Culture of Innovation at the heart of Bloomberg's PlaNYC

As Earth Day approaches, new numbers have been released for Bloomberg's forward-thinking PlaNYC.  The program was launched three years ago on Earth Day, and it's multiple initiatives are bearing some impressive fruit. 

• 100,000 affordable housing units created or preserved
• 319,054 trees planted and 113 schoolyards-to-playground sites opened
• 200 miles of bicycle lanes installed and a bike-access law enacted
• 86 energy-efficiency projects completed as part of plan to reduce City government energy use 30% by 2017
• 25 percent of the yellow taxi fleet converted to hybrid vehicles
• 9 percent decrease in citywide carbon emissions due to cleaner power generation and less sulfur hexafluoride release

At the heart of the plan is tireless planning, extensive data collection, and establishing a "culture of innovation" within city government that previously was not encouraged.

"But Mayor Bloomberg took care not to over-manage the process from the top down. Instead, he hired the most talented staff he could find and encouraged a culture of innovation, empowering city staff to experiment with new ideas—and giving them permission to be bold and take risks. This is a major distinction to the business-as-usual approach so common in jurisdictions around the country."

Other cities are following suit using the PlaNYC model HERE.

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Crippling Mortgage? Walk away . . . big business would.

Welcome back!  Happy New Year!  Here's a delightful thought for the new year!

". . . in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? Every oil speculator helps to drive up gasoline prices. Every hedge fund that speculated against a bank by purchasing credit-default swaps on its bonds signaled skepticism about the bank’s creditworthiness and helped to make it more costly for the bank to borrow, and thus to issue loans. We are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse."

So let's all act like the banks and just walk away!  An interesting perspective from John Courson at the NYTimes . . . full article HERE.

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