GEOP830: Critical Assessment of New York City's Sustainable Plan

This report provides a critical assessment of New York City's sustainability plan, OneNYC2050, evaluating its alignment with the UN Habitat Report on Planning Sustainable Cities. The report begins with an executive summary and an introduction to the plan, which addresses challenges like climate change, equity, and democracy. The discussion section examines the eight key trends in the UN Habitat report, such as renewable energy, carbon-neutral cities, and green infrastructure. The report then analyzes how OneNYC2050 incorporates these criteria, highlighting initiatives in inclusive economy, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. The progress of NYC in implementing the plan is reviewed, including achievements in education, greenhouse gas emission reduction, affordable housing, job creation, minimum wage increase, and improved transport. The conclusion summarizes the report's findings, emphasizing NYC's progress in establishing a sustainable urban system aligned with UN Habitat criteria. The report concludes that within four years of its launch, NYC has been able to make significant progress in providing adequate shelter, education to children, improved environment efficient infrastructure, carbon reduction and a safer environment to people, which can be deemed as successful implementation of the sustainability criteria of the UN Habitat.

Running head: SUSTAINABLE PLAN
Sustainable plan assessment for New York City
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Executive summary
The UN Habitat Report on Planning Sustainable Cities is a guideline for establishing a
sustainable habitat for the urban areas across the world. The guideline aims to address various
sustainability issues of the urban cities, such as, carbon emission, infrastructure, water,
sanitation, housing affordability, education for all children, and a sustainable wage for the
population. This report evaluates the measures taken by the New York City to establish a
sustainable city for the people by 2050. It has been seen from the report that an initiative,
OneNYC2050 was formulated by the NYC to follow the sustainable criteria designed by the
United Nations and within four years of launch, NYC has made significant progress in
establishing itself as a city moving towards sustainability.

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Introduction
This research report will present a critical assessment of sustainability plan and measures
adopted by New York City in an attempt to make the future better for the upcoming generations.
There is a sustainability plan for New York City, named OneNYC2050 to build a strong and fair
city. This is a strategy that was undertaken by the municipality and the government to secure the
future of the city against the challenges of today and tomorrow. The sustainability plan is aimed
at addressing the challenges like climate crisis, equity in the society, and strengthening the
democracy (Caputo et al. 2016). Under the Local Law 84 of 2013, OneNYC2050 is the long
term strategic plan of the New York City to achieve sustainability. Under this plan, the initiatives
that are taken by the city are vibrant democracy, inclusive economy, thriving neighborhoods,
healthy lives, livable climate, equity and excellence in education, efficient mobility and modern
infrastructure (Onenyc.cityofnewyork.us 2019). Thus, it can be said that OneNYC2050 is a
comprehensive plan about achieving long term sustainability for the future.
This report will evaluate the sustainability plan of New York City against the criteria set
by the UN Habitat Report on Planning Sustainable Cities. The United Nations has developed few
key trends for achieving urban sustainability in 1976 (UN-Habitat 2009). The purpose of this
habitat report or key trends designed by the UN is to work towards establishing a better urban
future. The mission of the United Nations is to promote or encourage the development of
environmentally and socially sustainable human settlements and achievement of adequate shelter
for all (Unhabitat.org 2019). The United Nations thus has focused on the challenges of growing
urbanization as it is expected that by 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will live in the urban areas,
and without proper planning, the consequences of the rapid urbanization could be drastic (Giles-

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Corti et al. 2016). As it has been seen that there are already some negative impacts on the cities
due to rapid urbanization, such as, shortage in housing supply, growth in the number of slums,
outdated and inadequate infrastructure such as, roads, water, sanitation, public transport, shortage
of electricity, increasing poverty, unemployment, safety, security and crime issues, increasing
pollution and health issues and man-made disasters leading to global warming and climate
change (Unhabitat.org 2019), the United Nations has taken initiatives to address these challenges
by implementing measures in the cities across the world.
Thus, the sustainable plan for NYC that is, OneNYC2050 will be examined against the
conditions set by the UN Habitat Report on Planning Sustainable Cities and progress report of
NYC will also be evaluated below.
Discussion
As highlighted by Davidson and Arman (2014), there are 8 key trends in the UN Habitat
report that shows the emerging trends in the urban sustainability. These trends are common for
all the urban areas across the world. As the authors described, the 8 key trends were identified in
the integration of the human systems with the natural systems along with other operations to
make a city work sustainably. Those criteria for sustainable planning for a city are:
 Development of renewable energy
 Development of carbon neutral cities
 Development of locally distributed water systems and power supply
 Increase in green infrastructure
 Improving the eco-efficiency
 Increase in the sense of place

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 Development of sustainable transport
 Development of cities without slums.
Hence, for a sustainable city, the UN Habitat emphasized on having improved infrastructure,
shelter for all, strategic spatial planning, inclusive economy, and measures to reduce the impact
on climate. It has been seen that the traditional approach to urban planning have mostly failed in
the past few years especially in the developing countries, however, the modern cities in the
developed nations are now focusing on sustainable plans as per the emerging trends identified by
the United Nations.
Under the OneNYC2050 plan, there are 8 different aspects addressing sustainability of
the city and the indicators are designed such that those follow the criteria developed by the UN
Habitat. Among the 8 aspects of the city development, OneNYC2050 has considered indicators
like growing job security and economic security through fair wages and benefits for achieving
inclusive economy, providing high quality, affordable and accessible healthcare to all to achieve
healthy lives for all, providing equity and excellence in education for all by increasing
integration, inclusion and diversity, implementing measures for achieving carbon neutrality and
100% clean electricity, improving public transport system and security and modern
infrastructures. Thus, it can be said that the OneNYC2050 city plan is aligned with the
sustainability criteria designed by the UN Habitat.
The progress report of OneNYC2050 is reviewed to assess how far NYC is following the
sustainable plans as per the UN Habitat report. According to the plan, New York City will have
more than 9 million people by 2050, the city is preparing for a changed climate and no longer
will be reliant on fossil fuel and rely on cars, there will be adequate and secured shelters for the

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New Yorkers, there will enough economic strength to establish an inclusive economy with
opportunities for all, there will be adequate healthcare facilities for every New Yorker, every
child will have equal access to education, the city will have modern and reliable infrastructure
and by 2050, the residents will actively participate in a vibrant democracy. Thus, in the coming
three decades, the city plans to establish a sustainable system.
The plan was launched in 2015, and since then, NYC has made significant progress
towards achieving the goals of sustainability. Progressive policies have been made and it has
been seen that:
 70000 children were enrolled each year in the universal pre-k and 3-k was launched for
all, which is a progress towards achieving education for all children.
 The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was cut by 17% below the 2005 levels despite of
significant economic and population growth (Onenyc.cityofnewyork.us 2019).
 Affordable housing has been provided to 275,000 New Yorkers through a most ambitious
affordable housing plan
 19000 good paying jobs were created in the high growth sectors with a plan to create
100000 more jobs.
 The minimum wage rate has been increased to $15 per hour and the worker protection
plan and benefits, with an aim to reduce poverty and lift almost 800000 New Yorkers
from poverty by 2025 (Onenyc.cityofnewyork.us 2019).
 The pedestrian fatalities have been reduced by 45% ensuring a safe and secure transport
and street systems and a citywide ferry network was launched to provide better transport
connectivity

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 Thrivenyc, a mental health support system is launched to provide mental health
assistance to the New Yorkers, whenever and wherever the need it (Gould and Lewis
2016).
 The crime rate has been reduced significantly to a record low ensuring safe and secure
neighborhood and policing in each of the neighborhoods of NYC has been increased too.
 NYC has invested billions of money in the five boroughs of the city for improving the
core infrastructure, building and renovating public places and taking measures to make
the city adaptive to climate changes.
 Lastly, to achieve environmental sustainability, the city is divesting $5 billion of the
pension funds from the fossil fuels and investing $4 billion into the climate change
initiatives. That has made NYC the global leader in the divestment movement
(Onenyc.cityofnewyork.us 2019)
The Green New Deal of the New York City is the vision of implementing measures to achieve
environmental sustainability while addressing growing population and increasing economic
growth. Recently, the state has banned the use of plastics, being the second city after California
in an attempt to achieve sustainability measures (McKinley 2019). Thus, by taking sustainable
measures and actions for mobilizing the climate change the city also ensures an improvement in
the social system. By assessing the above progress of NYC by implementing the vision
OneNYC2050, it can be said that the city has been following the criteria set by the UN Habitat to
establish a sustainable urban system. Within 4 years of its launch, NYC has been able to make
significant progress in providing adequate shelter, education to children, improved environment
efficient infrastructure, carbon reduction and a safer environment to people, which can be
deemed as successful implementation of the sustainability criteria of the UN Habitat.

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that the UN Habitat Report on Planning
Sustainable Cities has developed 8 criteria for establishing a sustainable living environment for
the whole world. The initiative is majorly aimed at achieving a sustainable unban living
environment as the pressure on the urban areas is increasing rapidly due to economic as well as
population growth. It has been seen that NYC, one of the most important cities of the world, has
adopted a sustainable city plan, OneNYC2050, which is highly aligned with the sustainable
criteria by the UN Habitat and the city has made significant progress in successfully following
the sustainable plan in establishing a better and improved sustainable habitat for the people.

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References
Caputo, S., Kukor, A., Lapides, N. and Sturtevant, A., 2016. A Critical Analysis of Well-being,
Consumption and Growth within New York City’s OneNYC Plan for a Strong and Just
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