158 Organizations from Across the Tri-State Area Sign a Joint Pledge to Promote Equity in Implementation of Regional Plan Association Recommendations
“Fourth Regional Plan is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote a more just and equitable region”
New York, NY— Following Regional Plan Association’s unveiling of the Fourth Regional Plan, 158 organizations in the region have signed onto a pledge to advocate for equity over the next generation as the plan moves from idea to implementation.
The Fourth Plan is oriented around four core values, equity, health, sustainability and shared prosperity. The investments and policies proposed by RPA would reduce inequality and improve the lives of the region’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged residents. The Plan includes sweeping recommendations with the potential to make our region more equitable including where to allow or encourage different types of housing and commerce, how to redevelop existing communities or business districts, where to build new public transit and how to use and preserve scarce natural resources.
“The Fourth Regional Plan is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote a more just and equitable region,” said Pierina Ana Sanchez, Director, Regional Plan Association - New York. “Together with organizations Across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, we are confident that the Fourth Plan will tackle many of the obstacles residents face, we can reduce poverty, close gaps in health and wealth and help to repair this region’s history of of urban planning policies that have perpetuated inequality.”
The signers pledge to advocate for the five equity principles which guide the Fourth Regional Plan:
- Affirmatively promote fair housing by both strengthening disadvantaged communities and opening up exclusionary places.
- Make decisions more inclusively, from facilities siting, to local land use control, to who gets to participate in local elections.
- Reduce inequality by expanding access to economic opportunity and eliminating the racial/ethnic/gender/disability wealth and income gaps.
- Create new relationships between communities, industry and nature to provide dignified, productive and ecologically sustainable livelihoods.
- Invest in transportation to link all to more opportunities and lower costs for those with the lowest ability to pay.
Fourth Regional Plan equity advocacy partners include:
- Community Voices Heard
- Partnership for Strong Communities
- Housing and Community Development Network
- Make the Road Connecticut
- Make the Road New York
- New York Communities for Change
- Right to the City Alliance
The pledge letter and list of signatories to date is available here.
Read the Fourth Regional Plan at: http://fourthplan.org/
History of the Regional Plans
RPA has published three previous regional plans, in the 1920s, the 1960s and the mid-1990s, that have dramatically affected the way the Tri-State area has developed. Major policy and infrastructure recommendations implemented from past regional plans include constructing the the regional highway network, instituting the MTA’s first long-range capital plan, creating regional economic hubs in Jamaica, Queens and Stamford Connecticut, developing Hudson Yards, and and the protection of open space including the creation of Palisades Interstate Park, Gateway National Recreation Area and Governors Island.
About Regional Plan Association
Regional Plan Association is an independent, not-for-profit civic organization that develops and promotes ideas to improve the economic health, environmental resilience and quality of life of the New York metropolitan area. We conduct research on transportation, land use, housing, good governance and the environment. We advise cities, communities and public agencies. And we advocate for change that will contribute to the prosperity of all residents of the region. Since the 1920s, RPA has produced three landmark plans for the region and is working on a fourth plan due out in 2017. For more information, please visit www.rpa.org or fourthplan.org.
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