Here’s NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management Director and NYU Wagner Professor Mitchell Moss’ report on the cover of amNewYork from earlier this week! You can also read the story, “Sidewalk congestion is now a maddening crowd for midtown” here.

via viewfromthebalcony:

Check out @nyuwagner prof & @nyurudin dir @mossmitchell report on the cover of @amNewYork #nyu #nyc (Taken with Instagram at NJ Transit Rail Terminal)

latimes:

Brooklyn Bike Patrol on a roll after attacks on women: A volunteer escort home from the subway along dark streets is a phone call away — no charge, no tips. Business is brisk.

On Halloween, Ruiz escorted two women — one dressed as a box of cookies, the other as a milk carton — who felt vulnerable because their costumes limited their arm movements. Many of his regulars, who are listed in his phone by their first names and their usual subway stations, are waitresses who work late and who don’t want to spend $20 or so for a cab ride home.

Nice job, Brooklyn.

Photo: Brooklyn Bike Patrol volunteers, from left, Ryan Finger, Timothy Wright-Bodine and Jay Ruiz prepare for a Friday night of providing safe escorts home from subway stations. Credit: Aaron Showalter, New York Daily News

Fostering Economic Growth in NYC: NYC Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio joined us at NYU Wagner to deliver a speech about economic issues facing New York City today.

DeBlasio is a member of the NYU alumni and has served as a public servant for over thirty years.

Here at NYU Wagner, our faculty include:

• Mitchell Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, teaches and does research on urban planning and politics, with special emphasis on economic development, telecommunications, and the governance of New York City. He recently authored the report, “How New York City Won the Olympics” His areas of expertise include:  Cities, Urban Planning, Transportation. 
• Will Carlin is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Project Management and Communications at NYU Wagner and co-Managing Partner of VShift, an interactive marketing firm.  Before entering Columbia Business School, Will was a world-ranked squash player on the men’s professional touring circuit (where he achieved the highest world ranking ever by an American man), won the U.S. National Championship in squash and was the United States’ #1 ranked player in 1990 and 1995.  He served on the Executive Committees and Boards of Directors of both the US Squash Association and the US Olympic Committee. He also served on the Athlete’s Advisory Council on the Olympic Committee for two terms. His areas of expertise include Leadership, Project Management, Web Design and Sport Management.
• Heleen Mees is Adjunct Associate Professor of  Public Administration at NYU Wagner.  Mees is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and she has a weekly column in theFinancieele Dagblad. Her work has also been published in The Financial Times, The New York Times and Le Monde. Her areas of expertise include: Economics, Finance, Immigration, Race, Class and Diversity.
• Rae Zimmerman is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at NYU Wagner and since 1998, Director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS).  Her teaching and research encompasses environmental quality, environmental health risk management, and urban infrastructure in the context of the quality of life in cities. Some specific areas of focus of her research include social and environmental performance measures for the resiliency of urban infrastructure services in the face of extreme events of both natural and human origins. Her work on these and other topics covers security and global climate change; the ability of institutions to cope with these stresses. Her research also has addressed risk communication in the context of unanticipated events.  Her areas of expertise include: Emergency Management, Urban Planning, Environment, Race, Class & Diversity, Housing, Inequality, Infrastructure, Sustainability, and Transportation.

Our faculty are in the news, whether as columnists or as experts for journalists. Here are some of the best clips from Prof. Mitchell Moss this past week:

• “Using the Olympics to Stimulate Urban Growth” via Huffington Post
• “A Battle for New York: Why City Needs the NYU Expansion” via the New York Post
• “NYC to Decide on Controversial NYU Growth Plan” via CBS
• “City Council Committees Approve NYU Expansion Plan” via NY1
• “Rise in Crime Could Push Stop-and-Frisk Off the 2013 Agenda” via Capital New York
• “NYC to Decide on Controversial NYU Growth Plan” via Businessweek

Professor Moss is the director at NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management and the Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning. He also has an affinity for the old man in Disney’s UP. We aren’t sure why.

TESTIMONY OF MITCHELL L. MOSS

HENRY HART RICE PROFESSOR URBAN POLICY AND PLANNING

ROBERT F WAGNER GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

City Council of the City of New York

June 29, 2012

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is Mitchell Moss; I live at 100 Bleecker Street in the Silver Towers complex. I have been a full-time member of the New York University faculty since September 1973.

The essence of a university is the creation and transmission of knowledge; this requires face-to-face contact. Even in the age of the Internet, there is no substitute for direct human interaction. In fact, as we increasingly rely on email and online information, those institutions that foster the flow of ideas and information directly between people are becoming more valuable. And this is precisely why universities require laboratories, classrooms, seminar space and residence halls for students and faculty to test ideas, share insights, challenge widely held doctrines and pursue new lines of research.

The NYU proposal to build new structures on the superblocks will bring together faculty, students and academic units that are now highly dispersed in a variety of locations. Propinquity produces interaction. The concentration of faculty and students in close proximity to each other creates a climate that fosters intellectual life and productive scholarship. There is substantial research that identifies the benefits of “clustering” similar industries near each other; it facilitates interaction, creativity, and innovation.

During the past half century, New York City has witnessed a transformation in its economy and population. I have prepared a chart listing a sample of the business firms that were once in New York that have since moved to another city, gone out of business, or been taken over by another firm. You may recognize names such as Lehman Brothers, Farberware, Gimbel’s, Abraham & Straus, Gertz, E.J. Korvette, Crazy Eddie, Swingline, The Wiz, Ebinger’s Bakery, CBGB, Bohack and Gage & Tollner.

Let me contrast these firms with New York University. It remains here, a vital part of New York City, a magnet for students and faculty from around the world. It is not abandoning our city but rather reinforcing its commitment to our city.

The proposed rezoning will not destroy Greenwich Village or the surrounding community. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated much of the area to the east, south, and north of the superblocks as historic districts; therefore, the proposed NYU rezoning cannot possibly change the existing pattern of development in the historic districts of SoHo, NoHo, and lower Fifth Avenue, as well as on the Silver Towers landmark site itself. 

Let me also point out that the area between Broadway and Washington Square Park has been filled with manufacturing structures for more than 100 years. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the site of one of the city’s worst fires, occurred in a building that has since been converted to classrooms and laboratories. This section of Greenwich Village differs considerably from the West Village, where Marc Jacobs has overwhelmed the legacy of Jane Jacobs.

More than ten subway lines are located within about a quarter mile of the superblocks under consideration. Environmentally sustainable urban development should occur in close proximity to mass transit. Furthermore, students, faculty and staff who live in New Jersey can easily reach NYU via the PATH, which has a station located at 9^th Street and Sixth Avenue, a few blocks from NYU’s Washington Square campus. 

Attached is a map highlighting the density of subway lines serving the area surrounding New York University. Greenwich Village is one of New York City’s most transit-dense areas, with service provided by the A, B, C, D, E, F, M, N, R, 1, and 6 trains. If new buildings cannot be built near this dense concentration of subway lines, then where can we build anything in the City of New York? 

Finally, let me call your attention to one group: the canines that rely on the Mercer-Houston Dog Run. This community-operated dog run draws upon dog owners from all parts of the city and is run on a volunteer basis. This community resource certainly warrants appropriate space on the superblock site.

Thank you for your time. I will be pleased to answer any questions.

Reporting their initial findings, researchers at New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP) have found that New York City’s summer jobs program improved school attendance and other educational outcomes for youth participants.

Researchers include NYU Wagner’s Amy Ellen Schwartz, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics and Director of the NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy.

The NYU Wagner office in the Puck Building has become a movie set for the day!

#nyu #nyc #madeinNY (Taken with Instagram at NYU Wagner - Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service) via viewfromthebalcony

From our friends over at Code for America.

We’ve recently partnered with CfA along with a number of other organizations to create Code for Change, a pipeline initiative to address civic organizations’ greatest technology challenges by matching them with talented coders, designers, data scientists, and other innovators. To learn more about Code for Change, our partners and how you can get involved, check out the NYU Wagner Innovations Lab and Applications for Good websites.

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viewfromthebalcony: My personal favorite: “We’re a “Peace Corps for Geeks,” and you’re a geek with a giant heart.”

Here a UCLA professor recaps the debate between NYU Wagner Professor Mitchell Moss and NYC celebrity Matthew Broderick on NYU 2031 expansion. Both testified at the recent New York City Council public hearing. Their verbal boxing also was covered in the Gothamist and the New York Times.

“This is not the pristine Village of Sarah Jessica Parker, of ‘Sex and the City,’ of Matthew Broderick,” said Professor Moss at the NYC Council hearing. “This is the future of New York, and we have to build for the future.”