New York City facing demands of growing population

Reuters ^ | December 12, 2006 | Daniel Trotta

[MinorityRepublican]

EW YORK (Reuters) - New York City must take aggressive action now to meet increased demand for energy, housing and transportation as America's largest city faces population growth of nearly 1 million over the next 25 years, officials said on Tuesday.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched the "New York 2030" planning campaign as the city expects an additional 200,000 residents by 2010 and as energy demand is seen outstripping the current supply by 2012.

The city, whose current record population of 8.2 million is expected to reach 9 million by 2030, driven by economic growth and immigration, is taking a hard look at the limitations of its current infrastructure, including parts of its power grid that date to the 1920s.

"Every major infrastructure system in our city will be more than a century old (by 2030) and pushed to its limit. It doesn't have to come to that if we act," the mayor told a forum unveiling the planning project.

For example, he said, "Our aging sewage network still discharges 2 billion gallons of sewage into our waterways every year."

Growth will require more power plants, playgrounds and subway routes, which the city must provide while safeguarding the environment in an age of global warming, Bloomberg said.

In addition to the city's millions of residents, infrastructure must accommodate the millions of residents of New York's surrounding suburbs who work in the city, as well as a growing number of tourists.

Absent were any details on how to finance mega projects, though Bloomberg noted that the city's bond rating was at its highest ever -- Standard & Poor's rates it at AA-minus -- and that last week a city agency sold $2 billion of bonds to finance a subway expansion with demand tripling the amount on offer.

[oceanview]

upstate new york needs casino gambling - not indian resevation casinos, but vegas style casinos. you go to atlantic city, the CT casinos - all full of NYers. all that economic activity leaving the state, could have been the basis for a revival of the catskills and other areas.

[upcountryhorseman]

Critical mass has been exceeded: move away!

[sageb1]

I guess your idea of upstate is different than mine. The Catskills are downstate to me. I'm near the VT border an hour north of Albany. No one wants a casino up here.

[Eric Blair 2084]

People aren't as dumb as Bloomberg thinks. They are voting with U Haul trucks and their feet and getting out of Dodge. It's all over for America's partial state by state experiment with Socialism. Unless the Communist states like MA, NJ, NY, CA are prepared to shoot the citizens who dare try to make it over the Berlin Wall and move to a capitalist Red State. Mayor/Dictator/Monarch Bloomberg makes the faulty assumption that people will want to remain in the DPRNY. It will be a ghost town in 25 years unless they change course.

[xowboy]

They are moving here to NM and wrecking the place too. Soon there will be no place to go.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1753283/posts