Neighborhood of the Arts, Rochester NY

Empire State Future works with its Coalition on several strategically selected advocacy campaigns. In our first three years, we have focused heavily on key state legislation that will profoundly advance smart growth across the state. Our advocacy work ranges from involvement in the authoring and design of legislation, to interfacing with legislators  about  the bills. In addition, we work with the Coalition to mobilize support for our legislative agenda, from Montauk to Niagara Falls.

Empire State Future’s advocacy agenda focuses now on key state legislation. Please join us in this advocacy–directions on how to reach your state representatives to urge their support are on each of the following issue pages:

• Properly and thoroughly implement the Public Infrastructure Priority Act.
• Properly and thoroughly implement the Complete Streets Law.
• Promote land banking for New York’s cities (now that the Land Banking Authority bill is law) 

In addition to these legislative advocacy campaigns, we are focused on other critical issues:

Right-sizing. Cities like Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Utica have populations 30-60% less than they did 50 to 60 years ago. While these population losses create a host of challenges, they certainly do not mean that these cities are terminally ill. Leaders of cities with shrinking populations—such as Detroit, Youngstown, and Rochester have their eyes wide open to the fact that their populations are unlikely to grow
back to their historic highs. Given this, these cities have taken steps to “right size” the infrastructure and built environment for their
current populations. In these cases, While Rochester may never be a city of 333,000 again, it is taking steps through its Project Green to be an outstanding city of 210,000.

Brownfields. New York State is full of contaminated properties that could and should once again serve communities productively. With resources assertively focused on the remediation and reuse of New York’s brownfields, smart growth would take a big leap forward.

Regional Planning. New incentives for or regulations requiring inter-municipal and regional planning are essential to stopping sprawl and actualizing smart growth across New York. In this “home rule” state towns, villages, and cities make land use and development decisions independently, resulting in inefficient and costly regional development patterns. Regional planning is the common denominator for regions known as the most successful economically and ecologically: Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction. The growing green consciousness in this country is encouraging, but better land use—anchored by “location efficiency”—is not enough part of this consciousness. The Energy Star appliances, hybrids, and LEED buildings are great, but if they are part of a sprawling development pattern, their greenhouse gas reduction effects are probably more than offset.