Dozens of marquee administration projects as broad of transforming the city streetscape with pedestrian plazas and bright green bike lanes or using new ways to train principals and encourage school attendance, have started as so-called pilot programs, ostensibly experiments that are often exempt from the unusual from of city review according to the off-lead article in today's edition of The New York Times by David W. Chen and Michael M. Grynbaum.
The article noted that "it has never been easy for a mayor to get things done in New York City, where every government proposal must navigate a thicket of community groups, policy boards, and empowered neighborhood gadflies who can blackball a project in a blink. So the Bloomberg Administration has taken a tack that could be called 'do it first, answer questions later. And the key to that strategy is to start small, and to use the world 'pilot,'" the article said.
"The pilot has emerged as the mayor's signature policy weapon. Admirers see an innovative way around red tape. Critics see a blunt tool that undermines democracy by minimizing the public's role in scrutinizing the ideas of government," the article continued.
The lead front page article by Elizabeth Rosenthal in the same edition of The Times noted that "across Europe, irking drivers is urban policy" as "cities discourage cars" and "closed streets and cuts in parking spots alter transit habits."
The article noted that "it has never been easy for a mayor to get things done in New York City, where every government proposal must navigate a thicket of community groups, policy boards, and empowered neighborhood gadflies who can blackball a project in a blink. So the Bloomberg Administration has taken a tack that could be called 'do it first, answer questions later. And the key to that strategy is to start small, and to use the world 'pilot,'" the article said.
"The pilot has emerged as the mayor's signature policy weapon. Admirers see an innovative way around red tape. Critics see a blunt tool that undermines democracy by minimizing the public's role in scrutinizing the ideas of government," the article continued.
The lead front page article by Elizabeth Rosenthal in the same edition of The Times noted that "across Europe, irking drivers is urban policy" as "cities discourage cars" and "closed streets and cuts in parking spots alter transit habits."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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