January 15, 2007
Amanda Burden: Good Witch or Bad Witch?
The NY Times has a nice profile of Amanda Burden, the influential Department of City Planning commissioner whose policies will shape the city for years to come.
Burden boasts a quiet, behind-the-scenes role in development across the five boroughs, including large-scale projects like Ground Zero, the Atlantic Yards (she supported downsizing it) and the High Line. She’s also overseeing the largest planning push since 1961 - so far, City Planning has rezoned approximately 4,500 blocks, including areas along the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront.
Land use changes in that part of Brooklyn led one community advocate to describe her as the “Wicked Witch of the West” for not addressing the area’s loss of manufacturing jobs and displacement of residents. The complaint is that she doesn’t take into account the larger impact of a plan, for example how transportation, schools or sewer systems fit into the mix.
Burden has other critics. Developers say she’s too design-obsessed (her favorite architects are Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne), that she micromanages how building angles sit in the skyline and that she’s attached to overpriced architects.
Here's Burden's take on design: “I think that it makes the city young and exciting to see aggressive and innovative architecture.”
No matter what you think of her policies, it’s admirable that she takes public service so seriously, given her elite background. She’s a descendant of John Jay, the nation’s first chief justice, and her father was an heir to Standard Oil fortune. She’s worth more than $45 million and lived in the Dakota but now lives near Mayor Bloomberg on East 79th Street.
We tend to think that if she’s being criticized both by developers and community advocates, she must be doing something right.
Here's an interview she did with Planetizen last fall.
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not quite:
Times profile of planning chair Burden maintains AY myth, suffers curious cut.
http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2007/01/times-profile-of-planning-chair-burden.html
Knowing the Community
http://dddb.net/php/latestnews_Linked.php?id=463
Downsizing Atlantc Yards?
As the great John Lennon once said, "We'd all love to see the plan."
Rem Koolhas....
Its sad. In the late 80s and early 90s there was a backlash to the glass box, crappy building with ample parking crap that was inflicted on the public in the 60s and 70s (its remarkable to go back and see how similar western designed buildings and Soviet projects were in that era). Then we got a backlash to the backlash, and now ugly glass out of context buildings and "big project" urban planning are all the range again. Its as if Jane Jacobs, Robert Venturi, and the new urbanist never had existed.
As to Amanda Burdenl, the city has become an exhibit of discredited urban planning and architecture under her watch and Bloomberg's watch. At least Robert Moses had some ability.
"the Atlantic Yards (she supported downsizing it)"
Are you people fucking kidding?
They did downsize AY, making Ms. Brooklyn shorter than the Billyburg SB building. It was ridiculous that knocking off hundreds of feet of a building was even on the table. The critics would never be happy until the whole proposal was rejected.
Yes, the did do that. but it was THEY, Ratner, not City Planning or Amanda Burden. and that 100 foot chop has not been found anywhere in writing. And the project is still just as big as it was the day it was announced.
the supporters will never be happy until they ram Atlantic Yards, at their preferred size, down everyone's throat.
#6: ramming it down everyone's throat is not what's happening. But to argue at this point is futile.
My point is that taking height off buildings is a stupid concession/complaint.
its not what's happening? could've fooled A LOT of people. yes, futile to argue that.
agreed, it is a stupid "concession", one that nobody asked for.
She is clearly an incompetent socialite. Not a coincidence that Charlie Rose shoots his show in Bloomberg's studios for so many years and that she's married to Charlie. They are both social climbing idiots. The fact that they backed Bloomberg's rise just speaks volumes about how little they care about anything besides their own egos. No it wasn't smarts on their part. Bloomberg only won the elections because he bought them. And he bought entry in to society by hooking up Mr. Rose with studio space. Pure and simple. And in exchange he gave Amanda, a royal pain this post. She's a hack. She should quit. Robert Moses is going to be forgotten when you compare the garbage she approves. She will forever blight so many parts of Brooklyn with her hack plans to allow a developer to get his way. She cares nothing about New Yorkers. People believe me we are nothing to this lady. She can buy or sell us and that's just how she treats us architecturally -- distancing the people and their purposes from the land we inhabit. Quit now Ms. Burden before your legacy is sealed. We expect nothing but horrors from you in the future. Luckily the social season is upon us so you will perhaps be occupied elsewhere. We know your husband makes the rounds and you certainly better keep up with your roving sleazy man.
Whoever you are, Jill Priluck, you don't know what you're talking about. You clearly are utterly out of the loop of planning and political circles if you can call this idiotic, ignorant and dishonest puff piece "a nice profile."
What the above posters say re: Burden's having *not* downsized Atlantic Yards is absolutely true. For one thing, City Planning didn't design that project - it's private, not public, duh. And if you call those tepid little whispers by the quoted developers "criticisms," you also know nothing of journalism and how it's practiced. The writer of even a puff piece like this has to come up with at least a semblance of opposing views, and these are about as weak as could be imagined.
The article failed to mention that City Planning, and therefore Burden, have no say over the main aspects of their projects. The DCP is run by EDC - in other words, Dan Doctoroff. In other words, the entire context of Burden's work was ignored.
It's frustrating that a generally good site like Gothamist allows people as ignorant as you to have anything to do with stories about planning and development. We, and Gothamist itself, deserve better. After all, land use is THE blood sport of our city.
Diane Cardwell's profile of Amanda Burden is light and breezy; it is not an exhaustive, hard-hitting look at Ms. Burden and her policies. That's precisely the reason that I described it as 'nice.'
Of course City Planning didn't design the Atlantic Yards - and, yes, it is a private project, although the city and state are footing $200 million in infrastructure costs, according to The New York Times. I never wrote that City Planning designed the Yards or that it was a public project.
Neither the profile nor I ever indicate that Ms. Burden downsized the Atlantic Yards project. The article reported that she merely played a behind the scenes role in limiting the project. I wrote that Ms. Burden supported downsizing it, which is accurate, according to Ms. Cardwell, the Times' City Hall Bureau Chief. The Yards project - in the form of scaling down the height of Miss Brooklyn - was downsized, if very minimally. See: http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2006/12/miss-brooklyn-though-shorter-would.html
Of course, Ms. Burden has no official role in approving new development projects. I never wrote that she does. Again, according to Ms. Cardwell, Ms. Burden has unofficial, but influential, role in those large projects that are transforming our city. And obviously Dan Doctoroff plays a major role in which projects get approved. Nothing new there, PlanningWatcher.
I have written for ARTnews, City Limits, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Sun, The New York Times, Salon.com, Vibe, the Village Voice, Wired News and many others. The notion that I am not familiar with how journalism is practiced is woefully inaccurate.
For a different take on Burden: http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2006/10/planning-chair-burden-claims-jacobsian.html