In her influential 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Village resident and noted activist Jane Jacobs wrote of Washington Square Park: “The city officials regularly concoct improvement schemes by which this center within the park would be sown to grass and flowers and surrounded by a fence. The invariable phrase to describe this is ‘restoring the land to park use.’ That is a different form of park use, legitimate in places. But for neighborhood parks, the finest centers are stage settings for people.”

To this day, people come to Washington Square Park because of its history, reputation and a certain charisma that the park retains despite its recent redesign. The park is currently in the midst of Phase III, the final phase of its five-plus years of reconstruction. This included the Bloomberg administration’s obsession with moving the historic fountain 22 feet east to “align” it with the Washington Square Arch at Fifth Ave. — which actually took the fountain out of alignment after 137 years in its previous location at the center of the park.

I started the Washington Square Park Blog five years ago around the time the park’s reconstruction began. For four or five years prior, the community participated in numerous meetings with the Parks Department and elected officials, addressing the city’s overhaul of the park. Park advocates filed several lawsuits attempting to prevent the cutting down of trees, the reduction of public space and limitations on performances and protests. The city incorporated some slight modifications to the plan as a result of public input, but, for the most part, the redesign of the park went on as the Bloomberg administration decreed.

In researching the history of the redesign, I quickly learned that the Village community and parkgoers largely did not want a private conservancy, which would change, they felt, the rebellious character of the park.

So when word spread over the last few months of the formation — behind closed doors — of a Washington Square Park Conservancy, those who had attended those past meetings, as well as newer people on the scene, felt alarmed and outraged. (In fact, The Villager published many letters of indignation.)

Last week, Community Board 2’s Parks Committee held a meeting addressing the formation of a Washington Square Park Conservancy. The four women who founded the conservancy outlined some of their plans. They stated that they have “no formal agreement” with the city’s Parks Department. And yet, the new Washington Square Park administrator, Sarah Neilson, is a Parks Department employee who serves in a dual role as the conservancy’s “executive director.”

At the meeting, the conservancy group provided no mission statement and no bylaws for their new organization. When these board members were asked for their projected budget over the first year, as well as the next five years, they had no answer. They said that Sarah Neilson is not being paid a salary by their organization.

In fact, conservancy directors are paid well at the larger parks, double-dipping salaries from the city’s Parks Department as well as the conservancy. According to fiscal year 2012 tax filings, the salary for Douglas Blonsky, head of the Central Park Conservancy, was $456,319. Bryant Park Corporation Executive Director Daniel Biederman made $240,701 in 2011. Madison Square Park Conservancy President Debbie Landau brought home $245,669 in 2011. Aimee Boden, at the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, received $62,745 in 2011 from the foundation, and $122,807 from the city as park administrator, totaling $185,552.

One of the founders of the Washington Square Park Conservancy, Gwen Evans, said at the meeting that they were “encouraged to proceed all along the way” in setting up the conservancy. Really? They clearly did not speak to the many community members who opposed the conservancy, and who — though especially distrusting of the Parks Department — nevertheless saw a private conservancy, as well, as a step in the wrong direction.

Which brings us to a larger question — why can’t our city’s Parks Department run our parks? Well, they could. While it’s true that the percentage of New York City’s overall budget allocated to the Parks Department has shrunk over the years, there is no good reason why a public agency is incapable of properly running our city’s public parks. The shortchanging of public funding for parks is part of a plan to allow parks to deteriorate in order to rationalize the private confiscation of “the commons.” Bill Castro, the Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, cited the success of one private conservancy in having “brought Central Park back from disaster” in the 1970s as a rationale for installing a private body at Washington Square Park.

Does Washington Square Park have to follow the same formula of private control as every other park? Unfortunately, once a conservancy is installed, there is no going back. And if Madison Square Park is any example, these organizations just take root and spread their dominance.

At Madison Square Park, an innocent “friends” group formed with restaurateur Danny Meyer at the helm. Two years later, it morphed into a full-on conservancy running the park, with Meyer’s private business, Shake Shack, granted exclusive rights to set up shop in the park.

Community Board 5 has complained over the years about the commercialization of parks in its district — Madison Square Park, Union Square Park, Bryant Park — all run today by private entities.

And yet the Washington Square Park Conservancy founders stated again and again that they are just there to raise funds. Elizabeth Ely said, “We have no plans to run Washington Square Park. The city runs the park.” That’s great! But what about two years or five years from now when new board members take the place of these well-intentioned individuals?

Community Board 2 member Keen Berger stated, “Don’t we already have organizations like this? Something is very suspicious about how this is happening.”

I have my issues with the Parks Department — it is hard not to. But I would not take the management of the park away from public control, however flawed, and hand it over to a private entity. While the conservancy says it will not run the park, we all know that money talks.

I asked Brad Hoylman, former C.B. 2 chairperson and now state senator, for his views on private conservancies.

“I’m not supportive of conservancies in general for parks,” he said, “because I think that the design, operations and management of public parks should remain transparent and accountable to the local communities they serve. The conservancy model has a tendency to undermine these goals.”

After most of the general public had left the meeting, Board 2’s Parks Committee voted to endorse this conservancy for Washington Square Park. Only one public member of the committee, Sharon Woolums, cast a “no” vote.

The full board of C.B. 2 will vote on this resolution at its next meeting Thurs., June 20, at 6 p.m., at the Scholastic Building, 557 Broadway (between Spring and Prince Sts.), auditorium.

What would Jane Jacobs do? If she could be there, she’d oppose that resolution on behalf of the community’s fight to keep Washington Square Park under public control and retain its wonderful rebellious spirit.

Swan is founder and editor, Washington Square Park Blog

Four years ago, New York City Hispanic bodega owners endorsed John Liu, Bill de Blasio and Tony Avella due to their support of the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. The sign reads: “Dear customers, please vote for [Avella, Liu and de Blasio]. The candidates are fighting to save small businesses and jobs. Your vote counts! Please vote.” After deciding Avella’s chances of winning were slim, they made a second poster featuring only Liu and de Blasio.

The elephant in the room was what was not debated: the closing of our small businesses and a lack of criticism of a 20-year Republican mayoral economic philosophy for New York City that many feel is a disaster for small businesses and the middle class.

All the candidates speak of small businesses as the city’s economic backbone and job creators. Yet, at the forum, there was no talk of the dire situation these merchants face. The very stability of our community hangs on the issue of these stores closing. And the politicians must surely know that small businesses cannot compete with banks “too big to fail” and national franchises for rental space on Main Street.

So I did my research. Statistics are staggering and speak to a crisis. Between 1994 and 2012 under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, the Landlord and Tenants Commercial Courts issued 143,202 warrants to evict businesses. Another estimated 235,000 businesses walked away without a court fight. In short, up to 380,000 small businesses closed in New York City under Republican economics.

Of all the economic problems facing our government, rent gouging, which is causing the closing of our mom-and-pop stores, is the easiest to resolve, restoring the American dream for our small businesses. There is a bill now pending before the City Council, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (S.B.J.S.A.). The original version was introduced in 1986 by Councilwoman Ruth Messinger to save small businesses from sky-high rent gouging resulting from out-of-control real estate speculation in New York City; as well as the unscrupulous practice of landlords demanding “cash under the table” to remain in business; oppressive and unreasonable lease renewals, often doubling or tripling rents; and retail tenants even being forced to pay the landlord’s property tax.

A survey of Hispanic small businesses by the U.S.A. Latin Chamber of Commerce showed the No. 2 reason small businesses failed was due to paying their landlords’ commercial property tax.

All of the current mayoral candidates are aware of the S.B.J.S.A. In fact, in the last election, four of the candidates took strong positions on the bill. Posters highlighting the bill’s supporters were put in the windows of small businesses. John Liu and Bill de Blasio, who had made the bill a central topic of their campaigns, were featured in these posters.

Other candidates, however, got negative posters, including Christine Quinn for stopping the bill in the City Council and Bill Thompson for not fighting for it.

Many now feel Liu and de Blasio have abandoned the issue that they once championed to get elected as comptroller and public advocate, respectively. When candidates forget what they promised only four years ago we have to remind them! We have to remind them to revisit this crucial issue and make it the top priority it must be.

Why in this election, have none of the candidates mentioned S.B.J.S.A.’s existence? In the last election, this bill had the sponsorship of the City Council’s entire Small Business Committee, including its chairperson, David Yassky, and 32 members of the City Council, including both then-Councilmembers Liu and de Blasio. May we interpret this new silence to mean New York City will remain a liberal Democratic town continuing a conservative Republic economic philosophy regardless of which party we elect?

A major study was released in 2009 by the U.S.A. Latin Chamber of Commerce showing the true crisis state of our city’s small businesses. Small Business Committee Chairperson Yassky opened the public hearing on the bill stating, “I believe that we absolutely have to do something. Period. It’s not an option to do nothing.”

Either our small businesses face a crisis and can survive only with government intervention or they are not in a crisis and do not need help. The voters who know the truth have a right to know how their candidates actually stand on this critical issue.

For those candidates who know small businesses are in a crisis, and that the only real solution is the S.B.J.S.A., this bill is still alive in the City Council…waiting for a candidate with the political will, leadership and courage to fight and stand up to the political machine and the powerful real estate industry to get it passed into law.

This bill may serve here as a litmus test for the differences in the political parties and the candidates’ willingness to engage on this issue in depth rather than merely spouting platitudes. Any of the candidates’ jobs-creation initiatives, loan programs or economic stimulus plans would be of little value if the businesses continue to close.

Hopefully, this issue and a platform distinguishing itself from a failed Republican philosophy will be readdressed and re-enter the debate now that Anthony Weiner, “the scrappy political street fighter” as The New York Times May 22 article calls him, has announced his candidacy. Weiner has claimed, “The ideas that I have will set me apart.” And he will, according to the Times, “likely…depict his opponents as machine liberals…unprepared for the kind of tough financial decisions confronting the city.” The recently deceased Senator Lautenberg nailed it when he said, “If one of the parties is shameless, the other party cannot afford to be spineless.”

For this mayoral election, the stakes are high for every middle-class and small-business family. Business advocacy groups predict that if government does not pass the S.B.J.S.A. soon, within 16 years our mom-and-pop Main Street businesses will become extinct. We who love our neighborhoods must demand that one Democratic candidate distinguish him- or herself from the failed 20-year Republican economic policies and reflect a true progressive economic philosophy. I’m not an economist but I — and you — see, hear, discuss, listen, learn and read, and we feel that something is wrong, something has changed, and that we are in trouble and that we must fix it, and that doing nothing is not working.

Actions speak louder than words. The record speaks for itself. I have one vote, and so do you. Our vote en masse speaks louder than empty words. Some say money talks, but so do our votes, if we cast them in droves at the polls. And if just one candidate speaks to this important issue, we will prove our one vote is worth more — yes, more valuable than a corporation’s coffers or a real estate’s lobbying dollar.

Real estate campaign donations and lobbyists’ influence should never be more valuable to candidates than any one vote from a constituent who has felt the pinch from losing his or her job; or from those investing life savings and years of work into a store, only to have their businesses fail because of ridiculously high rent hikes; or of a young native New Yorker or immigrant aspiring to the American dream only to experience a nightmare of impossibility; or finally the mom and pop who dreamed of passing on their business to their children.

If ever there was a time for an elected official to stand up for “the people,” it is now. For it’s not just our quaint stores that are disappearing — but also the faith in knowing whom our government actually serves. That candidate, whoever it may be, may soon inhabit the lovely Gracie Mansion that has sadly been vacant for 11½ years.

Earlier this year, NYCHA announced it was targeting 14 sites, including parking lots, playgrounds and even a community center, in eight Manhattan public housing developments for so-called “infill development,” in order to raise about $50 million annually and help close gaps in its capital budget. Subject only to the approval of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the authority plans to lease the sites to private developers for the construction of new high-rise apartment towers in which 80 percent of the units would be market rate.

There’s no doubt that NYCHA is in financial trouble. The authority predicts that its unmet capital needs will more than double to $13.4 billion over the next five years. Its operations budget has been underfunded by $750 million in the past decade. And we’re already seeing the effects — in staff layoffs, youth and community center closures, and multi-year lag times in critical apartment repairs. Residents regularly call our offices seeking help in cutting through red tape on maintenance requests; certainly NYCHA needs to manage its resources better and expedite critical repairs, but there’s no denying that money plays a role in these issues.

Is the infill plan the best option for ameliorating NYCHA’s financial problems? It certainly isn’t the only option. Currently, the city requires NYCHA to pay $100 million a year for police, sanitation and property taxes that are not imposed on other public agencies or low-income housing providers. Whether or not infill development goes forward, these payments — twice the amount of revenue the proposed infill might generate — should be eliminated.

And on its own terms, the infill development plan raises many questions that have yet to be answered. Since the beginning of the year, NYCHA officials have met with elected officials, tenant associations and the broader public to pitch the proposal. But these pitches have been scant on details and heavy on emotional appeals. Rather than discussing specifics about the proposed new residential towers, the presentations have focused primarily on the housing authority’s dire need for cash.

NYCHA officials have also made informal promises to residents of affected developments that revenue collected from infill development would be used to make repairs to their developments before being allocated to public housing in other parts of the city, though no funding ratio has been defined. There have also been promising ideas about improving security and energy resiliency for residents — an issue that especially resonates on the Sandy-ravaged Lower East Side — but again, there are as yet no details available about how this would be accomplished.

What’s missing in the infill process is a public forum in which fundamental questions can be addressed and authoritatively answered. Do New Yorkers believe that infill development with mostly market-rate housing is the best use of scarce public land? Would public housing residents, and New York as a whole, get the best possible deal under current plans? What would be required of developers to ensure that any new residential towers are designed with the concerns of the surrounding communities in mind? Even if we conclude infill can go forward at some sites, which ones make sense and with what conditions or limitations?

Residents have alternately crowded into community rooms seeking answers at so-called “engagement meetings” and boycotted these same meetings upon hearing from others that the authority isn’t approaching them as honest brokers truly interested in resident input. Many have complained that direct questions to the housing authority have either been ignored or — worse — challenged. For example, one NYCHA official responded to a question at a recent Campos Plaza meeting with this retort: “Come up with a better idea or shut up.”

We have suggested improvements to this process, such as it is, and NYCHA has accepted some of them. And the Assembly and the City Council have both held public hearings that have been informative. But here’s a big idea for NYCHA: Subject the infill plan to New York City’s formal land use review process, which ensures transparency and accountability and results in proposals that are better for both developers and the communities in which they build — if and when projects are approved.

The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) includes many checks and balances for major land use actions, including environmental impact studies, a formal role for community boards, the borough president and the City Planning Commission, and a binding decision by the City Council approving or disapproving each project. In fact, any redevelopment of public land owned by a city agency is already subject to ULURP. But because NYCHA is not technically a city agency — it was created by state law — the authority is not currently bound by the same requirement.

That is why we are sponsoring the “NYCHA Real Property Public Review Act,” which would require that any disposition of land or buildings by NYCHA be subject to ULURP. With the leadership of Assembly prime sponsor and Housing Committee Chairperson Keith Wright, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Council Public Housing Committee Chairperson Rosie Mendez, and the support of other local officials who have played an active role in the infill debate, like state Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilmember Margaret Chin, this legislation would help ensure that residents of public housing and surrounding communities can help shape the future of their neighborhoods through a fair and transparent process.

With both clear timelines and requisite opportunities for public input, ULURP would provide the authority with a clear and well-trodden path for community engagement from the ground up. The ULURP process will also enable public housing residents to avail themselves of the same community planning resources that residents of private housing use to evaluate and weigh in on major land use actions. It will bring NYCHA in line with other mayoral agencies, and ensure that the City Council has binding authority in this extremely consequential privatization of publicly owned land.

The need for this legislation is clear. According to an August 2008 report by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer entitled, “Land Rich, Pocket Poor,” there are 30.5 million square feet of unused development rights in NYCHA developments throughout Manhattan alone. In other words, there might not be any plan for infill development in your backyard yet, but with all those unused air rights, such a plan may not be too far off.

With 630,000 public housing residents and Section 8 recipients, NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in the country and the largest landlord in New York City; it is also one of the oldest, with some buildings nearing 80 years old. To serve all of these people, and maintain these aging buildings, there’s no question that NYCHA needs more money. But it also needs the support of residents, and the partnership of their communities, to tackle the challenges of preserving and expanding affordable housing in the 21st century.

Infill development has the potential to generate some revenue to pay for long-overdue capital projects — but at what cost to NYCHA’s relationship with its residents and neighborhood stakeholders? NYCHA will only score a win for the communities it serves by giving them a say and adhering to the standard public review process required of every other developer in the city. It’s about more than just basketball courts, playgrounds and community centers. The integrity of community-based planning is at stake.

Hoylman is state senator for the 27th District; Kavanagh is assemblymember for the 74th District

Most residents did not know about the details of the program or maybe didn’t focus on the public meetings that took place more than a year ago. Many people went to the see the sample bike docks in wide-open areas, like Washington Square Park and Matthew Palmer Playground, and saw a four- or five-bike installation and likely left saying, “This seems O.K.”

This lack of true understanding is both a discredit to the residents of New York City’s hundreds of neighborhoods as well as the New York City Department of Transportation itself. Folks were left completely unprepared for the size and bulk of the racks — 30, 40 or 50 in a solid wall. They were unimaginably placed with almost total disregard for any other city operational needs in many instances.

The location of these large stations are already having detrimental and potentially dangerous consequences — such as blocking essential services for garbage collection, building entries and Access-A-Ride services. They create impossible situations for moving vans and delivery vehicles, creating dangerous turning radii by extending the dock corner-to-corner on narrow blocks. In one location docks were put in a designated spot held by another city agency for an outdoor arts program.

The stations have been placed on small, historic Village streets that don’t even allow car parking, or on very intense commercials streets, where bikes must be extracted from the docks directly into heavy traffic. We can go on ad nauseam except we are getting nauseous.

The Department of Transportation has trumpeted the reaction in London, saying that residents will “hate you for six months and then they will love the program.” Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Perhaps in London they were more sensitive and flexible in their dock-station placements from the start. That statement is very insulting to local residents and neighborhoods. It says, ignore the criticism because it is simply NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard).

We don’t know how well they positioned the bike racks in London or Paris or Amsterdam or Montreal, but those cities have seemingly integrated their respective bike-share programs into the fabric of each city.

Additionally, many of these cities have a real “stop for red lights and pedestrians” culture, and we would wager that the vast majority of cyclists in these cities obey traffic rules, which still isn’t the norm in New York.

D.O.T. is saying, let the stations be in place for six months and then let’s evaluate the effects. While a few of the docks have been removed, there has been, for the most part, a refusal to respond to many legitimate complaints voiced by community leaders, elected officials and everyday New Yorkers. It feels like the program has been driven to be implemented — good, bad or dangerous — since the stations starting popping up on our blocks.

Six months won’t remedy a poor placement decision — it will just make a bad situation six months worse.

And here is the kicker. With a little juggling and tweaking all the docking stations (in the critical-mass numbers needed to have a successful program) could be placed in locations that actually make sense. Almost everyone at the very well-attended recent Community Board 2 forum said, “I support bike-share,” and then followed up by pleading for the city to work with them to achieve smarter, more nimble and appropriate locations. Not everybody is a NIMBYist. Some New Yorkers are just smart, concerned citizens who simply want their government to listen and really hear them — you know, it’s called participatory democracy.

As the New York City garment industry proverb goes: Measure 10 times, then cut just once. Evaluation and greater community engagement must occur each step along the way. We welcome this innovative program to the streets of New York, but D.O.T. must listen to affected communities, give residents a voice in shaping the implementation, and not worry about an artificial legacy  timetable.

We are told the bike-share program has been designed to be easily moved and adjusted, so let’s do just that. Let’s work together to ensure that this program is integrated into our neighborhoods appropriately. Only then will it become right-sized and a win-win for New York City.

Gruber is chairperson, Community Board 2; Johnson is chairperson, Community Board 4

Shirley Secunda, chairperson of Community Board 2’s Traffic and Transportation Committee, gave this index card, filled out by Charles Komanoff, to The Villager following last Thursday evening’s discussion at P.S. 41 on bike-share and the new bike docks all over the neighborhood. It was one of only two comments submitted that were wholly in favor of the program. Of the many speakers who testified at the meeting, only a handful were strongly in support of the bike-share program and the new bike-docking stations. Almost everyone else who spoke voiced some complaint about the bike-share stations and/or the entire bike-share program.

BY CHARLES KOMANOFF | I didn’t get to speak at the Community Board 2 meeting last Thursday night to discuss bike-share — I stayed outside too long kibitzing on W. 11th St., so my speaker card landed at the bottom of the stack. Here’s what I would have said:

I live in Community Board 1, on Duane St., but my first New York apartments were in or just outside C.B. 2, on W. 15th St. and Minetta St. My kids were born across the street at (now-shuttered) St. Vincent’s Hospital. My two sisters lived a few blocks away. And there were timeless evenings at the Village Gate, the Village Vanguard, etc. So there’s a lot of Greenwich Village in me.

I don’t quite know what to make of the uproar and upset from so many of my neighbors last Thursday evening. I think I’ll try to channel Jane — Jane Jacobs, the immortal author-activist who led the insurrection that stopped the Lower Manhattan Expressway and whose “Death and Life of Great American Cities” laid the intellectual foundation for today’s livable streets movement. Jane famously lived at 555 Hudson St., a stone’s throw from where last Thursday’s C.B. 2 meeting was held. I met her just once, in Toronto, in 1990 or 1991, where Jane had moved in 1968, the year I moved in to the Village. Obviously, I didn’t know her well. But I’ve studied her life and her work enough to venture what Jane might want to tell us.

To start, I think Jane would have understood that for Citi Bike to succeed it has to be done “at scale.” So far as I know, Jane didn’t use the term “network effects,” but that idea pervades her work, as blogger Timothy B. Lee points out:

Jacobs doesn’t quite put it this way, but “Great American Cities” is really a treatise on the importance of network effects to urban wealth creation. The reason people flock to noisy, dirty, crowded cities like New York and Chicago is because most of the things we value are provided by other human beings, and being in a large city puts us in close proximity with many more of them.

Network effects apply to systems as well as populations: Telephone systems are based on them, since the value of your phone depends on my having one as well. Indeed, “network math” posits that while the cost of a network rises in linear proportion to the number of instruments, the network’s value rises geometrically in relation to that number. Just so, with bike-share. A Citi Bike won’t be fully useful unless there’s a full-blown network of stations where you can find a bike and then leave it at the end of the trip.

In short, without scale, forget about bike-share, Jane Jacobs the analyst might have said.

Without question, Jane Jacobs the urbanist would have wrapped bike-share in a bear hug. Jane would have relished the opportunity to always have a bike at the ready and to be unencumbered by it at her destination. She would have delighted in the sturdy, interchangeable and utterly utilitarian machines themselves. And she would have appreciated the access to cycling the system would have provided everyone — not just those fortunate enough to live within easy cycling distance of work, as Jane did, but the throngs of workers and visitors who come in from the boroughs and the suburbs.

Where my channeling gets a tad murky is with Jane’s neighborhood-activist part. I’m sure Jane would have shrugged off the NIMBYs last Thursday night who kvetched that the bike stations block “their” streets but never organized against the cars that until a week ago filled the same curb space 24/7. And she’d have scoffed at the idea that bike-share users will be endangered by speeding and fast-turning cars and cabs. Why not go instead after the miscreant drivers who threaten everyone? But some of the micro-adjustments sought at the C.B. 2 forum — a gap in the line of bike docks for a truck loading zone, shifting a bike station from a side street to an avenue around the corner — might have tugged at her.

Yet on this point, I’ll venture that Jane would have consulted her political part, looked at the calendar, and said something like this:

“Mayor Bloomberg has eight months left, and then he’s gone, along with the political and administrative power to deploy this potentially transformational program. One or two or a dozen siting changes may make individual sense, but to open the program to them now is to jeopardize the intricate schedule of startup and expansion involving hundreds of stations and thousands of docks.

“Robert Moses spent billions and uprooted hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in a 40-year, highway-auto makeover that bled the life out of the city, and came this close to turning it into a cadaver. You know this. You know that we fought back. Some of you fought with me, or are the inheritors of those who did.

“We always said that reversing Moses’ monstrous legacy wouldn’t happen overnight. It won’t happen without some pain, either, even some loss. And the restored world won’t look exactly like the old. But it will be a lot better than what he left us with.”

Jane concluded “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by proclaiming that “lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.” Thanks to bike-share, New York is poised to become even more lively and more diverse, and to keep on regenerating.

Komanoff is an energy-policy analyst, transport economist and environmental activist. This column first appeared on Streetsblog.

Indeed I had seen it a number of times over the years since its cinematic birth in 1947 (66 years ago!) because it is one of the greatest movies ever made — some would say the greatest — and, as it turned out two weekends ago, one of the most eerily predictive.

The film is Carol Reed’s “Odd Man Out,” tracing the long night’s journey of young Johnny McQueen (the great James Mason, then 38), Irish revolutionist and wanted killer — a bank robbery gone wrong — on the run through the entire locked-down city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, where every face is either closed against him or trying to exploit him or to turn him in. Every face except one, that of the woman (Kathleen Ryan) who loves him.

It is impossible not to see the parallel but also not to see the differences. The most glaring parallel is that the driving force in both cases is political passion, or, if you like, political craziness — the quasi-religious fervor that leads you to kill anything or anybody (a marathon spectator, a bank teller) who can be seen as standing in the way of Irish freedom, Chechen freedom.

The differences also involve matters of faith, for the wrenching high point of “Odd Man Out” comes when bleeding, hallucinating Johnny McQueen, dragged into the studio of a nutty artist (Robert Newton) who wants to paint the fugitive as Christ, suddenly totters to his feet and starts shouting out 1st Corinthians 13:

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels

“And have not charity

“I am as sounding brass, or the tinkling of a cymbal…”

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I believed as a child… When I became a man, I put aside childish things… .”

It does not seem likely that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or big brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, now deceased, cared much about 1 Corinthians 13 one way or the other. Indeed, one wonders whether the Islamic Chechens who have been bombing Moscow to pieces and terrorizing theaters full of women and children these recent years, have any moral sense whatever. Or not any moral sense that one can equate with normal, rational thought processes.

The most normal, rational figure in “Odd Man Out” is neither Johnny McQueen or the girl who loves him — loves him to death actually — but the tall, quiet, contemplative police inspector (Denis O’Dea) who has to find him and bring him in, dead or alive. You can guess which. Reminds me of the several astonishingly levelheaded Massachusetts authority figures — cops, the mayor, the governor — whom we gratefully got to know so well over shootout weekend.

One does not have to sympathize with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is now being held at a federal medical center. But it is easy to sympathize with the drama of one isolated human being on the run through an entire locked-down city of Boston and environs.

There are those who will say that “The Third Man” was Carol Reed’s greatest film. Well, that was a pretty good movie too. Even had its own man on the run: Orson Welles as Harry Lime. But “Odd Man Out” got there first — by two years.

But in May the “draft” proposed boundaries will become the final proposed boundaries, after which it will be impossible to expand them further. So the next few weeks are critical to ensure that all sites in need of landmark protections are included, and there will still have some work to do.

In understanding how to proceed, it’s important to understand how we got here.

After designating the first phase of the South Village Historic District in 2010, the city halted further progress, in spite of promises to proceed.  This most recent advance on “Phase II” is the result of a campaign calling upon the City Council not to approve the recent Hudson Square rezoning — which would increase development pressure upon the neighboring South Village — unless the city also agreed to move ahead with the entire proposed South Village Historic District as well.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently released this map, showing the boundaries it is considering for the South Village Historic District’s “Phase II.” The proposed district includes 240 properties, but omits three others that must be included, according to the talking point’s writer.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn approved the full rezoning for Hudson Square, but got just a partial South Village landmarking commitment from the city. The city agreed to vote, before the end of 2013, on landmarking the remaining section of the South Village north of Houston St., with boundaries to be determined later, and to “survey,” but not designate, the area south of Houston St.

The draft boundaries then presented by L.P.C on April 15 were broad, and include about 85 percent of the non-landmarked properties in the Phase II area we proposed for designation. But some key sites have been noticeably left out, including two New York University sites with enormous development potential.

It’s now or never for preserving these sites, so it’s imperative that we push to get them included in the district. But it is especially incumbent upon Speaker Quinn, who brokered this partial landmarking deal and also led the City Council’s approval last year of N.Y.U.’s massive Village expansion plan, to ensure that these originally proposed sites, including those owned by N.Y.U., are landmarked by the city.

The proposed boundaries do include nearly 250 buildings on almost a dozen blocks, in one of the most endangered and historically rich parts of our neighborhood. The district would protect scores of 19th-century houses and colorfully detailed tenements, and dozens of buildings that housed institutions that profoundly shaped the culture and history of our neighborhood and city. These range from the home of Bronson and Louisa May Alcott on MacDougal St. to the homes of coffeehouses and clubs on Bleecker St. that nurtured the careers of Eugene O’Neill, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith; from historic businesses like Porto Rico Importing Co., to venerable institutions such as the Children’s Aid Society and the Little Red Schoolhouse.

What all these sites share in common is a modest, human scale; solid, masonry materials; and a tangible connection to the story of how one of America’s most unique and innovative neighborhoods forged its sense of place and identity.

That’s why the exclusion from the proposed historic district of three key sites that share these qualities is so perplexing, and should be corrected. The city eliminated from our proposed boundaries the row of nine 1844 houses forming the entire northern blockfront of Houston St. between MacDougal and Sullivan Sts., as well as N.Y.U.’s Vanderbilt Hall Law School and Kevorkian Center.

The Houston St. houses were built as part of the same development as their next-door neighbors, the landmarked MacDougal Sullivan Gardens. By the early 20th century, the houses had become a center of the South Village’s Italian immigrant community, housing the well-known speakeasy Luigi’s Restaurant and, since 1906, Rafetto’s Pasta. Without inclusion in the historic district, these houses could easily be destroyed for high-rise development that would tower over the South Village and the adjacent, historic MacDougal Sullivan Gardens.

The full-block Vanderbilt Hall on Washington Square South between MacDougal and Sullivan Sts., also excluded, was built in 1950, but quite intentionally looks considerably older. N.Y.U.’s first entirely purpose-built structure on Washington Square, it was the subject of considerable controversy when first proposed, as Villagers began their protracted struggle to protect their neighborhood from large-scale, post-war development and urban renewal.

But as a result of considerable pressure from neighborhood activists, the university limited the height of the new development to four and a half stories, and chose materials and a design that related to the Village’s 19th-century architecture. N.Y.U. also chose an architect, Otto Eggers, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village and, as a member of the New York City Art Commission, had fought to preserve the character of Washington Square.  In the post-war years, Eggers would come to be known for swimming against the architectural tide by creating contextual, historicist designs.

In the end, leaders of the Save Washington Square Committee, who originally opposed the construction of Vanderbilt Hall, praised the building’s design when it was completed. Recently, renowned architectural historian Christopher Gray, writing in The New York Times, called Vanderbilt Hall “a neo-Georgian brick miniquadrangle of subtle sophistication,” citing it as one of earliest examples of modern historicist design in New York — an architectural approach once shunned, but which has since gained considerable fashion.

Also excluded is the Kevorkian Center, built in 1972 on Washington Square South just across Sullivan St. from Vanderbilt Hall and designed by Philip Johnson. Called the “dean of American architects,” Johnson was one of the most honored and influential architects of the second half of the 20th century. He designed several controversial buildings for N.Y.U. in the 1960s that are considered among his lesser works, including Bobst Library. But with his final design for the university, he won great praise and admiration for a subtler and more sophisticated design. The stone Kevorkian Center deferred to the neighboring Judson Memorial Hall in scale and materials; architecture critic Paul Goldberger called it an “urbanistic success” with a “powerful monumentality.”

Both these N.Y.U. structures reflect the highly contested development of Washington Square in the post-war era, and are the rare examples of such development building upon rather than destroying the fabric and character of the Village. Without landmark protections, both could also easily be razed by the university, and, under existing zoning, Vanderbilt Hall could be replaced by a 300-foot-tall tower. Given the city and the City Council’s recent approval of gigantic new developments by N.Y.U. on the nearby superblocks, it would be particularly unfortunate and unjust if these sites were not included in the new historic district.

So while we have much to celebrate with this recent progress on South Village landmarking, we also have much work to do (including fighting for “Phase III” of our proposed South Village Historic District, south of Houston St.). Speaker Quinn and fellow elected officials have recently joined us in urging the city to consider adding these three excluded sites to the district, which is a good and important first step.

But time is short, and more is needed.  Every block in Hudson Square that developers asked for was rezoned and, in some cases, to even higher levels than the applicants originally requested. All we are asking is that these three sites, part of the original South Village Historic District proposal, be included as well. Speaker Quinn agreed to rezone all of Hudson Square based upon a commitment to landmark the South Village; it is imperative that she ensures that the landmarking is just as comprehensive, and includes these three sites, which are vitally important to the South Village’s history, and its future.

Berman is executive director, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

As residents of the Village and readers of The Villager well know, in recent years the New York City Parks Department invested in a major restoration of Washington Square Park that will be completed soon. When you visit the park today, you see new and expanded lawns, a fountain that has been restored to its original splendor, repaved and accessible paths, new benches, lighting and much more. As a result, the park looks better than ever, and we are excited to ensure the park’s continued success in the coming years.

Our goal with Washington Square Park’s renovation was to create a renewed sense of place, with a design that restored and upgraded the park’s significant features, while preserving its rich history of diversity. The first phase included a renovated and accessible plaza, the restored fountain, and expanded lawns and new planting beds that dramatically increase the park’s green space. The second phase included an enhanced playground, a stage, petanque courts, a small dog run and a new chess plaza, as well as sitting areas, landscaping, fencing, light poles and paths. The third phase will soon be completed and will include a new park house with restrooms for the public and space for Parks maintenance staff, a large dog run, perimeter sidewalks and a new playground for older kids. The Parks Department looks forward to joining the community in cutting the ribbon on this final phase and to seeing the realization of a fully restored Washington Square Park.

As Washington Square Park enters the next chapter of its storied existence, I would like to take this opportunity to announce the appointment of its new administrator, Sarah Neilson. Sarah is a veteran of the Parks Department’s Capital Projects Division, with a background in city planning, public programming and nonprofit administration, and a lifelong enthusiasm for parks and public places.

In the early 1980s, then Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis began appointing borough commissioners and park administrators. This was to ensure that parks would benefit from an increased level of experienced and skilled managers who would bring their expertise to upgrade physical conditions, organize recreation programs and obtain public and private funds for capital improvements. Administrators have overseen significant improvements to parks such as Battery Park, Riverside Park, Fort Tryon Park, Madison Square Park, Randall’s Island, Central Park, Prospect Park, Northern Brooklyn’s parks, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Rockaway Beach, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, Crotona Park, the Staten Island Greenbelt and more.

To assist in this effort, traditional friends groups and nonprofit park conservancies were formed to help raise private dollars to combine with public funds for maintenance and programming enhancements. Public-private partnerships have also coordinated thousands of neighbors to become engaged and active in their local parks through volunteering. Many park administrators are also the executive directors of a park’s nonprofit group. This allows the Parks Department to ensure that the best interests of the park and the public are coordinated with those local residents who have volunteered their time helping to improve their park.

At Washington Square Park, Sarah will hold a dual role as the executive director of a nonprofit organization that is currently being formed. A group of citizens who live and work in the community is seeking to raise funds for the park and engage neighbors to help the Parks Department care for the park’s lawns, plants and playgrounds, and to create programming. We look forward to working with the new group to encourage community involvement and volunteering.

Visitors to Washington Square Park will soon see fruit from our partnership in the flowering trees, daffodils and tulips, and in annual maintenance, including our top-dressing of the lawns. The Parks Department has increased maintenance staff to handle the springtime influx of visitors, while the new nonprofit group has pledged to bring in a playground associate for the summer months to conduct arts and crafts and other activities for children.

The future of Washington Square Park is bright, and we look forward to joining forces with the community as we ensure that it remains an inviting oasis to our city’s residents and visitors.

Washington Square Park Administrator Sarah Neilson is happy to hear community members’ ideas and concerns about the park and the emerging conservancy. She will hold a weekly “Arch Hours” session on Mondays from 11 a.m. to noon at the Washington Square Arch, and encourages you to stop by and say hello. She can also be reached at Sarah.Neilson@parks.nyc.gov or 212-408-0297.

Castro is Manhattan borough Parks Department commissioner

McCarthyism, at least as applied to communists, is dead and buried. But its tactics are not. And in liberal-minded communities like ours, sometimes words like “racist” or “homophobe” get thrown around in similar fashion — allegations, based on very little, designed to smear, not to engage in principled debate.

I don’t usually get to complain. I am a public figure, at times a controversial public figure, who is used to getting called names. I’ve learned to grin and bear it. And I certainly know how to dish it right back, although I rarely do.

But a line got crossed in The Villager a month ago that still leaves me angry, because it reflects an effort by some political forces in the Village to retain or regain power, and a lack of principle as they do that.

What was I called? I was labeled a “supporter of housing on Pier 40.” A whole page of ranting about this in a Scoopy column about the prearranged anointment of Jonathan Geballe to the Village district leader position. Tony Hoffmann, the Village Independent Democrats president, who himself was once the victim of smears decried by the late columnist Jack Newfield, announced that V.I.D. was running Geballe against me because I “supported housing on Pier 40.” Maria Passannante Derr, president of the Village Reform Democratic Club, who nominated me and then voted for Geballe, said the same thing: “Arthur supports housing on Pier 40.” But nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Unlike Geballe, who has never had a word to say about Pier 40 and has never lifted a finger to support it, I worked for Hudson River Park going back 17 years, when I filed a lawsuit for the Greenwich Village Little League and the Downtown United Soccer Club, which established the application of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) to Pier 40 and got the state to build a $2.5 million ball field on the roof. I helped draft and lobby for the Hudson River Park Act. I chaired the Community Board 2 Waterfront Committee for most of 15 years, and served as chairperson or vice chairperson of the Hudson River Park Advisory Council for most of that time.

In the course of that work I chaired two public task forces that looked at Pier 40 proposals, one in 2002-2003 and one in 2006-2007. And I was part of the Pier 40 Partnership, an independent effort in 2007 to find a solution for Pier 40. Those task forces and the Partnership included community leaders, elected officials, youth league reps and waterfront activists. Anyone who attended these meetings knows that I always took a nuanced approach, looking to build consensus and find solutions. Assemblymember Glick, former state Senator Duane and Council Speaker Quinn all signed on to the final task force recommendations both times, and generally supported the Partnership’s work.

There was NEVER a recommendation to consider housing.

Since December 2011 I have served on the latest Hudson River Park Trust Task Force looking for long-term solutions to for the park’s finances. Unlike the prior task forces, this one was chaired by the Trust’s president, Madelyn Wils. I chaired the C.B. 2 Waterfront Committee all of 2012, and the Hudson River Park Trust Advisory Council, and held numerous public hearings and meetings. No one who attended any of those meetings EVER heard me advocate for housing on Pier 40.

What I did do was publicly speak and write about building into the process, through legislation, some sort of safety valve to protect community input, which would be superior to ULURP. Some safety valve like the one that let Assembly Speaker Silver block a West Side stadium after it had passed ULURP. And, I advocated, once such a safety valve was in place, allowing all sorts of proposals to be made all over the park, even casino gambling on the pier that is now a tow pound (Pier 76). One position I stated repeatedly was opposition to condos in the park — no one should own a piece of the park. But I also question why renting a parking space to a car, or an office to a “tech firm” — both real estate transactions — was somehow preferable to renting an apartment to a family. I even dared to say that parking cars in the park was not a park-compatible use, but that I could live with it, with appropriate restrictions (mostly long-term parking spots that didn’t disrupt bikes, joggers, etc.)

But I NEVER said, “Build housing.”

But the modern-day McCarthyites decided they could not beat me in a district leader election without a smear campaign. Heaven knows what they will come up with now that housing is off the table.

Shame on you, Tony Hoffmann, and shame on V.I.D. if it adopts such tactics, tactics which belie its history.

And to The Villager: Do a little fact-checking next time, even for your gossip column.

Housing at Pier 40 appears to be a dead item. Let’s hope that McCarthyism in 2013 doesn’t rear its ugly head again.

Schwartz is vice chairperson of the Hudson River Park Trust Advisory Council and Democratic State Committee member for the 66th Assembly District

Elected and appointed officials from across the city, seeking a constructive way to respond to such a senseless tragedy, rallied behind a proposal to install speed cameras in select locations throughout the city, especially near schools. Unfortunately, because New York City cannot blow its nose without permission from the Legislature in Albany, we lacked authority to enact this safety measure unilaterally. And guess what happened? Our request was denied because certain influential Upstate legislators did not want to risk creating a precedent that could bring speed cameras to their own districts (where they might get caught speeding), and two Brooklyn state Senators cared more about currying favor with the police union than saving lives.

Fortunately, notwithstanding Albany’s obstructionism, New York City’s progressive Department of Transportation has implemented numerous programs that do not require Albany’s sign-off to protect pedestrians, cyclists and other motor vehicles from those traveling at excessive speeds. One such program allows for the implementation of “slow zones” in select neighborhoods. The slow zone program, in short, takes a well-defined, relatively compact area, and reduces its speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour, with further reductions to 15 miles per hour near schools. These newly reduced speed limits are then promoted and enforced through the use of traffic calming measures, such as specialized signage at zone entry points, painted speed limit information on streets and the selective use of speed humps (relatively flat, elongated speed bumps that are designed to be traversed at 15 to 20 miles per hour).

It is hard to overstate the value of a slow zone’s speed reduction: A pedestrian who is struck by a car going 30 miles per hour has a 45 percent chance of being seriously injured or killed, but if the car’s speed is 20 miles per hour, the chance of serious injury or death drops to just 5 percent. Additionally, such a speed reduction reduces the risk of child pedestrian/cyclist accidents by 67 percent. It is, therefore, not surprising that similar programs have produced dramatic results. In London, a 9-mile-per-hour reduction in average slow zone traffic speeds resulted in a 46 percent reduction in fatal and severe injury crashes compared to non-slow zones. In the Netherlands, slow zones resulted in a 25 percent average decrease in injuries. In Barcelona, crash rates in newly created slow zones dropped by 27 percent.

The success of these programs led other cities to implement similar programs, including Berlin, Zurich, Dublin, Stockholm, Helsinki and New York. Beyond their positive effect on health and safety, slow zones also bring numerous quality-of-life improvements, such as reducing traffic noise, reducing cut-through traffic volume (and its related air pollution) and creating more social streets.

Because D.O.T. will not implement a slow zone where its benefits are offset by negative externalities, such as increasing traffic congestion or restricting the flow of emergency services, many areas are not well-suited to receive the gift of a slow zone. Fortunately, one area within the district I represent as a member of Community Board 3 — and in which I have a special interest as founder of the Tompkins Square Park & Playground Parents’ Association (TSP3A) — meets or exceeds all of D.O.T.’s standards for the implementation of a new slow zone. In fact, if established, it would be the new gold standard for New York City slow zones.

To that end, I am pleased to announce TSP3A will soon be submitting an application to D.O.T. for what we are calling the “Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone” (TSACSZ). The proposed borders of the zone (which themselves are not part of the zone) are as follows: the western border is First Ave.; the eastern border is the F.D.R. Drive; the northern border is 14th St.; and the southern border — which, following D.O.T. rules, is drawn to avoid having a firehouse in the zone — is Second St. to the west of where it meets Houston Street, and Houston Street to the east of where it meets Second St.

TSP3A believes the proposed TSACSZ will benefit our neighborhood’s residents, visitors and businesses. With respect to our residents and visitors, the zone will create a safer, cleaner neighborhood with less traffic noise. The improvements will be of particular benefit to children, senior citizens and certain physically challenged persons for whom speeding traffic presents the greatest danger.

Local businesses will benefit in two ways. First, when motor vehicles pass through a neighborhood more slowly, their passengers are more likely to notice and patronize its local businesses. Second, reduced traffic speeds offer increased protection to the patrons of local businesses. Despite what we may think of the noisy, drunken masses that teem out of our local bars late at night, no one wants to see an intoxicated person stumble into a street and get hit by a speeding car. For bars — which can be subject to “dram shop law” civil liability in such cases — the extra safety that slow zones provide should be enthusiastically welcomed.

As noted, the TSACSZ abundantly satisfies all of D.O.T.’s major slow zone approval requirements. For example, D.O.T. requires that slow zones have strong borders. The proposed TSACSZ has a major avenue, highway and crosstown thoroughfare as three of its borders, and a major crosstown thoroughfare as part of its fourth. One significant benefit D.O.T. looks for in a slow zone is that it protects school children. The proposed TSACSZ is home to 12 schools located within seven school buildings, so its beneficial impact in this area would be significant. In fact, the highest concentration of schools in an existing zone — the New Brighton/St. George Slow Zone — is five schools.

Likewise, D.O.T. favors slow zones that help protect kids in preschools and daycare centers. TSACSZ has 22 combined preschools and daycare centers, which is more than double that of the Corona Slow Zone, the existing zone with the highest preschool/daycare center concentration.

The proposed TSACSZ is also home to three senior centers and 38 parks, which attract sizable populations that would greatly benefit from a slow zone’s traffic calming measures.

Moreover, TSACSZ avoids virtually all of the negative factors that count against slow zone applications, insofar as it has no firehouses, hospitals, truck routes or major thoroughfares within its borders.

Finally, the proposed TSACSZ encompasses 0.38 square miles, just 0.08 square miles more than the Elmhurst Slow Zone, whose size D.O.T. calls “ideal.”

Perhaps the strongest factor weighing in favor of the TSACSZ is that the area is particularly dangerous. According to Transportation Alternatives, from 2005 to 2009 (the five most recent years for which State Department of Motor Vehicles data is available), there were 143 pedestrian injuries and 70 cyclist injuries in the proposed TSACSZ. There were also two pedestrian fatalities. That means the proposed TSACSZ averages 42.6 injuries and 0.4 deaths annually. By way of comparison, only one existing slow zone — Elmhurst, with an average of 44.6 annual injuries — is even in the same ballpark as the proposed TSACSZ. The next highest injury total for an existing slow zone is Boerum Hill, which has 28.2 annually. In fact, one existing slow zone, Dongan Hills, was approved by D.O.T. despite having just 4.6 annual injuries — 89.2 percent less than the proposed TSACSZ.

Although, as the above data demonstrate, the proposed TSACSZ is ideally suited for D.O.T. approval, no slow zone application can be successful without demonstrated support from the local community and its elected officials. Although I will personally reach out to key stakeholders in our community to encourage their support, any person, business or organization that wishes to lend a hand to this health and lifesaving effort should contact me by e-mail at TSP3A@yahoo.com. Time is of the essence with respect to this application: The deadline for submissions is May 31, and with a new mayoral administration coming this January, there are no guarantees a slow zone program will exist in 2014.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it is important to conclude by explaining why protecting pedestrians from dangerously operated vehicles is so important and personal for me. When I was 23 years old, my father was struck and nearly killed by a speeding drunk driver. The accident left him bedridden, with quadriplegia and a severe brain injury, until he passed away 13 years later, just 16 days after my first child was born. The events of that terrible day — December 5, 1995 — completely devastated my family and me, and the relentless physical and emotional suffering and financial struggles that followed took an enormous toll on us for years to follow.

Having endured such an agonizing experience, I would do anything to help other families avoid a similar tragedy, but I cannot do it alone. This effort cannot succeed without strong, public support from the residential and business communities of the East Village and Community Board 3.

So I am asking the readers of this talking point to please join me and TSP3A in our effort to protect the health and lives of our families, friends and neighbors through the implementation of the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. Every voice counts. I hope we can count on yours.

Marlow is founder of Tompkins Square Park & Playgrounds Parents’ Association and a member of Community Board 3, where he serves on the Transportation and Public Safety Committee