A Land Value Tax for Syracuse - By Zach Zeliff Must this be the place? It’s a good mural and a great song, but seeing such good public art surrounded by a sea of surface parking is….. depressing. Is this the highest and best use of a large lot Downtown, directly across the street from one of the highest rent apartment buildings … Continue reading A Land Value Tax for Syracuse →
Pedestrianizing Westcott Street - Every year the Westcott Street Cultural Fair opens Syracuse’s eyes to what a city street can really be. For a few hours, Westcott Street—normally a no-man’s land reserved for the operation of heavy machinery—is given over to the community and filled with people, and it’s great. Streets are Syracuse’s primary public space. They take up 3,270 … Continue reading Pedestrianizing Westcott Street →
Replacing connections removed by urban renewal - When the Syracuse Police Department moves its main offices out of the Public Safety Building on State Street, City Hall should build a path through the property to reconnect Downtown with the neighborhoods immediately to its east. City Hall built the present Public Safety Building as part of an urban renewal project explicitly designed to … Continue reading Replacing connections removed by urban renewal →
Big new apartment buildings are good - The large apartment buildings going up around University Hill expand housing opportunity in surrounding neighborhoods, and that’s a good thing. These buildings—505 Walnut, Theory Syracuse, The Marshall, UPoint, etc—attract a lot of scorn because they’re big, new, expensive, and primarily marketed to university students. ‘Why’ a lot of people ask ‘do we need more luxury … Continue reading Big new apartment buildings are good →
The Governor’s Housing Plan and Upstate’s Need for New Housing - Governor Kathy Hochul’s goal of building 800,000 new homes in New York in the next decade is good. We need new housing—a lot of it—in communities all across New York State for all kinds of different reasons, and her New York Housing Compact will help build a lot of new housing. As proposed, however, her … Continue reading The Governor’s Housing Plan and Upstate’s Need for New Housing →
Transit to Suburban Jobs - There’s not much doubt that Centro will run a bus line to the new computer chip factory on Route 31 when it opens. What’s not so clear is how good the service will be, or if it will meaningfully improve anybody’s life. Centro designs its service—particularly suburban service—as a kind of social safety net. It’s … Continue reading Transit to Suburban Jobs →
Restore the canal without recreating its problems - More and more people are starting to talk about the benefits of rewatering the Erie Canal in Downtown Syracuse. Old photos of Syracuse are tantalizing. Clinton Square is full of people watching the canal, and the City looks like Venice or Amsterdam or Suzhou. Compared to the Erie Boulevard of today, it can seem like … Continue reading Restore the canal without recreating its problems →
Fixing the Creekwalk Downtown - The Creekwalk has a problem: its most interesting spots—the places where people stop and stare, where they can get close to the water, the places that make it unique—flood and have to get blocked off after heavy rains. Seen from the other side, the Creekwalk’s most reliably dry portions—the sidewalks Downtown—are its most boring. interesting … Continue reading Fixing the Creekwalk Downtown →
Scaling up Weekends on Walton - As the weather warms up and people start spending more time outside, it’s time to expand one of City Hall’s best pandemic-era pilot programs: Weekends on Walton. For the last two summers, Syracuse has created new outdoor public space in Armory Square by opening two blocks of Walton Street for people to walk, sit, eat, … Continue reading Scaling up Weekends on Walton →
ADUs in ReZone - City Hall wants to legalize Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs, or small 1-bedroom apartments built in extra space on a residential property). That’s good, but in order to secure all the benefits that this type of housing can offer, City Hall will have to do more than just list it as an ‘allowed use’ in the … Continue reading ADUs in ReZone →
Housing and highways in Onondaga County, 1940-2019 - Central New York’s highways remade the geography of where people live in Onondaga County. A new dataset makes it possible to track change in the number of housing units in each of the County’s census tracks from 1940-2019. These numbers show heavy housing losses in the few highway-adjacent neighborhoods that had lots of housing in … Continue reading Housing and highways in Onondaga County, 1940-2019 →
A New Vision for the Parkway - Our long experiment of running a freeway through Onondaga Lake Park has failed. The Parkway doesn’t even function properly as a high-speed arterial, and it blights the County’s premier public park. The I-81 project presents an opportunity to shift traffic to a safer corridor and restore public access to Onondaga Lake Park itself. Right now, … Continue reading A New Vision for the Parkway →
The Community Grid and Neighborhood Restoration - Before urban renewal, tight-knit neighborhoods right next to Downtown provided housing and opportunity for tens of thousands of people. Now, most of those neighborhoods are mostly parking lots and home to very few people. In order for the Community Grid to succeed, Syracuse must restore those neighborhoods. Urban renewal hit the 15th Ward/Near Eastside worse … Continue reading The Community Grid and Neighborhood Restoration →
Corning’s lesson for the Canal District - NYSDOT’s idea for a “canal-themed district”—a combination of fountains, public art, and parklets centered around the spot where Oswego and Erie Canals used to intersect—is a good one. It would create a new public space in the center of town, and it would restore the canal’s place in people’s lived experience of the City. However, … Continue reading Corning’s lesson for the Canal District →
How tearing down I-81 will reduce traffic - The I-81 Draft Environmental Impact Statement put a lot of effort into explaining exactly how many minutes it would take to drive a car between different points in the County depending on what NYSDOT ultimately decides to do with the I-81 viaduct. NYSDOT estimates, for instance, that in 2056 during the morning rush it’ll take … Continue reading How tearing down I-81 will reduce traffic →
Lay new sidewalks, keep old trees - This should have gone without saying, but the municipal sidewalk program should preserve as many existing street trees as possible. Tall trees with full foliage shade the sidewalk and make walking around the City more bearable in Syracuse’s steamy summers. A sidewalk—even a brand new perfectly level one—will not be a good place to walk … Continue reading Lay new sidewalks, keep old trees →
Sidewalk maintenance and street trees - Sidewalks and street trees both make it easier, safer, and more comfortable to get around town on foot, so Syracuse’s new municipal sidewalk program and Urban Forestry Master Plan should make life better for pedestrians. But these two programs might work against each other if they’re not coordinated. One side of the problem is that … Continue reading Sidewalk maintenance and street trees →
Plant more trees in Clinton Square - Clinton Square is Syracuse’s premier civic space. Bob Haley calls it “the center of the center of the center.” It’s the spot where the City of Syracuse started. It’s the site of our biggest city festivals. It’s where we gather as a community. City Hall has always taken special care of the space. It’s been … Continue reading Plant more trees in Clinton Square →
How cars killed Syracuse - 81’s construction was a cataclysmic event in Syracuse’s history. Building the highway—and 690 soon after—meant tearing down dozens of city blocks and demolishing hundreds of homes. But although that event stands out for the scale of its destruction, it was neither the beginning nor the end of Syracuse’s campaign to demolish itself. Aerial images from … Continue reading How cars killed Syracuse →
Food Deserts and Parking Lots - Too many people living in too many neighborhoods have too hard a time getting fresh food. In part, this problem has to do with the fact that grocery stores won’t open in poor neighborhoods—so-called ‘food deserts.’ But, because food deserts are only ‘deserts’ for people without cars, it also has to do with how accessible … Continue reading Food Deserts and Parking Lots →