Cooper admits push might be too late.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re seeing a significant number of people start to recognize that this is something that they can do,” she says. “A lot of them don’t even know they can do it. Even if you’re one of the few, maybe 10 percent, of people, there’s actually a lot of them that have an opportunity to take a significant role in building the public sphere.”<\/p>\n
“If I had my way,” says Mayor Bill de Blasio, “I would take the steps I did immediately, which are: We’re going to have\uc6b0\ub9ac\uce74\uc9c0\ub178<\/a> public participation workshops; we’re going to have community meetings to hear from people and hear from localities about why the city needs more public space; we’re going to launch a public service campaign to educate New Yorkers about their municipal rights; and we’re going to develop a strategy for working with groups of neighbors, community groups and city agencies to implement things like the inclusionary zoning ordinance in the next three years.”<\/p>\n In their conversation, Cooper and Mayor de Blasio acknowledge the challenges they face, but insist that the most critical question isn’t whether it might make them the city’s mayor (a job that remains unfulfilled for all but a few). It’s whether it can make them a leader.<\/p>\n “The mayor doesn’t always make decisions based on the facts and statistics,” says Cooper. “I think that’s why he’s not that effective…. His ability to speak to the citizenry, to tell stories and to be the kind of leader he is, that’s probably what’s keeping him in office for so long.”<\/p>\n And that’s why New York is finally catching up to other cities around the world as a model for urban development. It’s not just that cities have always thrived on the kind of diversity that seems to work best in large cities, Cooper contends. She’s also right\u2014it’s because of the way that cities are designe\ub354\ud0b9\uce74\uc9c0\ub178<\/a>d and governed, she says\u2014by the concept of “cooperative governance,” in which leaders and public officials coordinate and collaborate with neighbors, employees, employees and employees, employees and citizens. Cooper says the city is doing much, much better than most to implem\ubc14\uce74\ub77c<\/a>ent that, which could help convince more New Yorkers that a new mayor or council or mayoralty are the best way to address this very serious problem.<\/p>\n “I think it’s very important for cities to keep up with the times,” she says. “We’re already living a very dynamic, complex economy and urban centers, and they have to stay u<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cooper admits push might be too late. “I think we’re seeing a significant number of people start to recognize that this is something that they can do,” she says. “A lot of them don’t even know they can do it. Even if you’re one of the few, maybe 10 percent, of people, there’s actually a … Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[507],"tags":[508,509,510,503,511],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}