Cea Weaver

I am a big believer in participatory democracy and figuring forms for working class / collective governance over political processes and decision making but “local” = a problematic shorthand for that in a society as ridiculously segregated as ours.

1) the potential for racist local opposition to development is absolutely there and could be deeply problematic for sure. But two on-the-ground realities must be raised…

2) …first, *most* recent, actual community pushbacks to rezoning plans in NYC aren’t coming from an exclusionary/racist place. They’re in opposition to MIH developments, which are always mostly luxury and offer only crumbs of affordability. They’ve been engines of displacement.

3)…the second & most important thing is that these rezonings are almost always hatched in back rooms with developers & city agencies like CPC & EDC. Absent deep reform of these agencies, any citywide rezoning plan will and should be looked at with suspicion by average NYers.

4) So the solution should probably be a 2-pronged approach balancing out truly public city agencies that sever ties to for-profit developers, and strong community input. Checks & balances. But including developers in planning decisions is literally a conflict of interest.

in good faith: #2 is objectively untrue. e.g. soho/noho: ppl honestly concerned w/ displacement aligned w ppl who are *not* to form a political coalition #3 - let's start there, then. let's talk about what we can do to rebuild trust in the public sector. i'm really into that.

#4 - who is the community? deciding that is really messy. how are you going to decide whose voice "counts"? we need to think seriously about that and i haven't observed that anywhere. i don't see how your vision doesn't prioritize those who currently have economic power

this is an issue for any type of community engagement—always a determination that needs to be made. City planning said it consulted “the community” with Amazon.