URBAN
Volume III, Number II
Fall 2000
Planner of the Month: Fernando DeGuia Interview by Hilary Botein
For this issue’s Planner of the Month, URBAN interviewed Fernando DeGuia,a 2000 graduate of GSAP’s Urban Planning program and last year’s editor of URBAN. Fernando currently works for the New York City Office of Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington as a Mayoral Assistant. He has served in this position since September of 1999; he worked 25 hours per week (while attending Columbia full-time!) until June of 2000, when he became a full-time employee. URBAN: Can you describe your job and some of the projects that you are working on? FD: I serve as liaison between the city agencies that report to our office and the Deputy Mayor and Mayor’s office. I also work on special projects that the Deputy Mayor assigns me. My regular duties have me working with: the MTA (the Deputy Mayor is on the board); the Mayor’s Action Center; the Mayor’s Voluntary Action Center; the NYC Census; the Human Rights Commission; the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (the Deputy Mayor is the chairman of the board); and NYC Empowerment Zone (the Deputy Mayor is chairman of the board). I also handle correspondence with constituents. URBAN: How did Columbia’s Urban Planning program prepare you for your job? FD: Planning History and Planning Theo-
ry come to mind. Planning Law and Planning Process also were helpful. Planning New York City is a given. Three of the agencies I work with – the MTA, Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Empowerment Zone – have a lot of development projects. Our office as a whole has a lot of economic development projects – we also work with the Economic Development Corporation regarding the Hunts Point produce market and fish market, and with the Parks Department (one of our agencies). The Community Assistance Unit, which works with local community boards, is also one of our agencies. The public involvement process, ULURP, economic development, the law, and Robert Moses come up a lot in our line of work. URBAN: What did the Urban Planning program not prepare you for? FD: I wish that GSAP provided more courses on real estate finance. I didn’t take advantage of the courses offered by the real estate program and really feel that they would have been helpful. Of course, the City has a whole department – Office of Management and Budget – that that evaluates the finances of most projects or helps answer questions we have, but it is still useful to be able to do some of the calculations yourself. GSAP also didn’t prepare me for the political side of planning. By political, I mean power and influence of individuals or interest groups. Being able to influence persons in positions of power really has a lot to do with which projects go up and which don’t move anywhere. Who you know really does matter. The real estate program offers a class that deals with the political side of real estate; I think a class dealing specifically with the political side of planning would be useful. In New York City, the Department of City Planning has little more than the ULURP process and the zoning code as its “powers.” It is not a dynamic agency. In the big picture, there are far more powerful agencies – city and state – which influence the shape of the
city. A class on economic development and the players involved and the dynamics between them would be very enlightening. It would certainly be an education to see where the power strings lead. All this is stuff that they don’t teach you in school. URBAN: What do you like the most about your job? FD: I like the fact that I have the opportunity to see so many issues and projects that affect our city (and before many of these items become public knowledge). As part of the mayor’s office, I am able to see the larger picture of what goes on in the city and how it runs. Work is never boring. URBAN: What is the hardest part of your job? FD: The hardest part must be dealing with constituents who call on us for help and I have to tell them that I cannot help them, that our office, the mayor’s office, cannot help them. Many people call City Hall and our office expecting the mayor to be able to assist them with a situation they find themselves in, a private situation. We can’t help them. We deal with city issues, issues that we actually have control over legally. We don’t interfere in private matters and many people expect that because we are the mayor’s office, we can do something about their situation. No matter how badly we may feel for them, sometimes we cannot provide the answer. We can help as much as we are able, but the mayor or deputy mayor can’t just snap his or her fingers and resolve their issue. In private matters, there is very little we can do. Another difficult thing inherent in working in a political office is navigating the political landscape. There are friends and there are not friends. I wouldn’t exactly call them enemies, since we have to be able to work with everyone, but just like everywhere else, personalities don’t always get along. 3