POLICY ISSUES
To significantly improve the quality of life in New York City, it requires the reshaping of the City’s social and economic policies and promoting public debate on New York City issues. He Gin Lee believes that the old-fashioned and outmoded governmental policy approaches cannot revive the health of the community; there is a need to develop strategic policies that organize and bring the city’s citizenry together. Police, parents, the local faith institutions like churches, and the experts need to brainstorm urban public policy issues on new ways to solve the City’s social and economic aspects of infrastructural building to make it more beautiful. There must be expert advice and knowledge to confront the fundamental challenges of our city- education, crime and terrorism, housing, finance and fiscal soundness, and economic development.
From an economic policy point of view, providing a comprehensive array of reforms and undertaking infrastructural building needs an estimated investment of some $15 billion for large-scale but necessary projects such as building a modern subway system, improving roads, highways, bridges and ports, and constructing new infrastructural systems. Large-scale renovation will reinvigorate the city’s economy and create employment opportunities on a scale that would boost growth in the City’s various economic sectors. Building schools, community centers and promotion of vocational training will help the City’s economy grow on a healthy path. In the first order of business, it is projected that these innovative projects would generate 600,000 new skilled and unskilled jobs.
To elaborate on these issues and outline what should be done to maintain the social and economic vitality of New York City, He Gin Lee will confront these issues through his keen interest in the beautification of New York as the first world-class city and with the critical eye of a true architect. He will personally guide the implementation of the City renewal projects that will be further outlined here. His dream and ambition for beautifying New York is to design a world’s top-class city in which its citizens can take pride in. But achieving such a grand design of infrastructural beauty that comes from passion, heart and soul, cannot take place in a vacuum. To achieve the goals of a New York City that is vibrant, beautiful, clean, safe, and economically efficient while environmentally sound, two interrelated factors play a crucial roles: human resources development and economic and financial resources.
EDUCATION AND SCHOOL
What is human resources development? It is the people living and working in New York City, their labor and energy. A large number of the City’s population is made up of restless energetic young students who attend New York public schools, many of which are substandard and require renovation and rebuilding. Failure to teach and learn is a crucial mistake because it wastes valuable human and financial resources: The low-paid teachers leave the City for high paying jobs elsewhere. The students become dropouts and unemployable. As a consequence they increasingly rely on the City’s meager financial resources for their support without making any contribution to the City’s budget. This would naturally lead to an imbalance in the City’s budget and an eventual depletion of the reserve funds. This critical issue is further analyzed below.
In the City’s low-income areas, schools and schooling is one of the top public policy concerns. Two factors are critical: school choice and accountability. School choice, namely charter schools and school vouchers are committed to improving the options available to parents of the public school students. In other words, public schools are made more directly accountable to parents for excellence in education of their children. Similarly, accountability reforms are dedicated to improving educational achievement, making teachers, administrators, and students accountable for success or failure. The City needs to find new ways to keep our youngsters away from the streets and criminal activities that would lead to the costly operation of prisons and detention centers, instead it must engage these underachieved young students more productively in alternative activities like communal work, sports, clubs, and after-school programs. All these new activities would require economic expansion and infrastructural development but will later result in job formation.
Crime and New Yorkers’ Security
New York has long been labeled as a crime infested city. Realistically, however, crime has been reduced in the recent years. To maintain the momentum of keeping New York City and its residents secure and safe, the NYPD and FBI should be given the City’s fullest support in countering crime and terrorist activities. Pilot projects and programs should be developed to assist the existing local law enforcement agencies in their ongoing efforts to detect criminal and terrorist activities. The City’s initiative for the security of public places and the citizens is of particular importance. There should be full consultation of counter-terrorism agencies. Another important strategy already applied in New Jersey with some success, is the aiding of released prisoners in finding and maintaining jobs to develop positive relationships with their children and families. This would reduce male and female recidivists. These programs are an important aspect of maintaining the City’s beauty and attractiveness.
Welfare
Another important aspect in beautifying the City of New York is dealing with the problem of economic and social poverty so that the City residents do not become dependent on welfare. New York City is experiencing high levels of poverty, with significant segments of its urban population being locked in an intractable cycle of unemployment and government dependence. The welfare reforms were enacted in the mid-1990s, and the war on poverty and drug control was to address these problems. Yet welfare reform remains one of the most challenging public policy issues today. The welfare system remains under constant pressure and criticism. Much work remains to be done to ensure the integrity and the beauty of New York as part of an integrated economic system within the mainstream economy. He Gin Lee proposes that there should be constant vigilance in the application of laws favoring workers’ and household earnings, including single mothers, and tracking of success and failure in the welfare reform to ensure their implementation.
He believes that the City is morally responsible for caring for the handicapped, the elderly, the widowed and the orphaned, as well as all those with physical and mental disabilities. This is a very important public policy that is a crucial part of New York’s beautification. This project has two aspects to it: first, compassion for the sick and the needy, and second, the building of cost-effective facilities that will create jobs through new infrastructural plans and programs. It is important to stress that restructuring of industries in the City means building cost-effective and environmentally sound new small and large-scale industries and factories, and industrial structures that reduce fuel consumption. These short term and long term infrastructural building, requiring massive private and public investment would naturally lead to a discussion on how to keep this City clean and free from pollutants.
Cleaner New York
The air pollution that the New Yorkers breathe every day, especially in the congested and densely populated small areas like the subways, has been detrimental by contributing to diseases such as asthma and lung cancer. Water pollution is another poisonous disaster that is the result of the dumping of garbage into the rivers of New York. The irony is that a large number of unused empty buildings of our City is filled with rats and rodents that are dangerously threatening the health of the City’s economy and children. At the same time, the homeless people are sleeping on New York’s street corners. This ugly situation is not only immoral but an economic waste of resources that our City cannot afford for much longer. The infrastructural plan that He Gin Lee is envisioning will include not only cleaner air and water for New York, but also buildings. All parts of the New York City must be kept clean and beautiful in a well-integrated fashion. The most cost-effective way of cleaning the City from graffiti and illegal dumping that mars its landscape is to create a program for City renewal in which our City’s citizens, including a team of the city police, inspectors, and volunteers, would gladly participate.
Health Care
As a city architect, He Gin Lee states with confidence that the economically most efficient and cost-effective approach to the healthcare issue would be to design and implement health care facilities at the level of the neighborhood so that people are not forced to go to emergency rooms for simple treatment in big and crowded hospitals located in congested areas of the Big Apple. Building community level health care clinic facilities is good for the health of patients as well as the economy. Healthy workers mean lower insurance cost. Saving money from this can be effectively used in other priority areas. Insurance is one of the highest costing industries. Ways to cut down the cost of medical insurance, medicine, and hospitalization is to monitor smoking in banned public places and to ensure that nutritional facts are provided on restaurant menus. The medical cost of treating lung cancer and obesity in New York is very high, affecting the life of people and the economy. Better regulation of banned smoking areas and nutritional information is a long-term investment that could be used advantageously for extensive coverage of health insurance in the more critical health care of the most vulnerable and needy New Yorkers.
Socio-economic entrepreneurship
To maintain the vitality of the vibrant City of New York, where individuals come together to work and interact in organizations of all sizes, is of utmost importance. To optimize the City’s resources and to keep the income generating social and economic base (skilled workers, professionals, doctors, teachers, and the entrepreneurs), there is a need for all economic segments and the elements of the various parts of the economic system to work together synergistically and harmoniously in order to achieve an optimal and healthy living environment. In this process, the role and leadership of entrepreneurs are critically needed.
New York Economic and Fiscal Policy
The New York City social, economic, and financial crises have been compounded by the aftermath of the September 11th event. From a strategic policy point of view the serious economic crisis facing our City has been unprecedented, with the exception of the Great Depression in the 1930s. New York City needs a simultaneous overhaul and renovation in several areas of its economy in order to keep it environmentally pleasant and attractive to investors and visitors in order to raise the revenue to match the increasing cost of the services the City provides.
Currently, New York City and State impose tax regimes on their citizens that are among the highest in the nation. As a result, New Yorkers tend to lag the nation in economic development and job creation. Monitoring the finances of New York City government and trying to figure out its implications for taxpayers and the business climate is not easy. Despite the Government’s bailout of the banks, they cannot extend loans to small businesses as generously as they did in the past. Because the City government has faced huge budget deficit, many economic areas and services are being cut or closing down completely. An extension of this problem is that we are using money that we do not have to simply maintain the services that are already in dire need of renovation like buses, subways systems, roads, and bridges that are too old. The restless and frustrated youth, faced with no jobs, are caught in the vicious cycle of poverty with no income with an increasing reliance on illegal and unproductive activities like selling drugs, robbery and other more serious crimes. The community, as a whole, begins to suffer from the social crises caused by high unemployment.
With the declining productive human and infrastructural resources, massive amount of investments is needed for rebuilding of New York schools, colleges, subways and bridges in order to reverse the economic downtrends. Training and re-training of the labor force, employing the unemployed, and keeping the students in school are priority issues. Clearly, the sound operation of our City’s economy needs innovative and private solutions for its pressing social and economic problems. This can be achieved only by putting the unemployed back to work so that growth in income can be generated.
Conclusion
Every city needs a visionary leader, a servant and an architect. He Gin Lee is all three. Named the architect of New York in 2003 and 2004,l he has a vision that is possible to make New York City even more beautiful and clean, and its inhabitants safer and securer. All that is needed is the necessary leadership. Successful and excellent leadership requires learning from past mistakes and applying it to the future infrastructural, architectural, and engineering designs. Building and redesigning of sound and innovative structures like highways, mass and speed transportation are absolutely necessary in accommodating the needs of the 21st century modern man living in this City. He Gin Lee’s contribution is well-known. Every house, building, and church that he has designed is physical proof of his heart, dedication, and passion. His vision, with the combined support of New Yorkers and the Community leaders, will be able to provide the necessary leadership by orienting all talents with available human, infrastructural, technological and financial resources towards the beautification of New York City.
There is no unique, simple, and magical solution to all the complicated economic and environmental problems of New York City. But a successful leader could provide the kind of organization that will make the city a dynamic and beautiful place for work and living. New York should be a proud city that attracts tourists and visitors, which in turn will contribute to the city’s revenue and the provision of critical services the New Yorkers need.