unspoken) volumes about classical music and culture in this country. I would guess that the Staatskapelle Halle (founded in 1852) in Halle, Germany (it’s 31^st largest largest city), doesn’t play nearly at this level.

There was one black player in the orchestra, and I only noticed one black attendee at the concert. The city is 30 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. I had a very nice chat with the black woman who runs the city’s visitor’s center, who was upbeat about issues of diversity in the metro. I was, therefore, unable to get a sense of the reality of life for people of color and lower income folks in Kansas City, so my observations are presented with that caveat.

The place where I tried Kansas City BBQ in Country Club Plaza (which was recommended to me by the staff at the terrific nearby Raphael Hotel) wasn’t quite up to the standard of the BBQ at St. Louis’ Pappy’s. I found the pork and beef tips dry (I did think the potato salad was outstanding). But Pappy’s, in my book, is the ne plus ultra of BBQ.

I drew from my trip a broad lesson about the divisions in our national politics. [Missouri is a red state, while Kansas City, like St. Louis, is something of a blue stronghold within that conservative culture. Interestingly, the folks who live on the Kansas side of the state border within the metro, I was told, tend to be even more liberal and Democratic than the rest of the area. That border isn’t one of the two large rivers (Missouri and Kansas Rivers) that runs through the region. I couldn’t figure out where it was.]. Many Americans like to drive. They like houses with yards. They prefer a short commute. They like to shop and eat at national chains (most Americans don’t remember what a crap shoot eating on the road was before the standardization of chains. I remember some pretty terrible food when traveling as a kid. Howard Johnson’s was a reliable oasis.), and to have convenient parking for their shopping (as for their working). It is unsurprising if they feel judged and treated disrespectfully by those of us on the coasts (all three of them), who think cities should be walkable, people should ride bikes and take transit, and that restaurants should be local and vegan. [And alienating, grandiose, high volume lectures about the imminent threat of climate change caused by a car-based life style don’t win any friends or influence any people, no matter how urgent and important the issue may be.] Kansas City works – and while it doesn’t feature most of my personal touchstones for a successful downtown – it would be outrageous for me to be judgmental or make recommendations for improvement based on my experiences, since many people there obviously enjoy how they have chosen to live and the city’s economy seems to be prospering. We coastal elites need to get with the program on that or we are going to be seeing a lot more of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, whose political success is drawn from channeling such resentment. And, next time I go to hear the KCS in March, I’m going to leave my coat in my hotel room.

The Place Master

Resources for Placemaking

THE BEST LAID PLANS FOR FREE WI-FI (Part 1 of 3)

ONLINE PORN, GAMBLING AND 5G

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CABLE EMPIRE

EXPANDING THE REACH OF THE INTERNET IN NEW YORK CITY

LEARN FROM THE BEST — CINCINNATI

IMPRESSIONS OF IOWA

THE REST IS HISTORY

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH TARN-ET-GARONNE?

THAT’S ALL RIGHT, YOU CAN HAVE HIM – LOS ANGELES

ABOVE THE FRUITED PLAIN – KANSAS CITY