New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg launched PlaNYC, New York City’s sustainability plan, in December 2006. To mark that ongoing effort’s 20th anniversary, a conference is planned at Columbia University, sponsored by Columbia Climate School, the History Department and the School of International and Public Affairs.
The conference is intended to bring together scholars, practitioners, and participants in the original PlaNYC and its subsequent iterations in the de Blasio and Adams administrations, as well as sustainability and resilience policymakers and advocates from other cities and international organizations. The goal of the conference will be to understand and document the history of PlaNYC; explore its successes, failures, and limitations in New York City; and to assess its global impact and its interrelation with sustainability and resilience efforts in cities worldwide.
The organizers invite expressions of interest from scholars and practitioners who might be participate as presenters and discussants. Formal paper proposals are most welcome, but so are ideas for panel discussions and topics. The organizers are exploring the potential to publish an edited volume of the papers presented. Please click here to upload your proposal.
A broad range of topics could be covered, including but not limited to:
- The origins and development of PlaNYC
- What was New York City’s environmental record under Dinkins, Giuliani, and Bloomberg’s first term, and did PlaNYC represent a break, an evolution, or a continuation?
- How was the original PlaNYC developed in 2006 and 2007?
- What kind of advocacy community emerged around PlaNYC in 2007 and 2008? How was it fostered, and who participated in it?
- Specific policy areas covered by PlaNYC
- How did Bloomberg’s original effort to secure congestion pricing fail, and what lessons did it contain for the more successful efforts that came in 2019?
- What was the Bloomberg Administration’s record on zoning and housing development?
- What was the New York City Community Air Survey, and how did it affect air quality action after PlaNYC?
- Solid waste and recycling in New York City before and after PlaNYC, including the Solid Waste Management Plan of 2005
- How did New York City’s green building policy evolve from initial laws through the 2009 Greener, Greater Building Plan to Local Law 97 of 2019, and what impact has it had on building emissions?
- How did PlaNYC affect parks and open space? Was the Million Trees initiative successful, and what were its impacts? Did the regional parks identified in PlaNYC get implemented, and what impact did they have on surrounding communities? How did PlaNYC generate the metric of the 10-minute walk to a park, which is now widely used around the United States?
- How did climate adaptation emerge as an issue in New York City, and how was it changed by Hurricane Sandy of 2012?
- How did PlaNYC generate and use data? Is there anything to be learned from the NYC annual greenhouse gas inventory, benchmarking data about building energy efficiency, and air quality data from NYCCAS?
- How did NYC ban dirty heating oil?
- Sustainability planning after the first PlaNYC
- How was PlaNYC institutionalized?
- How did the de Blasio administration address sustainability, and how did that approach change over the course of those eight years?
- How did the de Blasio administration work to decarbonize city operations through power purchase agreements and vehicle changes?
- How did the Adams administration’s climate efforts demonstrate continuity or change?
- The global influence of PlaNYC
- What was the relationship between PlaNYC and Michael Bloomberg’s global climate advocacy and philanthropy, including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and his role as a UN Special Envoy on climate?
- How has Bloomberg Associates affected climate policy in global cities?
- Has New York City been more or less successful on climate and sustainability efforts than other cities?
- Did PlaNYC have a meaningful global impact through emulation by other cities or in other way?
Several of the original participants in PlaNYC from the Bloomberg, de Blasio, and Adams administrations will be involved in the conference, and scholars working on papers for the conference and volume may have the opportunity for direct and ongoing collaboration with them.
Interested presenters should submit a 2 page paper proposal by June 1, 2025. The proposal should include the topic of the paper, research done to date, collaboration sought from participants in PlaNYC and OneNYC, and the audience to which the paper is directed. A CV is also requested. Multi-author and interdisciplinary papers are encouraged.