Over the course of a month, advocates, academics, elected officials, and industry experts joined virtual panels to discuss the region’s response to COVID-19 during the 30th Annual RPA Assembly. The panels addressed core RPA issues like public transit, clean energy, and housing policy in the context of the health and economic crises brought on by the pandemic. We also hosted our first Assembly panel on 5G infrastructure, and a special, holistic conversation about recovery and renewal in the region.

Scenarios for Renewal and Recovery in the Tri-State Region featured stirring discussion between Afua Atta-Mensah, Executive Director of Community Voices Heard; R. Glenn Hubbard, Director of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business at Columbia Business School; Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos; Dr. Herminia Palacio, President and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute; and Tony Shorris, John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The panelists spoke with great force and clarity about the intersectionality of recovery, drawing lines between COVID-19 impacts, institutionalized racism, and future infrastructure investments. ​“A lot of us were catching hell before COVID,” said Atta-Mensah, ​“and we’re not looking to go back.” Jonathan K. Law, a Senior Partner with McKinsey, set the stage with a fine-grained presentation about the economic impacts of the virus.

Moderated by John Porcari, President of US Advisory Services with WSP, Saving Our Region’s Public Transit Systems and Building for Tomorrow focused on the fiscal ruin facing our transit agencies as a result of pandemic. The Chief Customer Officer for the MTA, Sarah Meyer, offered first-hand accounts of how her agency is coping. Rick Cotton, Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), explained why it’s difficult for multi-state agencies like PANYNJ to secure federal aid. The two panelists representing engineering firms - Ali Chaudhry, Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer at AECOM, and Tom Donahue, Vice President for Rail and Transit with Jacobs - emphasized how the fate of transit agencies in this moment will impact the entire construction and manufacturing sector locally and globally for better or worse. The Director of Transportation for America, Beth Osborne, drew on her experience running a nationwide transit group and suggested advocates must convince rural communities and their elected representatives of transit’s value for the nation’s economy.

During What’s Next? The Future of Housing, Neighborhoods & Urban Living, Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno of the Connecticut Department of Housing described the pandemic response in CT and highlighted the state’s relative success providing shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Two New York City-based practitioners, ANHD’s Executive Director Barika Williams and Shawn Rickenbacker, Director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures at City College of New York, described the city’s housing challenges in great detail including the vital relationship between transit and housing. Before he had to jump off to vote on a piece of pending legislation, Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon’s 3rd District suggested changes in housing policy that were aspirational only a few months ago now seem within our grasp. RPA’s Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning moderated the panel and drew attention to the lack of affordable housing in the region’s core, Manhattan.

Billy Fleming, Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center at University of Pennsylvania; Michael Green, Executive Director of Climate XChange; Sonal Jessel, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator for WE ACT for Environmental Justice; Judith Lagano, Senior Vice President of Asset Management with NRG Energy; and Ravenswood Generating Station CEO Clint Plummer each described their vision for a carbon-free tri-state region during The Climate Change Pandemic & a Path to Decarbonization. Fleming and Lagano debated the roles of the public and private sectors in the decarbonization process, with Fleming cautioning against ​“romanticizing” what the markets are capable of. The introductory remarks from WE ACT Director Peggy Shepard about the intersection of racism and environmentalism made for one of the 2020 Assembly’s most powerful moments.

Our Region’s Digital Future featured a discussion of 5G and broadband infrastructure with Leecia Eve, Vice President of Public Policy at Verizon; John Paul Farmer, Chief Technology Officer of New York City; Christopher Levendos, Vice President of Network Engineering and Operations with Crown Castle; Javier Lopez; Chief Strategy Officer for Red Hook Initiative; and Jason Post, Director of Global Communications and Public Affairs at Google. The panelists agreed the public and private sectors must align on managing the right of way where new 5G infrastructure will need to be deployed. Lopez stressed the need for a more intentional approach to community engagement during public-private partnerships, which counterbalanced Eve’s impressive overview of Verizon’s P3 achievements. Nicki Palmer, Verizon’s Chief of Product Development, began the panel with a keynote on her organization’s 5G deployment efforts to date.

Although they couldn’t gather in one place, this tremendous group of panelists managed to capture the energy of this moment and offer actionable insights for our region’s future. The panels featured some valuable disagreements and differences of perspective, but the speakers did unify around one core message: as we remake policies and practices in response to COVID-19, we are obligated to work toward a region that works for all residents.