The Zoning Code Commission (ZCC) has produced a set of Draft Recommendations for a New Zoning Code, available at http://www.zoningmatters.org. It's a must-read. It's well-organized and full of good ideas. But it's also got a big, fat poison pill that could destroy the ability of communities to have meaningful input into the future of their neighborhoods.

Below is my response to the following letter from Councilman DiCicco's attorney.

DiCicco Threat Letter

Yesterday, through his attorney, Councilman DiCicco sent me a letter claiming that I defamed him by posting on YPP that the Councilman has engaged in “corruption” to the detriment of our waterfront and city planning. The letter demands an immediate retraction and apology. Rather than respond to his attorney I will post my response here. I will not retract my post nor will I apologize.

I am, however, happy to explain in greater detail what I meant when I referred (and will continue to refer) to the Councilman as a politician who engages in corruption. But let’s get real about the term – it means lacking in integrity, virtue and moral principle; it means a deviation from what is right; it means failing to represent the public interest. It does not mean that the official took a bribe and I have never used it that way. I should be able to use the term when I think the shoe fits. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope you support my right to voice my opinion.

In my post, I said that our Delaware waterfront is in a sorry state due to “his and his mentor’s corruption.” I think this is a obvious and unremarkable assertion. Our waterfront is an embarrassing joke. The control over its development is largely a function of local zoning and land use laws; and the Councilman has been in charge of zoning in the First District for some time now. The gated towers of Waterfront Square, the wholly inappropriate solid walls of the garage at the Hyatt Hotel, the overloading of the southern end and the resulting traffic, I could go on and on and on. We all could.

Our Delaware River Waterfront is one of the City’s greatest assets and its development history and current status is horrendous. Some would even say, rhetorically, that it’s a sin and a crime. Why hasn’t the Councilman changed the zoning on the waterfront in the many years that he has been the district councilperson? Why? And, finally, when we have a fantastic planning effort led by thousands of citizens, guided by Penn Praxis in an open and transparent manner – that gave us the Civic Vision – the Councilman drafts, sponsors and passes a new Zoning Overlay that fails to adopt all the recommendations of the Civic Vision and worse yet, drafts zoning for casinos that exempts them and their satellite parking from that zoning overlay. Sure, he passed some of the recommendations but not the key one about the width of the waterfront setback. Why can’t the Councilman just do what the people want? Why is it so hard? All of that is evidence (on top of what we can see – or not see – when we walk on Delaware Avenue) that his conduct was and is lacking in integrity, virtue and moral principle, that it deviated from what is right and that it is not in the public interest. It gets worse when he claims that he will protect one constituency and neighborhood at the expense of others and attempts, with some success, to divide and conquer. In my view, that is corruption.

And when crafting the zoning legislation which allows Sugarhouse satellite parking, exempting surface parking lots from the new zoning overlay for the Waterfront he opens the door for more corruption at the newly named Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, formerly the Penn’s Landing Corporation. Rather than advancing the civic vision in a transparent way we have an agency, City Council, and Mayor whose vision for the riverfront mirrors that of Neil Bluhm, developer of the proposed Sugarhouse casino, rather than that of the thousands of citizens who spent tens of thousands of hours developing the civic vision.

I think it was wrong for the Councilman to accuse me of defamation. YPP is a place for people to have discussion and debate in a public forum. Yes, when I wrote my post I was mad (and I still am). If the Councilman wants to rebut my statements, if he wants to claim that his stewardship over the development of the waterfront was based on integrity, virtue and moral principle, then he should post a response online. He is a public person and he stands up and takes praise wherever he can get it. But Councilmanic prerogative has to work both ways – it means that the Councilmember is responsible and should be held accountable for the zoning laws in his or her district, especially when there has been as much tinkering in the First District; and especially when he has presided over so many failures and lost opportunities at our waterfront.

After all, last fall’s show about making the Gallery the sworn choice for a Center City slots joint was a tough act to follow. No plan, no design, no studies, no financing, but Council was able to ram through rezoning a 16-square block area before they could blink.

A city planning commission vote was such a rubber stamp at least two Planning Commission members voted not to oppose the project by shrugging their shoulders. After 1,000 people marched in the streets and 60 citizens gave five hours worth of testimony at a packed Saturday Council hearing, Council committee members unanimously voted to move a motion forward and left the room before we had picked up all the signs and banners from the seats. Council acted similarly in waiving requirements to speed up the final casino zoning vote. Except for a brief comment by Councilman Curt Jones Jr. and a classic reprimand by Council President Verna – “nothing you say can change this vote” – nothing referenced the concerns that a distraught community had raised for weeks. The same held true for the Mayor when he came in on a Sunday morning to sign the legislation for the Gallery zoning into law, less than 24 hours after meeting with community members.

So how can City leaders possibly top that?

Let’s review the huddle conversation.

PennPraxis and the civic associations of the central Delaware riverfront would like to invite you to the public presentation of An Action Plan for the Central Delaware. Since the completion of the Civic Vision last November, PennPraxis has worked with the central Delaware riverfront civic associations to develop a series of recommendations for leaders to use to implement the civic vision. Together, they have produced An Action Plan for the Central Delaware, with ten steps over the next ten years to allow Philadelphia to realize a truly world-class riverfront.

Andy Altman, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, is expected to attend, and Mayor Michael Nutter has been invited as well.

Register for this event: www.planphilly.com/registration

When: Thursday, June 26, 2006

Where: Independence Seaport Museum, Penn's Landing (free parking is available courtesy of the Penn's Landing Corporation)

For the many YPP readers interested in planning and sustainability issues and urban development: Alex Steffen at WorldChanging has a terrific essay on city redevelopment titled "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." It's fairly long for a blog post, but well worth reading, as it summarizes a lot of the current thinking about green tech, density planning, and cities over the past couple of years. (See also David Owen's "Green Manhattan [PDF]," etc.)

A brief summary of Steffen:

1) Since most of the energy consumed and CO2 produced happens in the home, we should focus on how people live and work rather than (solely) the gas efficiency of the car they use to get there.

2) We need to act fast, not just because our lifestyles are out of control, but that the rest of the world emulates us.

3) This doesn't mean cars aren't important, just that tailpipes and MPG matters less than the enviro (and social!) costs of roads and infrastructure, commuting, etc.

4) If we want to turn this around, we have to promote and build denser housing developments and leverage existing high-density neighborhoods (i.e. cities and inner-ring suburbs.

5) We can do this faster and achieve higher energy gains than we can turn around the existing automotive fleet.

6) Goodies! Bike shares, transit-oriented development, New Urbanist neighborhoods. A green-city-geek's geekstuff.

Michael Nutter has named a director of the Office of Research, Planning, and Policy: Wendell Pritchett, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (so yeah, he had to deal with me and Dan in class).

During the primary campaign, I questioned--um, speaking delicately--Michael Nutter's emphasis on declaring a state of emergency, and wondered whether his commitment to tax cuts would limit him from really addressing the poverty and inequality that persists across many Philadelphia neighborhoods (as the recent Urban League Study glaringly showed).

But among the things that I did like and respect, the greatest were Nutter's positions on housing, community development, and city planning. I have quoted Nutter maybe twenty times now on the need for assertive and visionary city planning. His papers on zoning and planning reform and housing and community development are really pitch-perfect. I complain a lot (I am Jewish, it is my real birthright), but I have no complaints about the policies outlined in those papers. They include reworking the tax abatement so that it fosters development of affordable housing and development targeted to areas still needing revitalization; unifying related agencies; and creating a land bank for vacant property. The policies are attentive to the need to balance gentrification with neighborhood preservation. If we do half of what they propose, the landscape of housing and development in this city would be both more efficient and much fairer.

The man who was central to developing those policies was Wendell Pritchett. Professor Pritchett is a great academic and an expert on land use and fair housing law. More than that, though, he brings an engagement with progressive public policy. That means turning a critical eye towards how law and policy have served to reinforce poverty and segregation, and having a vision of how they could instead ameliorate it.

One of the most striking parts of the recent Daily News assessment of NTI was that NTI bond dollars were being used to substitute for missing federal money:

Over the years, NTI morphed into a dizzying array of programs. Demolition and acquisition activities remain the anchors, but there also are home-loan and repair programs, a retaining-wall program, programs to work with the issues of homelessness and predatory lending, and support for commercial corridors.

Many of these activities were pre-existing programs in city government, all financed by federal tax dollars. Trouble was, those dollars started to disappear, particularly after the Iraq war began.

Kevin Hanna, the city's housing secretary, said NTI bond money was used to "backfill" many of these existing programs.

Without the bond money, Smith said, many housing programs would have been cut in half. But even with the inflow of new NTI money, "we were basically treading water."

NTI was ambitious and it was unfinished, and that bond money is slated to run out in July. As the discussion around the recent "Inclusionary Housing" bill has shown (here and here) there is great need, made even starker by the lack of federal dollars for housing and urban redevelopment. But we are entering this new administration with someone who understands the problems and has knowledge and experience to bring to bear. Congratulations, Professor Pritchett, and thank you for taking the job.

Below is my piece in today's Inky. I really hope those of us who attend the Praxis event tomorrow night ALSO go back to their communities and spread the word, share information and begin to rally around the idea of taking the riverfront back from the people who have hurt it for generations. The plan will be available online by tomorrow night. We should use the net to inform and empower on this critical matter.

Of course, anyone who owns a home, is building a future, raises children, or dreams of doing any one of these things some day anywhere near the riverfront has a stake in this. But I don't like to balkanize this city. We ALL have a stake in what happens on the waterfront.

Let's take it back. Let's organize. Let's turn it up!
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Taking Back The Riverfront
It's time for the public to rally against the special interests.

By Vern Anastasio

As of today, over 900 people have registered for the "presentation of a civic vision for the central Delaware riverfront" Wednesday at the Convention Center.

The presentation comes at a pivotal point: after a year of an amazing design process, detailed charmingly and fascinatingly by Matt Blanchard here, and just as the city gets ready to welcome an exciting new mayor.

That mayor, Michael Nutter, spoke starkly during the primary of the need for Philadelphia to finally re-embrace large-scale civic planning. He said he intended to "re-establish the Planning Commission as the nation’s preeminent city planning agency," and used the sort of sweeping and inspiring language that marks Penn Praxis's plan.

"We plan in order to protect our future as well as our past."
-- Michael Nutter

The whole process of developing the plan to be presented Wednesday for our shared waterfront has been inspiring: resolutely participatory, and fueled by immense local as well as national talent. It is a good model for the future as we move into the exciting time of a new administration that has been laden with so much hope and expectation that it can reverse the things that had seemed to fatally plague our city, the things we no longer want to accept: underperforming schools, inadequate transit, isolated and economically suffering neighborhoods, and unharnessed development.

The last, unharnessed development, is a good place to start. As our new mayor said:

"Recent Mayors of Philadelphia have pursued unrelated transactions rather than followed a plan. We no longer need to chase growth; now we need to guide it."
-- Michael Nutter

These are words Philadelphia needs to hear, and to which the government needs to be held. They are at the heart of the fight over the waterfront.

We should all go Wednesday and join in a celebration of the civic life of our city: civic participation and civic vision. You can register here. Go and stand in the old Philadelphia (the Convention Center) and see the new Philadelphia (an ambitious and democratically planned waterfront) made visible.

And we should seek not only to advocate for the Penn Praxis plan, which is in many ways OUR plan, but we should seek to continue the inspiring process of participation and collaboration that they sparked and apply it to the other areas where we want change.