"I was a maniac." Dan Doctoroff on rebuilding NYC after 9/11
The former Bloomberg CEO and deputy mayor of New York on the economic firepower of urban placemaking, how he convinced 38 opposing land owners to say yes to The High Line, and living with ALS
How do you rebuild a city like New York after a tragedy as eviscerating as 9/11? How do you get a project like The High Line, quite literally, off the ground when all 38 landowners below are in staunch opposition? How do you persuade Google’s parent company to set up an entirely new business arm backing your vision to create the world’s first digital district?
You push relentlessly. You set aggressive deadlines. And then, you enforce them.
Just ask Dan Doctoroff. One of the most influential urban innovators in the world, the former CEO of Bloomberg and deputy mayor of New York knows exactly what it takes to rebuild a city. And, a man for whom straight-talking honesty is a trademark, he doesn’t sugar coat it.
“I am not proud of the fact that, sometimes, I yelled at people,” says the 65-year-old reflecting on his reputation in both business and government for a ceaseless pursuit of results. “I was a maniac and I drove people incredibly hard. But the key to what we achieved with New York was setting deadlines. And I drove those deadlines. I had to. Because, particularly in government, the longer you stretch things out the more difficult they become. You need someone to drive the process. That was me.”
If there is any doubt that there was a method to Doctoroff’s maniacal madness, the results speak for themselves. From Lower Manhattan to Harlem and from Staten Island to Queens, he was the driving force not just behind The High Line, but over 40 other major projects and developments including the World Trade Center site, Governors Island, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Yankee Stadium and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
It is the same drive that propelled him to make it his mission to deliver the world’s next generation of digital districts in 2015 by founding and running Sidewalk Labs, Google’s urban innovation arm. In his own words, by far the most complicated thing he ever attempted. And that’s saying something.
This is the story of a man who created a new generation of landmarks in one of the world’s most recognisable global metropolises. A businessman who came into government with no experience in urban planning whatsoever to rebuild a city still reeling from the physical and emotional impact of the worst terror attack in the nation’s history. A man for whom time has always been of the essence - no more so than now following his ALS (motor neurone disease) diagnosis in 2021.
His is a story worth hearing, not least because it has never been more pertinent.
Doctoroff understood that the ultimate success of a city rests on its ability to attract people - something urban hubs across the globe are currently battling with in the wake of pandemic-fuelled population dips. There is much to be learned from a man who fought, loudly and forcibly, to create a “magnetic forcefield” of public places and spaces to draw the masses. Who turned a vision for human-centred design not just into a reality, but into a catalyst for economic growth.
An unconventional choice
Had it not been for Doctoroff’s reputation as a tenacious goal-setter with exacting standards – he was already well-known for pushing his teams in the finance world long before taking a role in government - he may never have had the opportunity to make his mark on New York at all.
When he was brought on board as deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding in January 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the first to admit that Doctoroff was an unconventional choice given his lack of experience.
But then, Bloomberg wasn’t interested in his experience, or absence thereof. He wanted Doctoroff for his “big, bold, audacious, against-the-odds ideas” and the reputation for dogged ambition that proceeded him.
“Hiring Dan was a message to all of City government, whether people understood it at the time or not,” writes Bloomberg in the foreword of The Urbanist, a book charting Doctoroff’s career and legacy. “Our administration was not going to be satisfied with bringing New York back from the brink, and we were not only going to rebuild Lower Manhattan. We were aiming much higher – at remaking the future of all five boroughs for the next several generations.”
And that is precisely what Doctoroff did.
He wasn’t completely unprepared. He came into office with a plan for an improved, reimagined city - one he had been working on for nearly a decade having been inspired at a sporting match in 1994 - to bring the Olympic Games to New York. A vision that put people - both locals and visitors - at its heart.
“Many elements of that plan did happen,” says Doctoroff. “Hudson Yards, The High Line, The Greenpoint/Williamsburg water front, Long Island City, Coney Island, Governors Island, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Harlem and South Bronx were all included in that original vision.” And while the Games themselves never made it to the city, the plan grew to cover all five boroughs and, just as Bloomberg had predicted, became the catalyst for Doctoroff’s much larger legacy encompassing housing, industry and, eventually, the entire physical environment of New York City.
The need for speed
So, how did he do it? Put simply, Doctoroff combined his finance acumen (and former Lehman Brothers contacts for expertise when expertise was required) with a golden rule to which he held himself accountable more than anyone; the need for speed.
“The more you delay a project, the more things fall apart,” he says with the confidently resigned tone of someone who has seen many a delay scupper many a scheme. “If you take too much time, particularly in government, problems will keep piling up and you are less likely to get the project done at all.”
That’s why he took his role as a deadline setter and enforcer so seriously. It’s also why he adopted a business-like approach to community engagement. Firm but fair, Doctoroff insists that while public consultation was at the core of every project he did across the city, he never allowed it to be at the cost of the scheme itself.
“In every neighbourhood, every borough, every cultural institution we paid attention to what would work for the community and we engaged that community in everything we did,” he says citing strong, ongoing relationships with the non-profit organisation Friends of the High Line and the community around the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park scheme on the East River waterfront as prime examples. “You need the input, it’s incredibly important. But you can’t spend too much time on it because that’s when things go wrong. You need to find the balance between getting that input and reacting with speed.”
Moving fast meant Doctoroff and his team achieved more in seven years in office than anyone in the history of he city’s development. Often compared to Robert Moses, the mid 20th century urban planner regarded as one of the most influential people in New York’s history, many have pointed out that while Moses achieved more in terms of quantity, he did so over four decades compared to Doctoroff’s not even one.
The obsession with speed, says Doctoroff, was not for show. It was, and still is, a necessity in his mind and all part of what he calls the virtuous cycle of growth. Getting projects over the line, one after the other, at a rapid pace was what transformed Doctoroff’s vision from a decent run of public placemaking to a catalyst for economic growth across the whole city.
“When you grow fast you have more money to invest and, hopefully, you invest it wisely,” he says. “Then the quality of life improves and the magnetic force of the city draws in more people and the perpetuation of that cycle continues. That’s what happened for New York up until the pandemic.” Not to put too fine a point of it he adds of Bloomberg’s mayoral successor, “the de Blasio administration literally coasted on the things that we did for eight years because that cycle is very powerful. But you have to invest the money well in places, in industries and in tourism.”
Powers of persuasion
And therein lies the not-so-secret tactic behind Doctoroff’s investment strategy. He targeted projects that he knew would attract people, both locals and tourists, and then he threw everything at making those projects happen, no matter how complex or challenging they were.
The High Line was a prime example. A 1.4-mile-long elevated linear parkway built on a former New York Central Railroad spur, it has become one of the most popular landmarks in the city. But, when Doctoroff came into office, all 38 landowners under the site were in staunch opposition.
“We had to figure out a way to incentivise those land owners to get on board,” says Doctoroff. “We eventually created the air rights for them that they could only sell to land owners on the 10th, 11th and 12th avenues [the streets running perpendicular to the scheme]. We created value for them and then we created a market that they could sell into and that persuaded them. So it was financial engineering that won them over.”
He refers too to Brooklyn Bridge Park, a 1.3 mile plot for both residential and public use as another example of using “clever financing” to get a complex project over the line. “There was a great need to repair a lot of piers,” he said. “We also thought that, over time, we would need to make sure the park was sustainable. So, we dedicated the air rights and the taxes from the buildings around the periphery of the park to its construction and maintenance forever.”
Referring to both projects he adds: “We couldn’t have succeeded without that combination of clever financing, relying on the best architects and landscape architects in the world and our partnership with the community.”
The plight of Doctoroff’s digital districts
Things didn’t always go to plan, although rarely were the hurdles Doctoroff encountered at the expense of an entire project or development.
There were close calls. The redevelopment of the World Trade Center site was preceded by a years-long battle between a “snarl” of stakeholders across the public and private sectors but, as we all now know, did eventually make it over the line.
But there was another high-profile project that didn’t. Doctoroff’s plans to create a generation of digital cities alongside Google was arguably one of the most well-documented projects he ever attempted. It was also the most contentious.
Long after his government career, he approached Google’s parent company, Alphabet in 2015 with a plan to build a generation of cities “from the internet up”. The idea was that Google’s technology could be used to create a new breed of new, sustainable districts all over the world with better building codes, modular housing, weather-mitigation systems and healthcare provision. Districts where self-driving cars could even be used as “robo-taxi” fleets.
An 800-acre test site was located in Toronto but, after years of wrangling, Doctoroff’s vision for what was dubbed The Quayside Project never got off the ground. The project was wrought with challenges as questions were raised over privacy and data use and, in May 2020, Doctoroff announced that Sidewalk Labs had decided to abandon the scheme.
“It’s a tragedy we didn’t get it done,” he says reflecting on the decision to walk away. “This was the ultimate focus on human-centred design. Every building was going to be mass timber and we were going to use digital tools to create a climate positive neighbourhood. Eventually though, we felt that local governments were not responsive enough to the technological innovation and that it was going to take forever. And that violated my rule of speed.”
One day at a time…almost
Another mention of speed, one that moves the conversation on to the future; both Doctoroff’s and that of the world’s cities.
Since he was diagnosed with ALS (Motor neurone disease) in 2021, Doctoroff says that he has realised there are only two things that genuinely matter in life; personal relationships and having a purpose. “I have both,” he says.
From a personal perspective, the diagnosis has shifted his focus away from looking too far ahead - a tendency for which he was known for so long - as he learns to take each day as it comes. But this is Doctoroff. And while he may be settling into a new rhythm of living his own life in the present, he can’t help but look ahead when it comes to the future of our urban hubs.
“The decline in population since Covid is a big danger to cities,” he says. “When you have fewer people you have less money, fewer people investing in quality of life and that virtuous cycle of growth can quickly become a vicious cycle. Addressing the decline in population is imperative. We have to focus on safety, which is foundational, on housing because we need people to be able to afford to live in our cities and we need governments to be more efficient to demonstrate what they can do to instil confidence in the private sector.
“It’s all about placemaking. It’s all about human-centred design.”
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