Over the past few years, RPA and Pattern for Progress have been strengthening their collective efforts to encourage better planning in the Hudson Valley. One way Pattern is doing this is through its Urban Action Agenda, a planning process which supports revitalization of urban centers across the Hudson Valley. The groups are working to align the agenda and RPA’s Fourth Regional Plan, which we talk a lot about in this blog and will recommend strategies to encourage housing, population, and job growth in existing centers.

One of the deliverables of our collective work is community profiles for 25 cities, towns and villages in the Hudson Valley, available here. Each eight-page profile consolidates housing, income, education and other information in an easy-to-digest way, in order to help communities plan better and understand local conditions. Local officials and municipal staff also use these to strengthen grant applications, and for many planning initiatives underway.

The profiles also offer a wealth of information for data nerds, and allow you to compare cities and towns with one another and surrounding counties. I was reviewing the profiles on my way to Peekskill for a site visit with Pattern last week, and found some interesting trends. Some aren’t surprising for those familiar with the Hudson Valley - incomes are lower and poverty levels higher in urban areas than the surrounding county, for example. But other data points aren’t as widely known, and are useful in illustrating the individual characteristics of each municipality. For example, the number of people who work locally varies widely. In Nyack, 15% of residents work in the municipality, but that number rises to 60% in Poughkeepsie. Housing affordability is pretty much a problem everywhere - many small cities like Poughkeepsie, New Rochelle, and Yonkers see around half of their households paying more than 30% of their income on housing (the general measure of whether a place is ​“affordable” or not).

Both Pattern and RPA see these urban centers as potential places for additional development to ease our region’s housing crunch and protect existing open space. We also think that population growth could add to a city’s bottom line, and its ability to improve infrastructure, schools and support local business. But in order to achieve this, local zoning and land use policies will need to be revised and state and county governments will need to invest in these areas.