Commentary

New York: A Next Act

When Amazon announced it was looking for a second headquarters, the list of potential locations became the topic of cocktail conversations among the digerati. Atlanta? Pittsburgh? Austin?

But one candidate came out with confidence and swagger worth a second look. I’m talking about New York.

And few people have had a greater impact on New York than Dan Doctoroff, deputy mayor of economic development for the Bloomberg Administration’s first six years.

Doctoroff policy resulted in projects including the High Line, Hudson Yards, the World Trade Center Complex, and Barclays Center.

So when Doctoroff's new book hit the shelves a few weeks back, it was a must-read for urban development wonks. “Greater than Ever: New York's Big Comeback” sets the city’s growth after 9/11 as a kind of remarkable from-the-ashes rebirth of urban New York.

Not everything was a success, of course. Doctoroff's plan to bring the Olympics to New York, with a massive stadium on the West Side, failed. But even those attempts had ancillary benefits in development.

advertisement

advertisement

“Doing anything in an urban environment is hard,”  Doctoroff told Curbed.  He calls his book a “memoir-manifesto”  exploring how to promote growth in cities — and telling the often intimate details of the hard path it takes to get things done.

"The recovery of New York in the 10 years after the World Trade Center disaster was nothing short of miraculous.The skyscrapers, the jobs, and the sense of optimism all returned. New York was once again the capital of the world. No one had more to do with this result than Daniel L. Doctoroff…” wrote Kenneth T. Jackson, editor in chief, "Encyclopedia of New York City," and Barzun Professor of History, Columbia University, in a blurb for Doctoroff's book.

When Amazon looks for its stated criteria, New York checks all the boxes: A metropolitan area with more than one million people, a stable and business-friendly environment, an urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent, with communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options. But there’s one glaring exception on the list: affordable living.

As Doctoroff noted in his Curbed interview,  affordability is unquestionably our biggest issue: “Some of that is part of an international trend — middle-income jobs, particularly ones that do not require extensive education, are disappearing as a result of technology. I think that is the fundamental thing that we have to wrestle with. The only way to deal with it at the end of the day is to generate money to invest back into the city, to improve social services, to improve transportation, to ultimately give people greater access to opportunity.”

So, the next time you’re walking the High Line, or going to a concert at the new arts center in Hudson Yards, or riding a Citi Bike on one of the growing urban bike paths in New York, you can thank Doctoroff.

Does that mean that Amazon will bring HQ2 to NYC? Probably not until affordable housing issues are addressed. And that’s a big fix that isn’t on the horizon.

1 comment about "New York: A Next Act".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Henry Blaufox from Dragon360, October 2, 2017 at 1:24 p.m.

    The City of New York will probably not fit the bill, because housing costs are too high, and the salaries being touited by Amazon will be more appealing in lower cost areas. Perhaps other parts of the metro NYC region will be suitable, though, if Amazon will consider suburban locations with sufficient rail or bus transit networks to limit the need for commuting by car. New York State has at least one other locale that meets most of Amazon's criteria, except the million plus population, notably the Rochester area. Amazon could probably take over and retrofit the Eastman Kodak campus. Rochester's  first rate area universities will be able to supply the labor force and collaborate on research projects. Transit might still be an issue.

Next story loading loading..