New York City continues to be one of the most coveted places in the world to develop, build, and buy property, yet the region is more and more strained every day. Infrastructure, housing, and employment continue to be of the utmost concern to city and state governments as they work to meet the demands of a city that added a San Francisco-worth of new housing units in 2014. New York has always been known as a global city, but the quality of its infrastructure does not match its ambitions. As a region, it is not well connected like cities such as Paris, where a comprehensive plan in the 1960s called the RER connected the suburbs and destinations like Charles de Gaulle Airport to the city center via express train lines. London is in the process of building a 20-billion-GBP east-west cross-city rail link, but New York remains relatively disconnected.
New York City today. All images courtesy Rethink Studio.
Jim Venturi of Rethink Studio wants to change this with a comprehensive plan to expand La Guardia Airport and connect the region’s robust but disconnected train system — Amtrak, MetroNorth, NJT, LIRR — in order to unite the city once again. In addition to overhauling the regional rail system, ReThink NYC also calls for the creation of a Midtown-sized commercial district in Sunnyside, Queens.
The centerpiece of the project, however, is the revamped LGA complex, which would include two new runways. LGA is the only New York airport that can easily accommodate these new runways without compromising the surrounding environment or sacrificing valuable terminal space. This would transform the airport into a truly international travel hub, reestablishing its place as such: The once-celebrated airport was recently likened to that of a third-world country by none other than Vice President Joe Biden.
New York City after Rethink Studio’s unification of the region’s transit.
In order to make the outer boroughs more unified, and to encourage business development and investment there, Venturi is focused on transportation. The plan explores opportunities in and around Randall’s Island and its environs as the nexus of three boroughs — Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx — including subway service to LGA via a crosstown 125th Street A line extension, taking advantage of the Second Avenue subway, as well. Other regional lines will be brought together into a rail hub in the new Sunnyside location along with a new station and a 300-acre park.
Venturi sees this regional unification of the city as more than simply good business — the plan also hinges on relocating the correctional facilities on Riker’s Island to use the space for LGA. Venturi describes it as a social project: “Robert Moses kept bridges that were under 10 feet so that buses could not go out to the suburbs. He called them the rabble. You can change laws or bus lines, but you can’t change the physical abilities to get to certain areas.”
“We are uniting Queens, Bronx, and Manhattan with the suburbs of NJ and Connecticut though the Northeast Corridor,” he continues. “It is social and infrastructural unification. It is guided by an idea that you treat people of all different classes the same.”
ReThink has a bold motto, via a very appropriate New York Times headline: “Thinking Big. Then Thinking Bigger.” The project is much more ambitious than many of the other proposals that were solicited by Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Master Plan Design Competitions for LaGuardia and JFK. While Venturi chose to present his project separately so that he could control it and have more freedom to think bigger, it does not mean that ReThink has forfeited visibility. On the contrary, the project has been featured in a TV news segment and even presented at a recent conference in Stockholm. Venturi continues to advocate for the project, and hopes that eventually it might come to fruition.