A Response to Warren Strugatch's 10/27/11 Piece: LI has Become the BANANA Republic

The following is a response to a piece by Warren Strugatch entitled LI has Become the BANANA Republic in the Long Island Business News on 10/27/11. His piece can be read here: http://libn.com/2011/10/27/strugatch-li-is-the-banana-republic/

I respect Mr. Strugatch’s varied experience in communications, but feel that his analysis of Long Island’s current, as well as past planning milieu is wildly off target. 

In his piece, Mr. Strugatch asserted that Long Island’s post-war planning community “ignored” the growing pains. This is simply not the case. The methodologies of Long Island’s past planners are not the cause of Long Island’s current problems. In fact, there are a growing number in the profession who feel that planning on Long Island should look to past methods. 

Mr. Strugatch was so quick to dismiss the efforts of the two previous generations of planning, that he failed to mention the various groundbreaking comprehensive studies, plans and policies that they crafted. In July of 1978, the Long Island Regional Planning board completed the Long Island Comprehensive Waste Treatment Management Plan (which was prepared pursuant to Section 208, Federal Water Pollution Control Act, giving the study the title of “the 208 Study”). This was the first hydrogeologic study of Long Island, and was based upon the best scientific data and methodologies available at the time. 

Using the 208 Study as a foundation, the state passed in 1987 the New York State Sole Source Aquifer Special Groundwater Protection Areas Law, and the LIRPB in 1992 crafted the article 55-based Long Island Comprehensive Special Groundwater Protection Area Study, which mapped out Long Island’s deep aquifer recharge zones. The SGPA Plan continues to shape land use policy on Long Island to this day.

Dr. Koppelman was correct in stating to Mr. Strugatch that “Smart Growth is such a stupid term”, and many other respected planners across Long Island feel similarly.

I’d like to remind Mr. Strugatch that the notion of creating livable, walkable downtowns is not a new or innovative concept. In the 1970 Comprehensive Regional Plan for Nassau and Suffolk Counties, there was a call for the creation of “Corridors, Clusters and Centers”, which had all the properties of “smart growth”. In fact, previous comprehensive plans from the 1970s and 80s went beyond “smart growth” in its calls for open space preservation and strict maximum densities defined by hydrogeologic conditions.

The Ronkonkoma Hub was cited by Mr. Strugatch as an example of “New Urbanist design”, but in reality the hub is a project that has been in the works since the electrification of the LIRR Mainline in the 1980s, a project initially designed by first and second generation planners on Long Island. Supervisor Lesko’s efforts to implement form based zoning should be applauded, but supporters of “smart growth” cannot take credit for Ronkonkoma’s rebirth.

It is understandable why there is such a following to this New Urbanist thought because in theory, “smart growth” sounds great. The reality is much different. Often times, developers brand their projects as “smart growth”, and do not factor in the carrying capacity of Long Island’s aquifer, or the levels of service of arterial roads. The good intentions of the community mutate into a developer drastically driving densities above as-of-right yield. In return for this increase in density, the public gets no true community benefits (for example, equivalent open space to offset the density increases) for this gifting of the public’s wealth by the municipality. New town centers branded as “smart growth” by developers, such as Heartland Town Square or the Meadows at Yaphank wholly ignore the concept of revitalization by creating new population and density centers grossly above as-of-right yield. In practice, “smart growth” is nothing more than a brand without any standardization or merit behind the title.

Mr. Strugatch is correct in asserting that there must be a change in the way Long Islanders look at planning. What he is grossly incorrect in is his championing of “smart growth”. If anything is to be supported, is the invocation of a planning process that is both community-based, and driven by the best science available. Buzzwords and density giveaways are not a viable nor sustainable solution.

The #ThinkRegionally Movement

The mission of my writing is to inform the public about the principles of good planning and design on Long Island. Good planning means that plans are based on the best available data-based science and that true community/public participation occurs throughout the whole process. - The Foggiest Idea Mission Statement.

In 1978, Newsday stated that Long Island is at a crossroads, but the same can be said today. The choices the public and elected officials made since then have impacted Long Island, for better and for worse. Since that series ran, the public (in Suffolk) has voted to increase their own taxes in order to create the Suffolk County Drinking Water Protection Program, voted to protect massive quantities of open space in Hydrogeologic Zone III (the preservation of the Pine Barrens) by utilizing the concept of Transfer of Development Rights (TDRs), supported the creation of sewers, either supported or opposed the creation of Planned Development Districts that mix land uses, have supported/opposed cluster developments in a 30/70 ratio and out on the east end, have created a Community Preservation Fund that ensures future land purchases will be funded through a real estate transfer tax. 

There are still serious issues that Long Island has to grapple with, and numerous stakeholders and groups will rattle them off: Deteriorating downtowns! The youth is running to the hills! Environmental regulations are strangling business! Long Island is in decline!

#ThinkRegionally is all about stopping the hysterics, taking a deep breath, and thinking. 

All of these above factors contribute to current conditions in which planning takes place on Long Island, but the scope must go beyond the villages, townships and counties. Long Island’s future is tied to New York City, whose future is hinged upon policy in Connecticut and New Jersey.


#ThinkRegionally is a concept that invokes the spirit of the Long Island Regional Planning Board. It aspires to think beyond the election cycle and local districts and think about development on Long Island from a broader scale. It will look at development from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to the west, to Montauk and Orient Points in the east. Communities and local Town Boards should only accept proposals that evoke strict adherence to planning standards for subdivisions and commercial and industrial developments. #ThinkRegionally is an approach that advocates for a thoughtful and academic approach to planning for Long Island’s future. At the heart of the movement is the planning process- outlined below:

As Dr. Koppelman has said:
"“Normal, comprehensive planning, community planning, per-se, which requires vision, does not necessarily require science. However as soon as the planners are moving into the area of ‘environment’, I don’t care what the environmental study is, whether it’s preservation of the Pine Barrens, preservation of an estuary, preservation of a river corridor, it has to be based on the best possible science available.”[1]

Since Long Island's environment is it's economy, the concept of comprehensive and community planning is forever connected to environmental planning as well. With this being the case, #ThinkRegionally will also highlight environmental planning that is based upon the best possible science available at the time.
Planning is the reconciliation between the Social, Economic and Environmental forces of a region. On Long Island, the goal of #ThinkRegionally is to show the public that it is possible, through a disciplined and academic approach, to keeping all three of those forces in harmony.

#ThinkRegionally will be a hash tag on Twitter @TheFoggiestIdea on efforts, proposals and projects that embody these values. For the Foggiest Idea in coming months, there will be a diverse set of guest writers that have unique backgrounds and perspectives on the problems faced by planners on Long Island. These guest writers will highlight different perspectives from across the region. All will focus on planning and policy challenges faced by Long Island, and the tri-state area.  

If you are interested in contributing to The Foggiest Idea, please email Rich.Murdocco@gmail.com with your planning and policy experience, and a brief summary on what you’d like to write about.

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[1] The Long Island Pine Barrens TV Show: Carmans River Implementation, April 2011, Interview with Dr. Lee Koppelman and Kevin McDonald.

The Need for Institutional Memory in Planning on Long Island

The following post was published to the NYMuniBlog on October 17th, 2011. You can read the post here: http://nymuniblog.com/?p=1615

Local government, in this age of voter anger over the issues of partisan gridlock and increasing costs, must look to the past. Only then will Long Island be able to move towards the future.

In the search for solutions to the land use issues of blighted parcels, protection of open space and alleviation of developmental pressures, groups claim to have an innovative “cure” for what ails suburbia. Often, the “cure” involves local municipalities are in a cycle of producing constant reinventions of the wheel. Time and time again, there are press releases issued by government and “smart growth” groups that read as follows:

We need Transit-Oriented-Development (TODs)! Concentrate growth around the downtowns and train stations! We need Transfer of Development Rights (TDRs)! We should to cluster development, and transfer the density from parcels saved to the downtowns! A visioning is required to make this happen!

All of the ideas are correct, and the planning behind these various concepts is sound. These “new” and “innovative” solutions have been around since the first Comprehensive Regional Plan for Nassau and Suffolk Counties in 1970, and in various iterations since then. 

The basis for the plan was the notion of “Corridors, Clusters and Centers”, which created corridors of growth (arterial roads such as NYS Route 110 in Huntington) that will connect Clustered developments (projects that have a 30% developed space and 70% preserved open space) centered in Centers (downtown areas that are within walking distance (the planning standard for walkability is one quarter-mile) to mass transit and other community services).

Currently, Suffolk County is grappling with how to protect the rapid decline in quality of its water supply. Solutions are being debated from various government agencies, stakeholders and organizations. Much of the work quantifying this problem and postulating these “new” solutions has already been done as far back as 1978.

In the efforts to protect Long Island’s sole-source aquifer, the Long Island Regional Planning Board (LIRPB) crafted in 1978 the Long Island Comprehensive Waste Treatment Management Plan, which was prepared pursuant to Section 208, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. To this day, the groundbreaking study is referred to by the title of “the 208 Study”. The 208 Study divided Long Island into eight (8) different Hydrogeologic zones, and recommended specific residential densities for zones that have critical areas of deep recharge. In 1992, the LIRPB released the Special Groundwater Protection Area Study that highlighted areas critical to aquifer recharge, and established development guidelines and recommendations for these areas to not only let Long Island grow, but to protect the environment as well. These plans must be studied by policymakers, understood by the public, and given legal teeth so they can be implemented.

The science-based solutions to Long Island’s woes were outlined in multiple studies across decades, yet municipal governments across Long Island spend valuable time and taxpayer money searching for answers to questions that have been in place for decades. Time and time again, corridor studies are drafted, visioning processes commence, and after much fanfare, the solutions reached mirror those found in documents from years back. The redundancy is nonsensical, time consuming and wasteful. The planning process requires that an inventory be taken of existing conditions, and that includes past land use plans. 

Recently, at the annual Suffolk County Planning Federation conference, it was stated by John Flynn, a member of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, that the 1978 Newsday series “Long Island at the Crossroads” could have the current year pasted on it and nobody would be able to tell the difference. He was correct. Time should be spent on understanding and quantifying the scale of a problem, not on identifying “new” problems that already well documented.  Many of Long Island’s municipal problems are well documented, but their potential solutions have gotten lost in the ether due to exceptionally short-term memories across government. 

The lack of institutional memory in planning on Long Island has to be addressed. It must be understood that in order to properly plan where we are going, we have to understand and remember where we have been. Once this is accomplished, government can build their solutions off of the strong body of work that was previously done.

Newly elected government officials should take a visit to the Arthur Kunz Library in the H. Lee Dennison building in Hauppauge, and pour over the Planning Department’s archives. The solutions to many of Long Island woes lay within those dusty, often ignored documents that sit on the shelves.