Over the past five years, the Center for an Urban Future has published three reports calling attention to the city’s delay-ridden and overly costly capital construction process for libraries, cultural institutions, public parks, and other vital social infrastructure. The Center’s work urged the city and state to reform this process to ensure that New York’s limited capital dollars can stretch much further than they do today. The Center also published multiple op-eds, testified at City Council hearings, and met with numerous government officials to inform this effort, including then First Deputy Mayor Lorraine Grillo, who led the Adams administration’s Capital Process Reform Task Force. 

In January 2023, the task force released detailed recommendations, which drew heavily from the ideas and policy recommendations raised in the Center’s previous three reports. The task force report included recommendations to streamline approvals, reform procurement, improve the project pipeline, and strengthen project management, mirroring several key recommendations from our Stretching New York City’s Capital Dollars report.

CUF has published a number of studies about NYC’s aging infrastructure and opportunities to reform the capital construction process, including Caution Ahead: Five Years Later, A New Leaf: Revitalizing New York City’s Aging Parks Infrastructure, and Slow Build.