Introduction

The red flag has been raised when it comes to the newspaper trade (watch the NY Times shrink before your eyes), on Wall Street, in corporate law firms, the automobile industry and in the plight of state and local government budgets with all the public programs they support. We are approaching huge changes in our economy and the way we live.
Some of the change has to do with scale. Over decades single family homes grew from 800 Sq. Ft. to 1,600 Sq. Ft., to 2,400 Sq. Ft. to the McMansions of recent decades. Sedans were replaced by SUVs. The population of traditional cities spread themselves over territory 8 times as large as the city space during in the 1950s. Yes, we will be downsizing on a lot of things, but that is the easy thing.
What really will be interesting and challenging are those aspects of our lives that will be completely reinvented like, I suggest, parks, senior living, mobility, urban living, education, environmental protection, medicine, energy, how we get news and what we eat to begin the list. Not only will the automobile be downsized, again that is easy, but, for example, new transit systems and other means of mobility will become the norm (back to the future). The automobile, for example, may not be individually owned, but rather be cooperatively owed and used as needed.
Despite these daunting prospects, we are like the deer caught in the headlight when it comes to understanding and taking control of the reinvention that will take place and in many cases is actually happening around us with little real awareness on our part. Many people and institutions are simply holding on to what they have always been accustomed to and this is not helpful. Too few are seriously thinking and contributing to the changes and reinvention that is happening. Apparently many believe this too will pass situation or simply right sizing will make things better. They should look again.
Beginning with this Eye column we are going to take a look at how certain key features of our lives need to be reinvented and how that should be done. In many cases reinvention has been quietly happening for years, mostly with little public and leadership awareness. Some of this reinvention comes from creative thinking and other aspects are a result of nature abhorring a vacuum.
Future of State Parks as We Know Them
Most people take state parks for granted. I was told a former Commissioner of the Office of New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation went to a cocktail party in New York City soon after her appointment and proudly told others at the party that she was “the state parks commissioner”. The response was ho, hum and what else is new. Protecting open space in the Hamptons and Columbia counties is interesting, but state parks?- they are yesterday’s news. Yet, state parks for much of the 20th century were very important in preserving natural wonders and should emerge in the 21st century in a different form as green and cultural infrastructure. Take notice!
State parks as we know them are unlikely to survive into the future.
Traditional parks have been public estates, separate and apart from surrounding land. Many state parks should and will continue as public preserves (see, the state forest preserve and Albany Pine Barrens Preserve as examples) set aside for their natural beauty and unique natural and cultural features. Otherwise, as park historian Galen Cranz wrote about urban parks in the “open space” era, state parks will become more entwined with the whole landscape. Gone will be the golf courses, swimming pools and other costly active recreational facilities as a major concern of a state park system.
The park of the “green” and “sustainable” future (identified, designed and protected, but not wholly owned by the public) is already here, for example, as greenways, heritage areas, agricultural and forest landscapes with scenic values and all sorts of trails for recreation.
This is both the result of emerging environmental objectives and financial realities. If you don’t believe me consider what Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing in California. Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating $70 million in parks spending through June 30, 2010. That could mean closing up to 220 state parks. An additional $143.4 million would be saved in the following fiscal year by keeping the parks closed.

In response, Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines said the state cannot afford to subsidize state parks when lawmakers are being asked to make severe cuts in even more vital areas. “Parks are just not going to be a priority over public safety and education, as much as we hate to see them close,” Villines said.

California State Parks Director Ruth Coleman declared: “We are often a harbinger of things to come elsewhere, for better or for worse. What will happen here with our state park system deserves close monitoring by World Commission on Protected Area members throughout North America and abroad. How much public support do we really have?”

A Little Background

In the early 20th century when State Parks came on the scene in New York City there were two opposite advocacy points of view on the development of State Parks. The booster types called for State Parks to be developed every 20 miles along Route 20 which crossed New York State. Do some landscaping including, if possible creating a swimming hole and add picnic and other recreation facilities and you will have a State Park. These parks were to be recreational amenities to encourage development across the State.

The other advocacy interest simply believed you can’t have a State Park until you find it. These scenic preservationists believed State Parks should be created to bring scenic lands like the Letchworth Gorge (the Grand Canyon of the east) and Niagara Falls under State protection.

For the most part, the scenic preservationists prevailed and many of our state parks are special places though often with conventional recreational facilities like golf courses, swimming pools, sandy ocean and lake beaches and other play spaces mostly for the auto dependent middle class (with exceptions like Roberto Clemente State Park and the state park on the sewage treatment facility on the Hudson River at 145th Street).

In the 1980s a state park administrator told me that his agency should drop concerns about conservation and concentrate solely on recreation. That never came to be but now we have reached the opposite situation, it being time for states to drop most of their role as providers of recreation and to concentrate solely on preservation of scenic, natural and cultural places of significance and doing this actively in the context of stewardship of our natural infrastructure: the air, water, soil, plants, animals, and microbes that working together in ecosystems providing critical environmental services necessary for humans to survive and our cultural heritage or ongoing narrative of human attainments over time.

Why the change or reinvention?

Financial realities like those being faced in California, a growing environmental crisis, expanding population and need to bring human habitats more in harmony with nature and quality of life are all driving the need to reinvent our notion of parks from being separate and apart with a large recreational component to having a whole landscape approach to protecting and managing our natural and cultural infrastructure.

New York State’s state park program has a backlog of $650 million in traditional infrastructure needs while it is losing over a 100 positions. Carrying the backlog of deferred maintenance of a costly park infrastructure as staffing for ongoing operation shrinks is a strong wakeup call that state park facilities as we have known them including golf courses and swimming pools are not sustainable.

Signs of change

TNC: The Nature Conservancy is a premier national and international conservation organization dedicated to the protection of plant and animal species. Originally it narrowly focused on the immediate habitat of unique species. In recent years TNC realized that a narrow approach was not adequate and intervening in whole landscapes was necessary. Under the rubrics of Landscape by Design and Conservation by Design, TNC develops a systematic approach to preserving healthy ecosystems that support people and host the diversity of life on Earth. Instead of owning golf courses, state park programs need to follow the direction of TNC and become a whole landscape approach.

Open space movement. Open space protection has been a primary effort in recent decades. Land trusts established to acquire open space easements, development rights and purchase significant natural and cultural resources have sprung up across the country. They are complemented by tax policies, community preservation acts funding open space programs through dedicated revenue sources, cluster zoning and state and federal programs supporting protection of opens space including protection of agricultural land for agricultural use.

Heritage Areas and cultural landscape. The notion of the cultural value of the entire landscape was the basis for the Council of Europe designating the entire area of Europe as a cultural landscape. Human attainments over the centuries (don’t forget the Native Americans were in North America for centuries before the Europeans came) are associated with the land and deserve attention, in some cases preservation and many cases interpretation. In the 1970s heritage areas (first called urban cultural parks) emerged as an integrated approach for the goals of conservation, education, recreation and sustainable development. Yes, feature traditionally associated with urban and state parks can be found and utilized throughout urban settings and regional landscapes. New York State’s first in the nation state system of heritage areas was enacted in 1982 and more than 20 heritage areas have been designated by the state legislature. Congress has established 40 national heritage areas some encompassing large portions of States. New York’s Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor stretches 540 miles across the State and links to the Hudson River National Heritage Area. Heritage areas are one of the key models for the next generation of state parks-one encompassing entire urban setting and regional landscapes.

Greenways. Linkage or connecting the dots is an important conservation approach. Greenways have primarily been established to protect and manage river corridors, but they have other forms. New York State’s greenways beginning with the Hudson River Green way in the early 1990s encompasses an ambitious agenda for goals in a region stretching from Saratoga and Washington counties in the north to the Battery in New York City. It boundaries are county wide so its focus ranges from developing traditional trails to Greenway planning based on fostering regional planning for regions within his boundaries. Like heritage areas (and the HR Greenway manages the Hudson River National Heritage Area), the Hudson River Greenway connections the dots including the roles played by traditional state park programs. The only difference is that its mission extends to an entire and vast landscape.

Trails. In 1987 President Reagan’s President’s Commission on American Outdoor recommended that all Americans be able to go out their front doors and within 15 minutes be on trails that wind through their cities or towns and bring them back without retracing steps. Today, public programs like the Healthy Heart program of the NYS Department of Health supports trail development in rural and urban communities. Many types of trails from wilderness trails in the Adirondack Park to Scenic By-ways are becoming the health, recreation and mobility infrastructure in New York.

Natural infrastructure (see Saratoga counties natural infrastructure plan), healthy watersheds and ecosystem based management (see Art. 14 of the Environmental Conservation Law). Complementing heritage areas, greenways and trails is a new generation of state and local planning focused on integrating the needs of natural and cultural resources with the needs of human communities. This is but another driver of the transition of traditional parks from public estates into an approach that encompasses the entire landscape of states and the nation.

Conclusion. Look for state park programs to be reinvented from being the custodians and managers of public country clubs to being a leader in managing the entire landscape for its ecological and human values. The Conservation Foundation in its report entitled National Parks for a Generation identified the phenomenon as a move beyond the feature to the entire setting. Like California and, in fact, the nation, New York State can no longer financially afford the traditional state and national park model and, at the same time, can no longer afford to not connect the dots and make the linkages so that our entire landscapes are ecologically healthy, economically sustainable and humanly enriching. (Don’t worry about our natural and cultural wonders, they will be maintained as preserves.) Change in parks has been approaching for decades. The current crisis can provide the impetus for the leap forward.

When I wrote the Eye column “It is one state, stupid”, I was thinking about the potential enhanced connections between the “City” and “upstate” like finance and upstate generated tech, farm to market and our shared natural environment. I overlooked one of New York’s great strengths, art and the creative industry and how it could change the perception of upstate from a dull place that time had passed by to an interesting and dynamic place.
New York City is the world capital of the arts. Upstate New York complements this fact with its good share of high quality fine art in collections large and small. But who knows this?
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, Munson-Williams-Proctors Arts Institute in Utica, and Hyde Museum in Glens Falls all have distinguished collections. Albany is well represented by 19th and 20th century visual art at the historic Albany Institute of History and Art and the 92 paintings, sculptures and tapestries (including painters like Ellsworth Kelly, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline at the Empire State Plaza Art collection. Visit the Arkell Museum at Canajoharie along the Mohawk River you will discover paintings by American artist including Winslow Homer and Georgia O’Keeffe. And, there many other gems like the Adirondack Museum, Art Omi and the Storm King Arts Center.
Upstate art for the most part escapes public attention. If there an art tour of upstate exists, it has escaped my attention. The crowds I see at art museums and galleries in New York City are not to be found in upstate museums and galleries. What can be found is creative industry. The numbers on creative industries in New York State Congressional Districts are found on http://www.americansforthearts.org. It shows, for example, our Capital Region outpacing Las Vegas and Sacramento, California when it comes to arts-related business.
Let us do some strategic thinking about how upstate could grow its arts-related businesses and become a world class destination for art lovers.
We can begin with the already noted fine collections of visual arts to be found in upstate New York and add to that upstate’s landscape including the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains and Niagara Falls amongst other scenic wonders that were highlighted to the world by the Hudson River School painters. Not bad, or so I think. But it will take more than marketing to get the message across though marketing is important.
What is missing outside of New York City is collaboration and the dynamic eye catching public art that will catch the public’s attention and direct it to upstate’s art, landscape and heritage.
Public Art
About 20 years ago, give or take, a mid-western wheat field was growing in Lower Manhattan where you will now find Battery Park City. An environmental artist took advantage of some open land created by fill and planted wheat as a public art/installation project. The result was a visual of a wheat field in front of the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Public art moves art outside of the museum and gallery to provide a commentary on the landscape at large.
New York City has had a number of public art projects like the Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island, a floating barge inspired by earthworks artist Robert Smithson and realized by Minetta Brooks, a nonprofit arts organization, and the Whitney Museum, Jeanne Claude Christo’s Gates woven throughout Central Park and more recently the Waterfalls called “a symbol of the energy and vitality that we have been bringing back to our waterfront in all five boroughs”.
The Great Depression generated a great deal of public art that in many places has endured for generations. Percent for art’s programs like the one former Mayor Koch signed into law in 1982 carried that tradition and bring art to the subway, public squares and courthouses.
Now if we could: (a) harness the existing art of the State including upstate museums and galleries to collaborate on one grand summer art exposition across the State; and
(b) Capture the imagination of one or more public artists and provide them the funding to design and realize a “Waterfalls” or theatrical piece for the whole state symbolizing our statewide heritage, natural resources and creativity,
We would polish the image of the whole state as larger than the sum of its parts that include NYC and create a dynamic to generate a revitalized economy and quality of life from the streets of New York to the villages, cities and landscape of upstate New York.
Let us hope this is an idea that has legs.

There is much anger and demand for revenge in the land. Who doesn’t want to smack down the greedy bankers and lenders who “caused” the worldwide financial melt down and are still stuffing their pockets with governmental money while one corporation after another announces thousands of job cuts.

It almost gets one to forget about what the Bush Administration did to us and our image around the world, the human suffering caused, our treasure and moral high ground lost on the war in Iraq, the spying on Americans and torture on whoever fell within our security grasp. Worry not as On January 6th, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers introduced House Resolution 104, “to establish a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties.”

I can’t say I wouldn’t like to get the greedy bastards and, if not putting George W. and Cheney in jail, at least renouncing their crimes against our Constitution.

I appreciate the pleasure, simplicity and value of revenge, but there are at least two reasons to let go of our anger.

First of all we’ve got real problems as a nation and as individuals and families and there is good reason to believe President Obama is right about not spending his political capital on revenge or looking back. We have many major priorities: getting our economy and as much of the world’s economy as possible moving forward including finding one or more sustainable economic engines and changing many, many things like reforming the financial system, ending our auto and foreign oil dependency, creating a universal health system and effectively responding to climate change amongst other monumental challenges. We need to concentrate on the future.

And then there is the uncomfortable fact that if we really want to correct what has happened, we need to see that Americans carry a fair share of the blame for the conditions that give rise to our hunger for revenge. Americans willingly bought SUVs and McMansions, shopped until they dropped, went into debt, re-elected Bush, let their Congressional representatives ignore global warming, our energy insecurity and regulation of the financial system, and were seduced by low prices as I pointed out in an Eye column in November 2004 (“Low prices are killing us. You won’t hear this from your leaders in Albany or Washington, DC, but the price of gasoline, Wal-Mart prices, the China price and food prices are undermining our security, health and environment“) and so on and so forth.

Someone I know calling for getting the damned Wall Street wizards, making them give back their money and punishing them said it wasn’t us who caused the crises. It was all the fault of evil bankers manipulating the system with mortgage based derivatives, hedge funds and swaps amongst other tools. Yes, the system was manipulated but didn’t the public at large lay the ground work with our willingness to be “consumers” rather than “citizens” that gave bankers the opportunity to manipulate?

Like the 162 pages of victims of Madoff’s ponzi scheme, we took the pieces of pie offered to us without thinking about where it came from and what the price in the end would be to them.

Yet, few Americans want to consider themselves at fault for the trouble we are now in. It is simpler and less burdensome to just denounce Wall Street and its bankers and financiers rather than consider our own role in the current crisis. That way we can keep the dream alive that if we get through this crisis like the tech bubble, the fall of corporations like ENRON, the impact of 9/11 amongst other economic troubles in the past, the free lunch will be back.

In the aforementioned 2004 Eye I concluded by writing: “We have a consumer society intent on acquiring endless stuff at bargain basement prices without paying attention to community interests. Our only hope may rest in our ability, if we have it, to return to being more a nation of citizens using our economic levers with our community interests in the forefront. Some value setting leadership from public officials would be welcome, but don’t holdeathe.”

Isn’t it a lot better to keep our eyes and minds on fashioning the changes we need as a society. Let us be citizens first. If we do end up going after the bastards, let us not ignore the ugly role we played in creating the troubles we now suffer.

On Bill Moyer’s public TV program constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, said the United States has the “most merciless criminal justice system in the world”. He pointed to the large number of our citizens incarcerated in support of his comment.

Especially in light of this “mercilessness”, don’t we have a responsibility for a strong and effective system of public defense so that the weak and unfortunate amongst us do not get unjustly caught in the tentacles of the criminal justice system?

Regrettably, it is a responsibility we have been woefully poor in meeting. As the NY Times pointed out in a front page article, “Citing Workload, Public Lawyers Reject New Cases” on November 9, 2008, “Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low”. They are pinched to “the breaking point” as the Times graphically points out.

With this as the background, we have a new class of impaired and in need citizens coming up against the criminal justice system. These are the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who return from the harms way of war to the harms way of adjusting to civilian life carrying the baggage of war.

The good news to the extent any good news exists from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the “ratio of survivors to fatalities in the current war operations is greater than in any other war in modern history”. The very bad news is many returning veterans suffer untreated psychological and brain trauma on the battlefield. It has been reported that “of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 percent of Army and fully half of National Guard service members have been diagnosed with mental illness”.

Medical care and the health and social safety net for veterans diagnosed with mental illness are notoriously bad from a health system for veterans characterized as “overcrowded, mismanaged, and under funded.

While veterans are supposed to have a health safety net as poor as it may be, I wonder how many of the Blackwater contracted private forces are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Is their mental and other war related health problems covered by Blackwater or will it be added to the social burden and cost of the war for all of us?

It isn’t surprising that veterans become incarcerated. Here are the basic facts: “Justice Department statistics suggest roughly 12 percent of the 7 million people within corrections systems-in prison, jail or on parole-have served in the military. Four in five incarcerated veterans reported drug dependency, and nearly a quarter held in jails were homeless in the year before arrest. A quarter of these veterans were also identified as mentally ill”.

When the public defender service providers are already overburdened, what can they do when they face special needs from the men and women who risk their lives to protect our freedom and have high incidence of substance abuse disorders and represent a disproportionate number of our prison population?

Veteran and defense advocates are trying to get public financial support necessary to train and educate the public defense community on matters like identifying defendants with traumatic brain injury and PTSD and being able to relate it to explaining criminal behavior.

The problems relating to the trauma suffered by returning veterans are very real. Let us not lose sight of the importance of providing these veterans with social equity so they can reintegrate themselves into the life of their home communities.

The state’s financial troubles are no excuse for failing to fully meet our responsibilities to veterans getting trapped by our criminal justice system.

On Bill Moyer’s public TV program constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, said the United States has the “most merciless criminal justice system in the world”. He pointed to the large number of our citizens incarcerated in support of his comment.

Especially in light of this “mercilessness”, don’t we have a responsibility for a strong and effective system of public defense so that the weak and unfortunate amongst us do not get unjustly caught in the tentacles of the criminal justice system?

Regrettably, it is a responsibility we have been woefully poor in meeting. As the NY Times pointed out in a front page article, “Citing Workload, Public Lawyers Reject New Cases” on November 9, 2008, “Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low”. They are pinched to “the breaking point” as the Times graphically points out.

With this as the background, we have a new class of impaired and in need citizens coming up against the criminal justice system. These are the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who return from the harms way of war to the harms way of adjusting to civilian life carrying the baggage of war.

The good news to the extent any good news exists from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the “ratio of survivors to fatalities in the current war operations is greater than in any other war in modern history”. The very bad news is many returning veterans suffer untreated psychological and brain trauma on the battlefield. It has been reported that “of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 percent of Army and fully half of National Guard service members have been diagnosed with mental illness”.

Medical care and the health and social safety net for veterans diagnosed with mental illness are notoriously bad from a health system for veterans characterized as “overcrowded, mismanaged, and under funded.

While veterans are supposed to have a health safety net as poor as it may be, I wonder how many of the Blackwater contracted private forces are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Is their mental and other war related health problems covered by Blackwater or will it be added to the social burden and cost of the war for all of us?

It isn’t surprising that veterans become incarcerated. Here are the basic facts: “Justice Department statistics suggest roughly 12 percent of the 7 million people within corrections systems-in prison, jail or on parole-have served in the military. Four in five incarcerated veterans reported drug dependency, and nearly a quarter held in jails were homeless in the year before arrest. A quarter of these veterans were also identified as mentally ill”.

When the public defender service providers are already overburdened, what can they do when they face special needs from the men and women who risk their lives to protect our freedom and have high incidence of substance abuse disorders and represent a disproportionate number of our prison population?

Veteran and defense advocates are trying to get public financial support necessary to train and educate the public defense community on matters like identifying defendants with traumatic brain injury and PTSD and being able to relate it to explaining criminal behavior.

The problems relating to the trauma suffered by returning veterans are very real. Let us not lose sight of the importance of providing these veterans with social equity so they can reintegrate themselves into the life of their home communities.

The state’s financial troubles are no excuse for failing to fully meet our responsibilities to veterans getting trapped by our criminal justice system.

Stimulus package: Good news and not so good news; and where are the plans

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters that “the Obama administration wants to rebuild America”.

Where is the plan for rebuilding America? At a program on the North Country of New York, a Chamber of Commerce rep from the North Country said a number of times, “we need a plan”. The other regions of New York State, the state itself and the nation also need a plan.

The good news is that the Obama administration is going to quickly advance a massive stimulus package to support much needed infrastructure projects. Fueling a failing economy and public infrastructure are good especially when infrastructure has been ignored for many decades.

The not so good news is the Obama administration intends to quickly advance without adequate land use, resource management and development plans this stimulus package targeted to real needs like refurbishing the existing power grid, existing sewage and water treatment facilities, repair roads and bridges and repair schools.

In the words of NYTimes columnist David Brook, the effect will not be “transformational” or bring “Americans together in new ways” after more than a half century of sprawl and decline of most of our cities. As Brooks goes on further to say, “the Obama infrastructure plan may freeze that change (an urban and transportation revolution), not fuel it”.

Furthermore, unlike the Eisenhower era when there was pent up demand for production after World War II, we are likely to suffer a prolonged hang over from the binge of the last decades. The stimulus is unlikely to be strong enough to get the private sector including business and the consumer to respond no matter how large it is.

Given our financial condition, we can’t avoid a spending binge investing in the past if the spending drought continues and new production doesn’t directly follow.

How did we get into this fix? We do have creative and sometimes even visionary people with ideas about smart growth, sustainability, new urbanism, renewable energy and distributed power, open space protection, heritage development and 21st century mobility. These ideas exist both on paper and in some cases real projects, but to be realistic they are mostly seedling ideas.

Missing has been an overall system of national, state and regional planning to blueprint and marshall resources and the political courage of conviction necessary to really restore our cities, our rail and transit systems, our educational system, our food system, our health system, our natural resources stewardship, and so forth. We pick and poke at one thing or another, but we don’t get our act together to really be transformational. We have been just too busy making paper profits, driving SUVs, building McMansions and just plain shopping? Or, is it that there are just too many vested interests in every of our “systems” to create the great log jam we are in? We have no desire or willingness to support planning.

We need a grand vision for the 21st century that addresses all the aforementioned systems and clearly provides the road map to realize the vision. Let us hope that Obama understands this and takes steps like initiating a comprehensive planning effort with Federal financial support for urban, regional and state planning throughout the nation and an overarching national body to frame the vision and implementing strategy for Congress.

Please, we need real planning at every level of our complex governmental system and economy to guide the real makeover of our rural areas, suburbs, cities and regions to be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. Can we do that without a planning infrastructure? I am not a planner and I think not.

Some like America 2050 (www.America2050.org)—Coalition of Leading Civic/Business/Environmental Organizations and Transportation Officials express concern that the stimulus money “will be blindly thrown at rebuilding America’s infrastructure-causing more harm than good”. It is hitting good buttons of fix, phase, green, train and count, but they don’t call for the grand vision nor needed planning infrastructure to avoid what it fears. Rather it is simply a group of transportation, policy and other usual suspects looking to get their hands on stimulus decision making. If they do and we don’t get an ongoing real planning effort to transform America, we still will be doing more on the harm side than the good side.

In the 1960s Governor Rockefeller had a first class planning agency that helped design public efforts like pure waters, the Adirondack Park Agency and a State University System. It produced a broad State Development plan. It foundered when Rockefeller’s successors had no interest in planning and only reacted to the crisis of the moment.

Time will tell if Obama understands that a broad and ongoing planning effort is needed if we can accomplish more than fixing the old and really organizing and building a 21st century future that the public and private markets can believe in. Let us hope he understands.