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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Ideas for a New New York
By
on
Happy new year everyone!
We're still on hiatus here until Monday, but Annie McDonough, a tech and policy reporter at City & State, released a piece recently worth reading about the work we have to do in framing a post-Covid 19 policy future. It collects the results of conversations with "urban planning and policy experts, health care and environmental advocates, and local and state lawmakers about the bold steps they’d like to see taken in New York."
She frames the discussion:
[A]s the country begins the massive work of vaccinating people, we’re starting to imagine what life looks like on the other side of the pandemic. Do we revert to the status quo? Do we attempt to chip away at those long-standing inequalities with some version of the solutions we’ve tried before? Or do we use this crisis as an excuse to take big, ambitious swings?
"New York," the piece says those experts collectively argue, "should use this moment to pursue bold policy ideas that not only aid our recovery, but ensure that in a future crisis, all New Yorkers are protected from the worst effects witnessed in the past eight months."
Municipal broadband sits first on the list of the five ideas covered in the piece (the others being single-payer healthcare, radically more friendly multi-modal transportation, the end of exclusionary zoning, and a universal basic income) that McDonough offers as a result of those discussions. Among them, it has arguably both the strongest track record of existing success stories in the Unites States as well as deep support from a wide collection of diverse interest groups.
Head over to City and State to read the whole piece, stay healthy, and we'll see you back in the office next week.
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