3 Takeaways
A Blueprint for Reimagining Our Cities (#228)
Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500
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Our cities need to be revitalized to make them more appealing. But how? Seth Pinsky, CEO of 92NY and former CEO of New York City's Economic Development Corporation, has answers. Here, he talks knowingly about creative ways to stimulate growth; how to combat the skepticism that government can deliver on its promises; the importance of what he calls magnetic infrastructure; and more.
Chapter 1: How can cities become more vibrant?
Most people, both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, live in cities. And we take our cities as they are, assuming they're hard to change, especially in positive ways. But it is possible to change cities, even ones as densely populated with skyscrapers, buildings, sidewalks, and people as New York. How can cities become more vibrant?
And what does an inspiring renewal that attracts new residents and businesses, revitalizes neglected neighborhoods and creates a better city look like? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists.
Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today, I'm excited to be with Seth Pinsky. Seth was the head of New York City's economic development arm under Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg appointed Seth as president and then CEO of New York City's Economic Development Corporation.
New York has been revitalized by a wide variety of diverse and innovative initiatives. These include a new sports stadium, enormous new public spaces and gardens, transformed neighborhoods, a new technology campus and strengthened arts, culture and entertainment.
Chapter 2: What role does magnetic infrastructure play in city revitalization?
After spearheading New York City's Economic Development Corporation, Seth became head of one of the city's preeminent cultural organizations, the 92nd Street Y. I am excited to find out the innovative ways that cities can be re-energized. Welcome, Seth, and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today.
Thank you. It's great to be here.
It is my pleasure to have you as a guest today. Seth, New York is a heavily built-up city where it's hard to get things done between powerful unions, real estate owners, and Wall Street. You were selected to head the Economic Development Corporation by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, one of the best mayors any city has ever had. How did you start?
I entered city government in 2003, which was not that long after the September 11th attacks on New York City. I joined the administration, which had actually started on January 1st, 2002. And as Mayor Bloomberg took his oath of office, the World Trade Center site was literally still smoldering.
So in many ways, what was the greatest challenge of the Bloomberg administration that is the September 11th tragedy and figuring out how to move the city forward beyond that was also the greatest opportunity for the city because it was clear to almost everyone that something significant had to be done if the city were to be saved, let alone were to grow again and become prosperous.
And actually, throughout Mayor Bloomberg's time in office over the 12 years that he was in office, there were several major catastrophes that befell the city that the administration had to respond to. September 11th, first, the 2008 financial crisis, second, Superstorm Sandy towards the end of his time in office. And each of those allowed the administration to look anew at
the way the city operated in its entirety, to question whether the way it had been operating before was the right way, and to build a consensus among multiple stakeholders as to what the direction forward would be.
I think the most important thing that distinguished the Bloomberg administration in trying to answer all of those questions was the very rigorous approach to analyzing what the needs of the city were and what
I think was really important and that a lot of people don't appreciate about the administration was the amount of time that we put into first framing the question of what is the problem before we jumped to the answers to the question. And in government, what tends to happen is the opposite, that everyone likes answers.
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Chapter 3: How did Hurricane Sandy present an opportunity for city resilience?
But when 2008 came around, it was very clear when the financial markets collapsed that we still were highly dependent
on wall street and it looked to us like the impacts of the 2008 downturn were going to be really devastating to the city as frankly they were to many parts of the country but especially here so the approach that we took was that first we started to study the issue and what we saw was that it was unlikely that the financial services industry was going to be growing anytime soon in fact it was likely that it was going to be shrinking
but that two things were going to be occurring in New York. One was that there was one part of the financial services industry that our studies indicated might be less impacted than the rest of the industry, which was venture capital. That was an area that New York had never been particularly successful in. And the second was that as people were being laid off in
more traditional New York industries like financial services and professional services, many of which are dependent on financial services, that a lot of talent would suddenly be let loose. And there was a risk that those people would leave the city. So our focus very quickly became two-pronged. One was that we had a goal of trying to tie those people back down to New York.
And two was that we wanted to grow the venture capital sector. And so what we landed on was the idea of trying to promote entrepreneurialism in the city.
We really focused on making new sources of capital available to entrepreneurs, training people who had never worked in an entrepreneurial environment before in the skills that they would need, not in a large corporation, but in a small startup, and creating spaces that would allow them to start these businesses and get support.
What we started to see, which really surprised us, was that the businesses that people were founding tended to be technology businesses. And so we began to really focus on growing the technology industry in the city. We eventually put together a roadmap for achieving that goal
the flagship initiative of which was the creation of a new engineering and applied sciences campus that was built by an Israeli university, the Technion in Cornell on Roseville Island, which is in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. It was a $2 million investment. And I'm pleased to say that today it has hundreds of students and
is turning out new businesses and new talent that's fueling the growth of what is now, by everyone's estimation, not only probably the second most important industry in the city behind Wall Street, but also an industry that has now made New York the number two center of technology anywhere in the country and maybe anywhere in the world.
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Chapter 4: What strategies did Seth Pinsky use to diversify New York's economy?
You know, again, it's an example of how with strategic investments in what I like to call magnetic infrastructure, the stuff that makes cities attractive, how you can then attract enormous amounts of private investment, which really gets things going for a neighborhood or a city.
It isn't just large and beautiful and a benefit to New York, but it's become a model that's been replicated in other cities around the world and points to a strategy for redevelopment that really can work in lots of places in many different countries.
Hudson Yards is another innovative project. It transformed a 10 plus block area of the city that was previously known as Hell's Kitchen. Can you talk about that?
Dan Doktoroff was the first deputy mayor for economic development. His title was economic development and rebuilding relating to the World Trade Center. Hudson Yards was another project that came out of Dan's mind. And the issue that he was trying to address was the fact that there are two large open rail yards that are on the west side of Manhattan that are
or in many ways, a gaping hole that prevented development from occurring around them. And what was really innovative about the plan was that the biggest challenge to developing the Hudson Yards was a combination of two things. One was building a deck over the rail yard so that you could develop on top of them. And the other was that the neighborhood was off of the subway system.
it really was not accessible to people who were coming from most parts of the region. So what Dan understood was that if the city were to rezone the area and allow for high density development, which would also solve another problem the city was facing, which was that we didn't have enough modern office stock, that if we were to rezone the area,
that we could borrow against the future tax revenues that would be generated by that development and use that money up front to extend the subway to the Hudson Yards from what had then been its terminus at Times Square. And the city did exactly that.
It turned out that not only was the city able to use the tax revenues to pay for the subway, but it's been generating a surplus of tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars a year from that tax revenue. And it has a vital new central business district that previously had not existed.
Seth, you've talked about this huge variety of successful transformations. What are the keys to success?
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Chapter 5: How has the tech industry evolved in New York City?
And because they feel like it's worth it to be here, they bring their talent and their talent attracts business and businesses attract more talent. And that's what fuels our economy.
What are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today?
One is that the key to economic development is talent and the key to talent is quality of life. The second is that an important part of quality of life is magnetic infrastructure. And that when we think about arts and culture and entertainment, especially when we're thinking about the health of our cities, magnetic infrastructure is not a nice to have. It's a need to have.
And the third is that government can't just focus on creating new programs and spending money. It has to make sure that the programs that it's creating and the money that it's spending are actually achieving the goals that were established and that those goals are clear. And if we want people to believe in government, government has to give them a reason to believe.
Thank you, Seth. Thank you. This has been wonderful. Thank you for your leadership in New York's economic development and your leadership now of the 92nd Street Y. Thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the 3 Takeaways newsletter at 3takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.
I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.
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