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As an urban planner, what is foremost on your agenda as implementation or change?

Foremost on our agenda is the public realm, which is the property that the public owns, such as streets, parks, sidewalks and public buildings.  The public realm is a city's or suburb's living room.  It's where we spend our time; it's where we do our shopping, go to school, go to the hospital, ride our bikes and just go strolling.  We want to improve the quality of the public realm, and in improving it, tie it to the increase in value of the private property that's around it, thereby paying for the improvements in the public realm from increases in revenue derived from private property. 

Transit-oriented development and walkable communities make a lot of sense, but what is required to implement these types of projects?  How do we get from point A to point B?

My model for this is they city of Copenhagen.  The city of Copenhagen in the 1930s started creating protected bike lanes.  By 2005 it had a network of these protected bike lanes.  That meant you could go anywhere on your bicycle.  You could go to school, go to work, go shopping.  As a result, in 2005 more people in the peak hours of morning and peak hours of night use their bikes to go to and from work than those who use mass transit or motor vehicles.  You've got to start investing in that system, and keep investing until you have a network.  Without this network, you have nothing.  You can't have a walkable community if the sidewalks are discontinuous.  If you go to any suburb in the United States, you find sidewalks that suddenly stop and may resume 100 feet later or maybe a mile later.  You cannot have that; you must have a continuous system.  An you must have alternatives easily available and in good condition.

Are there any cities or projects that you can point to and say, "They got it right"?

Beside the bicycle example in Copenhagen, I can name a number of other examples, such as the FasTracks system in Denver.  They are building a light rail system that extends into the entire metropolitan region.  It is going to change the way of life of metropolitan Denver.  Another example, one that is much more glamorous, is the boulevards in Paris.  Not only are those streets places where people want to hang out, go shopping, meet people, and sit in a café and sip espresso, they are lined with trees that filter the air, lower the ambient temperature, provide a habitat for birds and other animals.  The Minneapolis park system is another great example.  I don't think there is a city in the country that has as well-located, well-designed, well-managed and well-financed park system.  People don't flee to the suburbs; they continue to live in the city because of this.

What about the issues of suburban sprawl and the lack of affordable housing?  How can cities effectively address the housing issue so that people can live closer to their jobs if they so choose?

I believe there is a locational error in that question.  I don't think that people want to live in company towns.  I think people choose to live in a place for reasons that are not tied only to employment, such as the quality of the school system.  Therefore, to tie development so that people can live an work in the same place is wrong.  But it's true there is a serious housing problem in come cities.  Take the city of Palo Alto, Calif., for example.  Firemen, policemen, school teachers cannot afford to live in Palo Alto.  Some of these workers travel two hours between work and home, ad this is not an acceptable situation.  The reason for this is the city of Palo Alton has regulated itself in such a way that there is no way to increase the housing stock.  They don't want apartment houses in place of single-family homes.  The city has done its best to maintain the quality of life that the wealthy people who live there would like to retain.  The other side of the coin is that they can't complain that they have problems finding and paying decent firemen and policemen.

Green building and sustainability are hot topics on the development side of commercial real estate.  What are some of the latest innovations in this area?

I think there is a fundamental flaw in America's thinking.  It's not about buildings.  We should be thinking about the entire environment.  LEED certification is not enough.  There is s a city that has just started a program that I believe will accomplish much more than a lot of glamorous things such as green roofs.  The city of New York is going to plant 1 million trees.  Those trees will do more for the quality of the environment - air quality, runoff, habitat - than almost anything else you could do.  You've got to extend thinking beyond the green buildings and start thinking about green cities.

What about the tremendous needs across the U.S. for infrastructure investment?  What do you see as the answers?  Are you a supporter of privatization or public-private partnerships?

There are answers and not just about privatization.  We have two major devices that are increasingly employed to provide that infrastructure.  One is the business improvement district (BID) and the other is tax increment financing (TIF).  BIDs are providing street furniture and management of downtown streets, including planting of flowers, street sweeping, the garbage removal and so on.  A business improvement district adds a very minor surcharge on the real estate tax collected by the city.  It is paid to a business improvement board district board, which is basically run by the property owners within that district.  We now have more than four dozen business improvement districts in New York City.  The second device is tax increment financing.  The city of Chicago has more than 150 tax increment districts in which the infrastructure is paid for thorough allocating the increase in real estate value that comes from the capital investment.  The TIF allocates that money as income stream to pay back the debt service on the bonds that were issued to put in the infrastructure in the first place.

It seems like Europe and other parts of the world are more advanced that the U.S. with regard to sustainability.  What can we learn from them that might work here?

Three cities that are very interesting are Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Vienna.  In all cases they feature a mixed-use multi-purpose public realm.  In fact, in Copenhagen I saw the most amazing street.  It accommodates trucks, pedestrians, cafes, bicycles, private automobiles; in fact, there is no sidewalk.  They have created an entirely different kind of environment.  If we can start thinking about streets performing a mixed-use function, then we can have a much improved public realm.  All of these cities, for example, have protected bike lanes, where you have a motor vehicle roadway, parked car, a protected bike lane and then a sidewalk.  These streets promote all sorts of activities, including shopping; they are not simply built for motor vehicles. 

Knowing what you know about urban planning and design and the future demographics in the United States, if you were an institutional property investor, what types of buildings and/or markets would you invest in?

I it's not buildings you should be investing in, but places that are progressive.  For example, Denver is putting in the FasTracks light rail system that is going to service the entire metro region, Atlanta is creating the Beltline - a 23-mile ring of parks and transit that circles the downtown - and Minneapolis features the best park system in the United States.  Look for places that are attractions for people because their public realm and public services are superior to elsewhere.

You've been very involved with development, redevelopment and planning issues in New York City for four decades.  If you could pick one change or project that you would really like to see in the city, what would it be?

I would like to have a continuous river front park on the East River going from Red Hook all the way to the Triborough Bridge, which is essentially the entire Queens waterfront along the East River and the entire Brooklyn waterfront along the East River.  That would be a tremendous achievement and it's quite doable and rather expensive.  Chicago started doing that when it started to create its 23-mile long Lakeshore Drive and parks.  They began in the 1870s, and they slowly invested the money.  If you look at Lakeshore Chicago today, you will see it lined with billions of dollars of private investment.  We should be doing the same on the East River in Queens Borough.