Democracy for the Demos: A Plan to Reform New York City’s Community Boards

The housing affordability crisis in New York City is so ubiquitous it has almost become a cliché. Rents continue to rise, neighborhoods change, and housing supply growth has trailed new job creation for years. One common enemy developers often point to for obstructing the necessary construction of new housing stock is the Community Board. Now a common feature of many large metropolitan cities, Community Boards in New York City grew out of a reaction to mid-century city policies which demolished and displaced many in lower-income communities of color.

This article argues that community involvement in the planning process is important and in New York City’s case was a necessary reaction to the anti-democratic ills of slum clearance politics. However, local Community Boards have strayed from their originally intended purpose due to lack of representativeness and other barriers to entry for stakeholders. Reform to this system could solve this representativeness problem and allow for stronger community involvement in the process while simultaneously addressing the affordable housing problem.

Part I of this article reviews the history of New York City’s Community Boards, placing the modern Community Board system in context as a response to the top-down slum clearance policies of the inter- and post-war years. Part II outlines common oppositional stances taken by Community Boards to housing projects and explains the crisis of legitimacy caused by a lack of representativeness. Finally, Part III proposes a comprehensive reform plan for the city’s Community Boards, drawing lessons from citizens’ assemblies around the world and recommending a new participatory body to be composed of community members drawn at random from the community.

A Brief History of New York City’s Community Boards

Few figures had as great an impact on post-war New York City as Robert Moses. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Moses led the construction of 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkway, and 658 playgrounds across New York.[1] At the height of his power, he held 12 positions simultaneously; ranging from New York City Parks Commissioner to Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.[2] Today, Robert Moses is arguably best remembered amongst New Yorkers as the man responsible for orchestrating ‘slum clearance’; sometimes to make way for Le Corbusier-style “tower in the park” apartment complexes,[3] but just as often for highways.[4]

By the 1960s, Moses tied himself to a number of deeply unpopular projects, most notably the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station in 1963. The early 1960s were also characterized by a broader rejection of slum clearance policies, from Jane Jacobs’ 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities to the housing activism of Charles Abrams.[5] New York City reacted to decades of top-down slum clearance policies that had demolished neighborhoods in the 1963 City Charter by adopting some of Jacobs’ recommendations. This included the establishment of 62 Community Planning Boards meant to decentralize service provision and planning decisions.[6]

The city revised its charter in 1975, in part due to mandate by the state government.[7] This revision resulted in the 59 “Community Boards” across all five boroughs that the city has to this day.[8] Each Community Board is composed of no more than fifty member “volunteers”, appointed by the Borough President and the neighborhood’s respective City Council member(s).[9] This process of appointment has drawn criticism for lack of representation of the served community and adherence to partisan politicking.[10] Current Board members may appoint public members for subcommittee work,[11] but this still requires overcoming the burden of getting involved in the first place. The burden to show up at all is particularly high, given that meetings typically occur on weeknights and run for many hours.[12]

In 1975, the city revised its charter again, this time creating the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (hereinafter, “ULURP”).[13] Under the ULURP, any use, development, or improvement to real property is subject to recommendation by the affected Community Boards.[14] This signaled a further move towards community participation. For example, § 197-a of the City Charter allowed communities to sponsor their own land use plans.[15] However, this was not fully fleshed out, and subsequent demands for further clarification of the community engagement process helped push for another charter revision in 1989.[16]

The 1989 revision not only amdended § 197-a by specifying the process for community plans, but also moved the environmental review process over to the City Planning Department.[17] This had previously been the responsibility of Community Boards, and was an arduous process better suited to professional planners. The move freed up Community Boards to be more involved in the zoning process.

Prior to issuing their advisory opinions on city zoning or development plans, Community Boards typically hold a series of public hearings followed by a drafted recommendation. Notably, this power remains purely advisory. In many instances, city higher-ups have overridden the will of even unanimous Community Boards.[18] However, the influence of Community Boards remains strong. Their soft power has completely changed the end result of many construction projects, even when they are unable to stop the projects entirely.[19]

This has left Community Boards in a sort of limbo where they face both legitimacy and accountability crises. They are somehow powerful enough to rally support and at times transform projects, but ultimately remain powerless in the face of persevering developers and city planners. This has angered many on both sides of the debate. Private developers and politicians alike have griped about how, as Mayor Koch once articulated, if Community Boards got their way “nothing would be built in this town above three stories.”[20] At the same time, community members across the city have protested the lack of veto power and relative ineffectiveness of Community Boards in the face of encroaching gentrification, rent hikes, and displacement.[21]

This article attempts to bridge this gap by proposing granting Community Boards some degree of veto power and simultaneously transforming how Board members are selected; ultimately advocating for a sortition process somewhat akin to jury duty. By making these suggested reforms, New York City’s Community Boards could become both more legitimate and more accountable all at once.

How Community Boards Affect Affordable Housing

1. Opposition to Housing Development Projects

Community Boards frequently raise concerns about new housing projects for a variety of reasons. Overgeneralizing a little, these concerns can broadly be placed into two overlapping categories: worries about the effect on a neighborhood’s ‘character’ and fears about gentrification and displacement. It is not for any one person to judge the merit of these concerns, but a truly democratic system ought to properly represent the interests of a community, especially when those interests are diverse.

Complaints about ‘neighborhood quality’ usually involve criticism of the technical details of a project, such as the height of buildings or number of parking spaces. During the Bloomberg Administration, the city drew height restrictions on a block-by-block basis.[22] This level of micro-targeting zoning has fueled Community Board efforts to prevent rollback of these restrictions. When zoning decisions are made at a neighborhood level, the community can feel under attack. This is even more true when the proposed change affects only a single block.

For example, in the Upper East Side, an affordable housing project for seniors was proposed and vehemently opposed by community members on the basis of its added height.[23] This was somewhat notable, as housing for seniors is traditionally more palatable than other forms of affordable housing or development. One neighborhood Zoning and Development Committee co-chair went so far as to say that “no matter what you put in it — you could put Mother Teresa in it — it still is a too-tall building.”[24]

In addition to height, parking has emerged as a frequent complaint from Community Boards when criticized or opposing new affordable housing development. As a newly elected Mayor in 2015, Bill De Blasio proposed two major housing reforms; one that required inclusionary housing, and one that adjusted the requirements vis-à-vis height restrictions, lot setbacks, and more.[25] This second plan, dubbed ‘Zoning for Quality and Affordability’, included elimination of parking requirements for a range of affordable housing and affordable senior housing projects.[26]

The Zoning for Quality and Affordability parking requirements have been attacked by Community Boards for supposedly exacerbating problems with lack of parking.[27] Proponents of the Mayor’s plan point to studies showing that affordable housing typically requires too much parking, as well as the fact that the Mayor’s plan considers proximity to the subway for projects.[28] They assert that requiring more parking wastes valuable space and can worsen traffic by encouraging driving when seniors in affordable housing already own and drive cars at lower rates than the city as a whole.[29]

While many developers vilify Community Boards for this form of opposition, it should be noted that there are many heartfelt criticisms about impacts to quality of life for current residents. Take the example of the original proposed Trump City plans for the Upper West Side. The plans included the world’s largest skyscraper jutting out above the Hudson right next to Riverside Park.[30] Fears that the sheer size of the project would have changed the character of the neighborhood, from casting a shadow over the park to upending local business practices, were at least somewhat meritorious.

On the other hand, there are many who use the “neighborhood character” argument as a means to justify a neighborhood-level form of otherness and racism.[31] This is a more acute problem in the single-family zoned parts of the city, where local residents and their Community Boards oppose affordable housing projects, homeless shelters, upzoning, and any other regulatory change that may bring “others” into their neighborhoods.[32]

At the same time, while some communities reject new affordable housing development due to “character” concerns, others voice fears that new projects will only fuel gentrification and displace current residents. This is not an unfounded concern, as gentrification in New York City has been found to have created “islands of exclusion” such that more than a third of the city’s low-income residents live in neighborhoods “at risk of or already experiencing displacement.”[33] Sometimes, this very real fear manifests itself as opposition to development projects entirely,[34] and other times means pushing for a higher share of affordable units and greater inclusionary zoning.[35]

In cases where residents have been successful in pushing for changes to stem the tide of displacement, it has been the result of active citizens pursuing litigation or other alternative means of progress. Notably, Community Boards are often left out of these efforts. In Inwood, it was a New York Supreme Court (the state’s lower court) judge who annulled the city’s zoning plan.[36] Similarly, it was a judge who granted the restraining order against a controversial Crown Heights tower project that would have overshadowed the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.[37]

These examples demonstrate the failure of modern Community Boards as a democratic structure. The Boards are meant to act as a conduit for communities to voice their concerns about zoning and development issues. However, the Boards are populated by and listen to a disproportionate share of wealthier, whiter, homeowners, and the Board is ultimately powerless so that even if they did listen to residents, they have little forms of redress. This leads to a crisis of legitimacy for the Boards, and leaves community activists to seek alternative remedies via the judicial system. Instead, Boards should be better representative of the diversity of residents — particularly the large share of New Yorkers who rent, who work hourly wage jobs, and who are non-white. The Boards should also have the ability to act on the desire of their communities they are now more representative of.

Ultimately, it should not be for any one individual to decree which concerns are more or less valid. Rather, the point of a democratic system is to represent the interests of constituents. That means translating a diverse range of preferences into a policy outcome. Currently, the Community Board system is such that not only are the wrong people often being heard, but the concerns being voiced are not even able to be acted upon. This paper proposes reforming the community’s role in planning by the addition of a sortition process to increase citizen representation while also addressing the lack of community power.

2. Lack of Representativeness

Community Boards generally suffer from two representation problems: the lack of representativeness of those on the board, and of those who attend meetings. New York City’s Boards are no exception. The City’s Community Boards members, or “volunteers”, are appointed by their respective Borough President.[38] This has meant that many Boards have “been dominated by local party organizations”, and perhaps more importantly, that “minority membership on community boards has lagged behind their composition in the city’s population.”[39]

This lack of popular accountability has led many to call for a more democratic process in how Board members are selected.[40] Furthermore, that Board members are not required to reside in the community they are serving only further devalues what legitimacy they may have within that community.

Beyond who sits on the Community Boards themselves, the members are influenced and possibly swayed by the community members they hear from during public comment periods. The ULURP process requires that Community Boards, as well as almost all other entities at their turn in the process, take comments from the public. However, Community Boards often hold their meetings late at night on weeknights, and they typically run for many hours.[41] This has a significant chilling effect on anyone interested in or willing to participate in the public comment process, but who may face other more pressing responsibilities such as childcare.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that these forces, along with the incentives built into a system that deals with planning issues on a case-by-case basis, combine to result in community speakers at Board meetings being older, whiter, wealthier, and more likely to be home owners than the community as a whole.[42] In fact, research by Katherine Einstein and others that focused on the Boston metro area found that those who spoke at public Community Board meetings were older, whiter, more male, and more likely to be home owners than even the voting population;[43] and we already know that the voting population skews older, whiter, and wealthier than the general population.[44]

In New York City, the ULURP process means that almost all major development and zoning decisions are made on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. Therefore, even if the City were to erase the hurdles to participate as outlined above overnight, the very structure of how planning decisions are made would itself still encourage those most opposed to a project to turn out and speak up. This in turn makes each proposed project and each zoning change feel like it is targeting a specific community.

City Councilmembers Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, both from Brooklyn, have proposed a unified plan to address zoning across the entire city.[45] Their vision is for a comprehensive zoning plan that address the city’s affordability issues as well as how to tackle future threats like rising sea levels. The hope is that, by comprehensively planning for the entire city, each neighborhood does not feel as personally attacked as they do under the current ULURP process.[46] In the long run, Lander and Reynoso’s plan seems the best way forwards. However, even if their plan is implemented, community participation in the process is vital to restore missing accountability and legitimacy in the city’s planning decision making process.

Community involvement needs to start with the community itself. Those representing the community’s interests ought to be members of the community, and not Board Members selected by political party officials. Similarly, representatives ought to be truly representative. The best way to achieve this is to draw citizens by lot from the community we want them to represent.

A Plan to Reform Community Boards

The word “democracy” is a translation of the Greek word “dēmokratiā”, which is derived from the words “dēmos” (people) and “kratos” (rule).[47] It means, quite literally, “rule by the people.”[48] To the Athenians, rule by the people meant a system of sortition and rotation, wherein eligible citizens[49] were selected at random to participate in the legislative process for brief, rotating, shifts.[50] Remnants of this mode of democracy remain today in the form of American jury selection, as well as in notable examples of sortition-created citizen bodies erected to draft new constitutions or to advise on electoral reform from Ireland to British Columbia.[51] Were New York City to adopt such a sortition and rotation model for its zoning decisions, communities could be better represented in the planning process.

This article lays out a proposal to adopt a sortition model for community involvement in the zoning process, drawing on the lessons learned from other modern examples and evaluating what impact this newly formed representative body would have on housing in New York City.

1. Sortition and Rotation: Drawing Citizens by Lot

The best way to achieve representativeness is to draw citizens by lot from the community. This paper proposes that New York City create a new set of local bodies, here referred to as “Community Planning Organizations” (CPOs), that would be made up of community members selected via an iterative process of random selection and self-selection. These new Community Planning Organizations would exist at the level of the Community Board, they may even be housed within Community Boards for the sake of bureaucratic hierarchy and organizational simplicity. But, unlike current Community Boards, CPOs would have actual veto power in the planning process.

While CPOs would be standing bodies whose operations run continually, the members themselves would circulate out every few months. This paper recommends terms of three months for CPO members, and thus a new CPO is commissioned every quarter. If that turns out to be too frequent, periods of four or six months would work just as well. Borrowing from Iceland’s citizen assembly,[52] CPOs should be composed of 25 citizen members, and decisions should be made on a pure majority basis.

CPO members would be drawn by lot from the community that their Organization serves. As subdivisions of the Community Board, the CPO and Community Board district boundaries would be one and the same. Adopting the same process used in the Netherlands and Canada,[53] members would be selected via a three-step process. First, invitations would be sent to a much larger share of the community than are needed to serve on the CPO. These invitations are sent out randomly based on city data on neighborhood residents. Second, invitees self-select to confirm their participation. Third, the final CPO board is selected from those who self-selected, with sampling done to try and match the demographics of the community served.

By using a three-step process, we are able to avoid the need to impose sanctions on those who decline service. Unlike jury selection, there will be no criminal (or civil) penalty to reject an invitation to serve on a CPO. Similarly, without the preemptory strikes of jury selection and with the addition of a sort of quota sampling, CPOs will more representative of their respective communities than juries often are.

At the same time, the city must take significant steps to make participation in the CPO process as seamless as possible, particularly for lower-income residents. Otherwise, the second round of self-selection will be so overdrawn from wealthier, whiter residents that we could end up with the same problem this article is trying to address in the first place. In order to do this, CPOs will need to pay members fairly for their time, and ought to offer accessory benefits such as childcare as well.

Nearly all forms of formal citizen participation in the process of governing are compensated in some way around the globe. In the United States, jurors are paid $50 a day for their time and efforts.[54] Longer, comprehensive citizen panels in other countries included a range of renumeration. In Canada, citizen assemblies working on electoral reform in both Ontario and British Columbia were paid the equivalent of over USD $160 per day.[55] . In the Netherlands, pay was closer to USD $565 per weekend worked, while in Scotland is was USD $245 per weekend.[56] In Iceland, members were compensated at the parliamentary salary for up to four months.[57]

This article recommends that New York City adopt a weekends-worked based model of pay akin to that employed by the Netherlands in their 2006 Citizens’ Forum. As terms of three months are recommended, with meetings at least every other weekend, this paper suggests a payment plan of $222 per weekend worked, with regular adjustments to account for inflation.[58] Such a payment rate will increase the chances that lower-wage workers are able to take the time to commit to their term on the CPO, and therefore will bolster the representativeness of the Organization. Beyond cash renumeration, CPOs should also provide some means of childcare or child support for the weekends worked in order to encourage single parents and other time-pressed family members to self-select for the sampling.

Furthermore, in addition to renumeration benefits for participating community members, those who sit on the CPO should receive some level of training and ought to hear from experts as well as community members before deliberating on decisions. In drawing on lessons from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Canada, this could involve a first weekend of learning about the basics of zoning from experts, then move on to a consultation phase where CPO members hear from community residents (and possibly developers as well).[59] The consultation phase does include running the risk of similar problems that are currently faced by Community Boards in terms of who shows up to speak at meetings. However, the fact that CPOs meet over the weekends should help with attendance, and the more diverse set of CPO members ought to guide what level of deference is given to which members of the community who speak at meetings.

In order to establish the system of Community Planning Organizations that this paper proposes, the New York City Charter would need to be amended. This is done via a Charter Commission.[60] In 2019, the Charter Commission put its proposal up for a vote as part of a popular referendum during the election cycle; this included, for example, a change to the city’s electoral system by switching to ranked choice voting.[61] The New York Department of State allows for the amendment of city charters via legislative action under the state’s Municipal Home Rule law.[62] However, as New York City does not have home rule, this seems not to apply to the city, and therefore the proposed change would need to be adopted via a popular referendum.

Referenda have been used both successfully and unsuccessfully to pass into law recommendations from other citizens’ assemblies around the world. These examples, from Gdansk, Poland to Dudley, England, can inform New York City on the best practices for establishing and running a sortition and rotation system of local government.

2. Case Studies of Citizen Participation

In the modern era, a number of democratic countries have set up their own citizens’ assemblies to respond to questions as varied and as significant as electoral reform,[63] climate adaptiveness,[64] constitutional amendment,[65] and municipal flood protection.[66] These citizens’ assemblies have broadly been heralded as great successes for effectively changing policy through comprehensive and substantive citizen participation. While some assemblies have been called to address thorny national political issues, like abortion law, others work at the municipal level to consider how town centers ought to evolve. All of these are informative for New York City and the plan this article proposes for Community Planning Organizations.

These assemblies have ranged in size from only 25 citizen members to as many as 160.[67] National or provincial assemblies dealing with fundamental changes to the constitution or electoral process have typically been much larger than municipal citizens’ assemblies. In Dudley, England, an experimental assembly to plan the future of the town’s center was composed of 40 randomly selected residents.[68] In Gdansk, Poland, another city-level assembly is made up of 60 citizen members.[69] Larger national or provincial assemblies, such as those in the Netherlands, Ontario, and Ireland, each featured 140, 103, and 100 members, respectively.[70]

Given the size of Community Districts in New York City, as well as the need for frequent renewal of who sits on each CPO, a smaller group is preferable.[71] Prior examples have emphasized the need to have a small enough group that members can hold a conversation together. For national one-time citizens’ assemblies, the need is instead more akin to simulating an alternative form of legislative body. Therefore, this paper recommends that CPOs be made up of only 25 members of the community.

As the goal of this reform is to make community involvement in city planning more representative, an important step is to ensure that the sortition process reflects the Community District being represented and served.[72] This same goal of proper representativeness has been a common feature in the examples of citizens’ assemblies discussed here. In Iceland and the Netherlands, citizens’ assemblies were proportionally distributed according to region and gender demographics of the country.[73] In Canada, regional and cultural differences were accounted for. For example, British Columbia drew one man and one woman from each of the province’s 79 districts, plus two aboriginal members.[74]

As most of these case studies were assemblies formulated with one specific goal, such as a proposal for electoral reform or advice on the country’s climate response plan, their output was a report.[75] Even juries, who only sit for a matter of days or weeks, create a single tangible output in the form of a verdict. This is not the case for CPOs, whose work instead will involve ongoing decision making on development projects and other city planning policies. Here, the Gdansk assembly is informative, as it crafts and employs actual city policy, with the power to spend city funds.[76] Therefore, instead of a single report or verdict, CPOs should continually play a role in the policymaking process with their limited veto ability and jurisdiction over zoning and development within their district bounds.

In Gdansk, their citizen assembly has been praised for effective policymaking, including better preparing the city for future flood seasons.[77] The decisions made by the Gdansk assembly were not just effective as flood prevention policies, but importantly they were actually put into practice. This has led other cities in Poland to consider adopting their own form of citizens’ assembly.[78] Analogous success stories have come from Ireland, where policy recommendations were offered by the citizens’ assembly on contentious issues like abortion and then passed by parliament,[79] and Australia, where a citizen assembly halted construction of a proposed nuclear storage facility.[80]

It is notable that even amongst similar deliberative processes in Canada, the citizens’ assembly in Ontario ultimately selected a different recommended set of electoral reforms than that in British Columbia.[81] Thus, moving to a similar sortition system for local involvement in zoning decisions does not guarantee any one outcome across New York City. Rather, it will better represent the interests of diverse communities as to what works best in their neighborhood.

These successes reflect the importance of policies being put into action. In the Netherlands, the citizens’ assembly recommended electoral reforms, but the process handed it off to the government and the proposals were not adopted.[82] This can breed the kind of legitimacy crisis that New York’s Community Boards currently face; wherein a governmental body is seen as so ineffective in both reflecting popular interest as well as in effectuating change that citizens can become disillusioned. To counter this concern, CPOs ought to have some degree of veto power in the planning process in order to truly reflect and act upon the interests of the community.

3. Effect on Housing in New York City

By ending the process of politically appointed Community Board members listening only to those most aggrieved by a given project, and instead replacing this with a truly representative system of sortition and rotation, the Community Planning Organization plan this paper proposes will likely have a real effect on housing policy in New York City. Renters and lower earners will be better represented than they currently are by Community Boards, and CPOs will have more authority to act on the interests of the community they reflect.

The sortition process will change who is on the body making these planning decisions for the community. This is profound, even if future policies are not always drastically different then today. It represents a shift towards ground-up democracy for New York City’s many diverse communities. Ideally, this will also mean that through the greater representation of renters, of lower-income residents, and of younger and more transient constituents, CPOs will be less opposed to certain features of affordable development. For example, while these new CPOs may be even more oppositional to luxury development than current Community Boards for fears of displacement, they may also be less oppositional to affordable projects on the basis of “neighborhood character”. Having a more racially diverse group of community decision makers will certainly play a role in how conversations of “character” are had.

Furthermore, the new process will improve the incentive structures for who currently participates. CPOs will still hear from community members during open public commenting. However, these meeting times will be more convenient for both members and commenters. Additionally, the drawing-by-lots system means that regardless of who shows up to comment at public forums, there will be some community members present who are not there purely out of strongly held opposition to a project.

This article asserts that CPOs will help address the affordability crisis through a more careful consideration of what kind of projects are approved, given the needs of a community. This assumes that CPOs will not amplify the rejection of all proposed housing projects. Instead, it assumes that CPOs, through more accurately reflecting a more diverse set of local interests, will more aggressively fight to stop luxury developments out of reach to current residents, but will also be less opposed to affordable housing projects for fears of “otherness”.

In practice, this is because of who will now play a larger role in the zoning process. For example, local small business owners such as bodega operators may be represented via themselves or a family member who would not have previously been appointed to a Community Board. While a local small business owner may not want a luxury high rise next door to their apartment, they would certainly appreciate the extra foot traffic from some level of development. This diversity of represented interests downplays the outsized role of zealous “NIMBYism” in the zoning process.

Furthermore, experiments in participatory and deliberative democracy demonstrate that people are willing to listen and think carefully if given the appropriate setting to do so. Community members must be trusted that if given good information, a range of resident input, and the time to speak amongst themselves, then they will reach a decision that is in the interest of the community. Most New Yorkers know that the city needs more housing, and if given a chance to see themselves as an integral and powerful part of that process, many people are more likely to get onboard with affordable development.

Thus, this proposed reform should lead to less domination of CPOs by older, wealthier, whiter, homeowners in the way we see Community Boards often being co-opted today. Ultimately, by addressing the dual crises of legitimacy and accountability, CPOs should lead to more affordable housing in New York City through a more deliberative democratic process.

Truly addressing the vast and deep-seeded ills that exacerbate New York City’s housing crisis, from a history of racist zoning laws to predatory landlord practices, will continue to be an ongoing endeavor at all levels of city government and society. This article attempts to take a modest step in this direction by reforming who is able to play a part in the process of making planning decisions for communities. To do this, this article proposes a new community-level body to be made up of randomly selected community members who will collectively have veto power over planning choices that effect their district. As other examples of citizen participatory democracy around the world have demonstrated, this can lead to competent decision making and tangible results. In doing so, the reform proposed by this article will improve the legitimacy of local decision making and address the affordable housing problem by returning to the original spirit of community participation.

[1] See Sydney Sarachan, The legacy of Robert Moses, PBS (Jan. 17, 2013), https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/the-legacy-of-robert-moses/16018/.

[2] See id.

[3] See Roberta Brandes Gratz, Robert Moses Reconsidered, CityLimits (Apr. 2, 2007), https://citylimits.org/2007/04/02/robert-moses-reconsideredblight-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/.

[4] For example, the Cross-Bronx Expressway was constructed at the cost of displacing thousands of Bronx residents from their homes. When considering the project, Moses and his team disregarded a proposed alternative just two blocks over that would have required considerably less disruption and home destruction. See Robert Caro, The Power Broker (1974); Catherine McNamara, The Cross-Bronx Double Cross: How the Cross- Bronx Expressway has Affected Pediatric Asthma in the Bronx (Dec. 15, 2011) (unpublished Senior Thesis, Fordham University) (on file with the Fordham American Studies Senior Theses collection).

[5] See Gratz, supra note 4.

[6] See Seth Forman, Community Boards, Gotham Gazette, https://www.gothamgazette.com/lessons/boards.shtml (last visited on Mar. 17, 2020).

[7] Bruce F. Berg, New York City Politics: Governing Gotham 277 (2007).

[8] Id.

[9] Carl Boisrond, Ask A Reporter: What Do Community Boards Do?, Gothamist (Oct. 23, 2018), https://gothamist.com/news/ask-a-reporter-what-do-community-boards-do.

[10] See, e.g., Miranda Katz, Why Do NYC Community Boards Have So Little Power?, Gothamist (Apr. 12, 2016), https://gothamist.com/news/why-do-nyc-community-boards-have-so-little-power.

[11] See How to join your New York City community board, Curbed New York (Dec. 30, 2019), https://ny.curbed.com/2017/3/15/14918194/nyc-community-board-member-get-involved.

[12] E.g. Manhattan Community Board 8, https://www.cb8m.com/#calendar (last visited Mar. 17, 2020) (next CB8 Meeting is scheduled for 6:30pm on a Wednesday); Queens Community Board 6, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/queenscb6/news/upcoming-events.page (last visited Mar. 17, 2020) (next CB6 Meeting is scheduled for a Thursday at 7:45pm); see Katz, supra note 11 (Board Meetings “often [last] as long as three hours”).

[13] See Amy Widman, Replacing Politics with Democracy: A Proposal for Community Planning in New York City and Beyond, 11 J.L. & Pol’y 135, 145 (2002); Barbara Eldredge, What Is ULURP? And Why Do We Have It?, Brownstoner (Nov. 24, 2015), https://www.brownstoner.com/development/ulurp/ (outlines the ULURP process, including its history and its passage in 1975 as a way to “prevent Robert Moses-like mega-projects”).

[14] See ULURP Explained, CityLimits, https://citylimits.org/zonein/ulurp-explained/ (last visited Apr. 10, 2020).

[15] See N.Y.C. Charter § 197-a (West 2020); see also Widman, supra note 14, at 146.

[16] See Widman, supra note 14, at 146.

[17] See id. at 147.

[18] See, e.g., Berg, supra note 8, at 277 (In the 1970’s and 80’s, Community Board 7 unanimously opposed Donald Trump’s proposed ‘Riverside South’ construction project in the Upper West Side, yet it was ultimately approved and today stands along the Hudson River). More recently, 50 of 59 Community Boards formally opposed Mayor De Blasio’s rezoning plan, but the City Planning Commission pushed it through nonetheless. See Katz, supra note 11.

[19] For example, while Donald Trump’s Riverside South project was eventually erected, the intense opposition by the well-connected Community Board 7 led the charge to shrink the project. What was once imagined as a behemoth with over 14,500 residential units, television studios, and the world’s largest skyscraper, was years later constructed as a series of fairly ordinary condo buildings with fewer than 8,000 units. See Michael Kruse, The Lost City of Trump, Politico Magazine (Jul/Aug. 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/trump-robert-moses-new-york-television-city-urban-development-1980s-218836

[20] Alan Finder, Community Boards are Feeling Unloved and Powerless, The New York Times (Mar. 15, 1987), https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/15/weekinreview/community-boards-are-feeling-unloved-and-powerless.html.

[21] See Miranda Katz, Anti-Gentrification Protesters Call Borough President “The Biggest Uncle Tom In Brooklyn”, Gothamist (Mar. 31, 2016), https://gothamist.com/news/anti-gentrification-protesters-call-borough-president-the-biggest-uncle-tom-in-brooklyn.

[22] See Carol Rosenthal & Theodore Clement, Community Boards: For Affordable Housing But Against Administration’s Solutions — What’s Going On?, CityLand (Dec. 10, 2015), https://www.citylandnyc.org/community-boards-for-affordable-housing-but-against-administrations-solutions-whats-going-on/.

[23] See Abigail Savitch-Lew, How are NYC’s Community Boards Reacting to de Blasio’s Housing Proposals?, CityLimits (Nov. 2, 2015), https://citylimits.org/2015/11/02/how-are-nycs-community-boards-reacting-to-de-blasios-housing-proposals/.

[24] Id.

[25] See id.

[26] See Rosenthal & Clement, supra note 23.

[27] See id.; Savitch-Lew, supra note 24.

[28] See Rosenthal & Clement, supra note 23.

[29] See id.

[30] See Kruse, supra note 20.

[31] See Michael Llewyn, Not racist — but similar to racism, Planetizen (Jul. 29, 2015), https://www.planetizen.com/node/79881/not-racist%E2%80%94-similar-racism; see also Tom Basgen, The Case Against “Neighborhood Character”, Streets MN (Feb. 22, 2017), https://streets.mn/2017/02/22/the-case-against-neighborhood-character/.

[32] For example, the nine Community Boards without shelters in their district are all largely single-family areas. These include Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, Forest Hills, Glendale, Maspeth, and Ridgewood in Queens, and Community District 2 and 3 on Staten Island. See Ahmed Jallow, The Shelter Wars: City’s Need for Beds Meets Opposition in Several Neighborhoods, CityLimits (Sep. 9, 2019), https://citylimits.org/2019/09/09/the-shelter-wars-citys-need-for-beds-meets-opposition-in-several-neighborhoods/.

[33] New York City gentrification creating urban ‘islands of exclusion,’ study finds, Berkeley News (Apr. 10, 2019), https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/04/10/new-york-city-gentrification-creating-urban-islands-of-exclusion-study-finds/; see also Urban Displacement Project, https://www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/ny (last visited Apr. 17, 2020).

[34] For example, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a fight is underway to block a proposed luxury tower complex, where activists in the neighborhood point out that units will be far beyond the financial reach of current Crown Heights residents, and that the tower will block needed sunlight to the 100+ year old Brooklyn Botanical Gardens next door. See Craig Hubert, Brooklyn Botanic Garden Launches Exhibition That Warns of Shadows From Proposed Towers, Brownstoner (Jul. 30, 2019), https://www.brownstoner.com/development/brooklyn-botanic-garden-development-spice-factory-960-franklin-avenue-rezoning-crown-heights/.

[35] See, e.g., Stefanos Chen, The People vs. Big Development, The New York Times (Feb. 7, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/realestate/the-people-vs-big-development.html (detailing a community victory in Inwood, Manhattan, where residents successfully opposed new zoning rules for requiring only half of new units to be below market rate).

[36] See id.

[37] See Lore Croghan, Judge issues restraining order to halt development near Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Apr. 18, 2019), https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/04/18/judge-issues-restraining-order-to-halt-development-near-brooklyn-botanic-garden/.

[38] See Boisrond, supra note 10.

[39] Berg, supra note 8, at 277.

[40] See, e.g., Katz, supra note 11.

[41] See supra note 13.

[42] See Katherine L. Einstein et al., Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Minute Meetings, 17 Perspectives on Politics 28 (2019); see also Richard Florida, NIMBYs Dominate Local Zoning Meetings, CityLab (Sept. 6, 2018), https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/09/nimbys-dominate-local-zoning-meetings/569440/.

[43] See Katherine L. Einstein et al., Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis 101 (2019).

[44] See Voter Turnout Demographics, United States Elections Project, http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics (last visited Apr. 17, 2020).

[45] See Brad Lander & Antonio Reynoso, Leaving the REBNY v. NIMBY Doom Loop, Gotham Gazette (2019), https://www.gothamgazette.com/archives/130-opinion/8708-leaving-the-rebny-vs-nimby-doom-loop.

[46] See id.; see also Karrie Jacobs, The real answer is ‘maybe’: Why “YIMBY” vs. “NIMBY” is no way to think about the most complex human creation: the contemporary city, Curbed NY (Nov. 25, 2019), https://ny.curbed.com/2019/11/25/20978322/yimby-vs-nimby-argument.

[47] See Robert A. Dahl, Democracy, Encyclopædia Britannica (Feb. 19, 2020), https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy.

[48] Id.

[49] It is important to note that slaves, women, minors, and foreigners were not allowed to participate in Athenian democracy.

[50] See David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections 59–61 (2013).

[51] See id. at 116–17.

[52] See id.

[53] See id.

[54] Juror Pay, United States Courts, https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/jury-service/juror-pay (last visited Apr. 17, 2020).

[55] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 117 (citizen members were each paid the equivalent of 110 Euros per day, which once converted and accounting for inflation is roughly $167 USD as of April 2020).

[56] See id; Citizens Assembly of Scotland, Scottish Government (Jun. 26, 2019), https://www.gov.scot/news/citizens-assembly-of-scotland-1/.

[57] See id.

[58] This number was reached using 80% of the New York City median annual income. $222 per weekend represents two days’ pay at 80% of the City’s average annual income when broken down by daily earnings. This payment rate also places this plan above that of jury duty, and closer to the renumeration of the Canadian and Scottish citizen assemblies. See Eric Reed, The Average Salary in New York City, SmartAsset (Mar. 4, 2019), https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-nyc. This payment plan would total $8.5 million across the entire city annually, which accounts for roughly half of the current Community Board baseline budget citywide (i.e. baseline budget does not include extra funding the City Council appropriates such as the $2.5 million to Community Boards approved last year for non-salary expenses). See Gabriel Sandoval & Claudia Irizarry Aponte, No Cars Allowed: Community Boards Get New Funding Boost, With Warning, The City (Jun. 19, 2019), https://thecity.nyc/2019/06/no-cars-allowed-community-boards-get-new-funding-boost.html.

[59] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 116–17 (citizen assemblies in Ireland, the Netherlands, British Columbia, and Ontario all began with experts teaching members about the law before moving on to consultation and then decision-making phases).

[60] E.g. Charter Revision Commission 2019, https://www.charter2019.nyc/; see generally Christine Billy & Matt Gewolb, Reflections on the 2018 Charter Revision Process, 2019 CityLand 1 (2019).

[61] See Erin Durkin, Ranked-choice voting adopted in New York City, along with other ballot measures, Politico (Nov. 5, 2019), https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2019/11/05/ranked-choice-voting-adopted-in-new-york-city-along-with-other-ballot-measures-1226390.

[62] See New York Department of State, Revising City Charters in New York State 5 (2015).

[63] See, Ron Levy, Breaking the Constitutional Deadlock: Lessons from Deliberative Experiments in Constitutional Change, 34 Melb. U. L. Rev. 805, 808 (2010) (outlining the citizen assembly model used in both Ontario and British Columbia).

[64] See Sandra Laville, UK citizens’ climate assembly to meet for first time, The Guardian (Jan. 22, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/uk-citizens-climate-assembly-meet-first-time.

[65] See Grainne de Burca, An EU Citizens’ Assembly on Refugee Law and Policy, 21 German L.J. 23 (2020) (praising the 2012 and 2018 Irish Constitutional Convention and Citizens Assembly as a way to get broad participation that leads to actual change); Silvia Suteu, Constitutional Conventions in the Digital Era: Lessons from Iceland and Ireland, 38 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 251 (2015). But see Eoin Carolan, Ireland’s Constitutional Convention: Behind the hype about citizen-led constitutional change, 13 Int’l J. of Const. L. 733 (2015).

[66] See Tin Gazivoda, Solutions: How the Poles Are Making Democracy Work Again in Gdansk, Resilience (Nov. 22, 2017), https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-11-22/solutions-how-the-poles-are-making-democracy-work-again-in-gdansk/.

[67] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 116–17.

[68] See Dudley People’s Panel, The Democratic Society (2019), https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oqseb5GXXeOh2RQes1fxRPyFE-kEhy1S/view.

[69] See Gazivoda, supra note 67.

[70] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 116–17. Other examples of large, national citizens’ assemblies include the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland (100 members) and the Climate Assembly UK (110 members). See Citizens Assembly of Scotland, supra note 57; Who is taking part?, Climate Assembly UK, https://www.climateassembly.uk/detail/recruitment/ (last visited Apr. 12, 2020).

[71] It is worth nothing that the average New York City Community District size is roughly 142,000 constituents. This is approximately half the entire population of Iceland, and one quarter the population of Gdansk.

[72] See supra Part II.B.

[73] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 116–17.

[74] See id. at 117.

[75] E.g. British Columbia Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform, Making Every Vote Count: The Case for Electoral Reform in British Columbia (2004); Dudley People’s Panel, supra note 69.

[76] See Gazivoda, supra note 67.

[77] See id.

[78] See id.

[79] See Julia Hotz, Explaining ‘Citizen Assemblies’, a Real Kind of Democracy, Vice (Dec. 18, 2019), https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/pkeydg/explaining-citizens-assemblies-a-real-kind-of-democracy (“In Ireland, a 99-strong citizens’ assembly prompted Parliament to lift their abortion ban.”).

[80] See id. (“In Australia, a 300-citizen assembly helped cancel construction of a nuclear storage facility.”).

[81] British Columbia’s citizens’ assembly recommended the province move to a ‘single transferable vote’ system, whereas Ontario’s assembly recommended a mixed member proportional representation system. See Ontario Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform, One Ballot, Two Votes: A New Way to Vote in Ontario (2007); Making Every Vote Count, supra note 76.

[82] See Van Reybrouck, supra note 51, at 117.

Image Source: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/784937