Last month, Chinatown’s neighborhood advocates placed a strong vote of confidence in the power of proactive community planning. The Chinatown Working Group — comprising over 40 community-based organizations and three community boards — has been meeting for over a year to hash out the issues that matter most to the people who live, work, and go to school in the neighborhood. The MAS Planning Center provided support to the Working Group process early on by providing area maps and timely information on community-initiated planning.

The group voted to pursue a 197-a plan—one of the City’s most comprehensive planning tools. Named for the section of the City’s Charter that enables them, 197-a plans provide a way to capture a community vision and translate that vision into policies and strategies. (You can view summaries of all of the City’s adopted 197-a plans here.) The Chinatown Working Group has already begun work identifying themes and principles that will guide their work over the coming year. Continue Reading>>

In a cramped meeting room in Washington Heights, a high school student scurries to set up a laptop and projector. Searching for a free surface in an already packed room, she makes her best effort to connect cords and load her presentation quickly before the committee chairperson calls to order the community board meeting, the student’s very first. The student, Nicole Lugo, is one of over thirty students who have been selected to work at their community board as part of the MAS Planning Center’s CITI Youth program. Across the city, students like Nicole are attending their local community board meetings—projecting maps and creating presentations that correspond to the items being discussed. Continue Reading>>

There was a time in New York when the appointment of a young person to a community board made the headlines (or close to it). That was back in 1977, when the word “planning” was still a part of the term to describe the 50-member, unsalaried community boards that represent the city’s 59 districts (there were 62 boards in 1977). Current Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is a case in point. His commitment to public service spans three decades. Appointed to Manhattan Community Board 12 (Washington Heights/Inwood) at the age of 16, Stringer learned the value of public participation and community involvement at an early age.

In a 1977 interview with the New York Times, a then-teenaged Stringer already had ideas for his community: “My board could be supportive of after-school programs and at least get a committee going — go into schools and organize activities like escort service for old people, cleaning up the parks and all sorts of things (sic).” Continue Reading>>

Last month, three CITI Youth interns were honored by their community boards. These students, who have worked as map technicians for the past year, are part of the CITI Youth program, a project of the MAS Planning Center. The CITI Youth program helps young people connect with their community through the use of technology. Using the website www.myciti.org, CITI interns create and display maps at community board meetings to help facilitate the community decision-making process. Over 30 CITI interns are currently working as map technicians in community boards throughout the city.

CITI interns Merlin Valdez and Brandon Rutishauser are map technicians at Bronx CB 7 (Fordham). According to Merlin, their maps have earned them a reputation as the “wizards of technology”, with Bronx CB 7 routinely expressing their appreciation of the maps and the student’s service. Brandon and Merlin were both awarded with the 2009 Bronx Community Board 7 Unsung Hero Award at their June board meeting. The students, who are new to the program, have been enthusiastically invited to continue working at the board this coming fall. Continue Reading>>

On Tuesday, June 9, nearly 300 New Yorkers — community board members and staff, their supporters, elected officials, and MAS — turned out to rally around community boards and to send a strong message to City Council that the public cannot afford for community boards to take a big hit. As reported last week, community board budgets — currently, at just under $200,000, and not having had a single increase in 19 years — are looking at cuts totaling $35,000 each.

A cut of that magnitude results in a savings to the City of only about $2 million, but impacts the operations of the board to the point where their ability to do the work of the people — ensuring a voice in local decision-making, overseeing essential municipal services, and serving as a place-based provider of constituent services — becomes next to impossible.

Please contact your local council member and urge them to restore the community board budgets: stronger community boards equal stronger communities, and the public can’t afford to take this hit!

Your community board provides a range of services vital to your community’s welfare, from overseeing essential municipal services, to ensuring that you have a voice in local decision-making, to serving as a place-based provider of constituent services, but each and every one of our city’s community boards is currently facing a budget cut of $35,000.

In response to this, join all five of New York’s borough presidents, all 59 of New York’s community boards, and community advocates of all stripes next Tuesday, June 9, at 11:00 a.m., on the steps of City Hall, to call on the City Council for the restoration of community board budgets for the coming fiscal year. (This rally has been organized by the Manhattan Borough President’s Office.)

Community boards are the public’s interface with New York City’s enormous and complex government, and they are also government agencies’ conduit to the public. Meaning, for example, that when the Department of Health needs to update a community on the spread of the H1N1 virus, it asks the community board for help with outreach. Continue Reading>>

On Friday April 4th, MAS accompanied 20 high school students on a visit to architecture and planning firms Perkins Eastman and BFJ Planning. The students, who are part of the MAS CITI Youth program, had a first-hand look at the work of professional architects and planners — receiving an office tour and presentations by key staff from both firms.

For the past seven months, these interns have been working as map technicians at their local community board. The students attend public community board meetings where they create and project maps to help facilitate the decision-making process. As a component of their internship, MAS provides monthly professional development workshops that are aimed at helping them increase their capacity as map technicians and expand their knowledge base. Continue Reading>>

The Municipal Art Society is pleased to welcome Manhattan Community Board 1 (MN CB1) and high school students Alina Lee and Karen Wang to the CITI Youth program. MN CB1, which covers Lower Manhattan and Tribeca is an ideal place for students to engage with real-life planning issues. And this new team of interns has been working very hard to understand the nature of New York City’s local government, develop new mapping skills, and exchange information with other students in the program as they learn about community planning. Continue Reading>>

This month, the MAS Planning Center kicked off its fifth year of the CITI Youth Program with a new class of map technicians from all corners of the city. Forty New York City high school students are now embarking on year-long paid internships with their local community boards, presenting live, internet-based land use maps during community board meetings. Recently, with the help of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office, the Planning Center was able to substantially expand the program in Manhattan — serving seven of Manhattan’s 12 community boards. Continue Reading>>

Having easy access to data and maps is critical to public participation in planning. Thanks in no small part to the efforts of community advocates and community boards around the city, more data than ever before is available on-line to assist in neighborhood-level decision-making. Property-level information on zoning and ownership, Department of Buildings data on permits and violations, district-level data on 311 complaints and health statistics, and Census Bureau demographic information are but a few of the resources available. You can access all of this information and more at  www.myciti.org.

Empowering communities with planning tools and technology is a core part of the work of the MAS Planning Center. The MyCITI initiative began as a demonstration of the utility of publicly-accessible GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data as a tool for community participation in local planning. Made possible through a partnership between the City of New York and the Municipal Art Society, www.myciti.org now provides direct access to PLUTO’s detailed property information including zoning, ownership, land use and lot dimensions. Continue Reading>>