How NYC Became a Planning Wunderkind

Iovine is enthralled with the Bloomberg administrations ability to identify problems and opportunities to improve the built environment, and to implement solutions "with astonishing speed." She is captivated by, "This hallmark ability to pounce" which "has turned New York City from an eminence grise into an urban wunderkind."

"We're not Copenhagen, yet, but New York has bootstrapped it's way up from Scorsese seedy to sustainably cosmopolitan. Other cities want to learn from us. From the High Line to the rooftops of Via Verde, you can see mayoral posses taking notes."

The administration's rapid responsiveness hasn't come without its critics however. "The Pratt Center for Community Development has cautioned in the past that the Bloomberg Administration has launched a lot of plans without sufficient neighborhood input and that the city's own strategic plans are not transparent enough for communities to understand and respond with their own feedback."

With the end of the Bloomberg era in sight, "the anxiety about what lies ahead is palpable," notes Iovine. "The next team will need performance enhancers to match this band of bureaucrats with shared purpose who believe that new ideas must be put to work sooner than later."