II. the goals of the task force
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The Community-Based Planning Task Force is leading the effort to create a more meaningful role for communities in New York City’s planning and decision-making processes. Based on the premise that the people who live and work in a neighborhood are among the best-equipped to plan for the future of that neighborhood, the Task Force’s Campaign for Community-Based Planning is laying the groundwork for the formal adoption of community-based planning as official New York City policy.
Organized in 2000, the Task Force is a group of environmental justice advocates, professional planners, community board members, and academics. They were motivated to act after seeing, on the one hand, that in certain instances, plans devised by the city did not address neighborhood needs, and, on the other hand, that the creative, proactive plans being developed by communities for their neighborhoods lacked an effective mechanism for realization. In conjunction with the Municipal Art Society Planning Center, which has spent fifteen years providing direct technical assistance to communities, analyzing the 197-a process, and documenting communities’ struggles to benefit from 197-a plans, the Task Force is directing a campaign to ensure New Yorkers their right to engage in this basic civic process. The core elements of this initiative are to promote policies that build the capacity of communities to plan and to ensure that community-based plans are implemented and truly recognized as building blocks for the city’s comprehensive vision.
The Task Force aims to counter the perception that community-based planning initiatives consistently seek to halt development or promote a “NIMBY” (not in my backyard) mentality. In fact, the Task Force champions the importance of addressing local, citywide and regional needs with the principles of fair share, equity, environmental sustainability, and economic diversity. These ends can be achieved only through an equal partnership between the city and communities.
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