Mayor Bloomberg has announced PlaNYC, a planning process for looking at New York’s next 25 years. If trends continue, the city may add almost one million new residents by the year 2030. The city is preparing a strategic plan to define how to deal with the implications of such dramatic growth.

New York New Visions, broadening the scope of its work beyond the World Trade Center reconstruction, will host an educational forum, an overview of the Mayor’s challenge. The presenter will be Rohit Aggarwala, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability. Other participants will be announced, but will include Don Elliott, former Chair, NYC Planning Commission, who directed New York’s last city-wide planning effort.

On the next three successive Friday mornings, NYNV will have presentations and discussions around the three main topic areas of the NYC 2030 process (titles as characterized in current planning material):

• Friday February 9 (8-10 AM): MaintaiNYC: How can the city’s utilities and services be updated to deal with this growth?
• Friday February 16 (8-10 AM): OpeNYC: Where will people live and work? Can they easily get around? Where will they relax and play?
• Friday February 23 (8-10 AM): GreeNYC: How can New York become a sustainable and environmentally sensitive city?

Today (Feb. 5), NYNV will organize task forces around each of these major topics to help engage the city in exploring assumptions, defining an inclusive process, identifying options, and examining implementation tools.