The Corridor Journal of Strategic Alliances Transportation & Infrastructure | Page 8

Smart Growth
Has Made It on
Long Island If...
We Love Where We Live,
Get Where We Need to Go,
and the Plumbing Never Fails
Voices of Eric Alexander, John Durso,
Ralph Ekstrand, Veronica Vanterpool
By Vivian Leber
The CORRIDOR highlighted Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)—the new emphasis
on the vibrant Long Island Downtown—in our last issue, “Building Arts & Real Property.”
This issue continues to look at “Transportation & Infrastructure,” to tell the story about
how Long Island is proactively planning a saner, smarter future, one community at a time.
The Editor held a second conversation with Eric Alexander,
Executive Director of Vision Long Island, the Cover for our last
issue. Eric is the “Bridge-Builder” who articulates goals and
brings the developers, community leaders and policymakers to
consensus; no one does that better. Other voices in this feature
include two of Vision Long Island’s 45 board members: John R.
Durso, who speaks for the workforce which is building the new
and improved Long Island; and Veronica Vanterpool, Executive
Director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who is the
advocate for everyday users of transit—the walkers, bike-riders,
train and bus commuters, shoppers, and the involuntarily carless.
Another voice (Sidebar) is that of Ralph Ekstrand, Village of
Farmingdale’s mayor, who is a successful early-adopter of TOD.
If Long Island were a state, its population (nearly 3 million) would
rank it as the 19th largest. Alexander describes Long Island as
“a community of communities.” He believes that viewing it as a
single region that ought to have a common plan is wrong and
counter-productive. “Academic conversations about regionalism

“So you want to lift communities up, support the local leaders
who are doing a good job, and be attentive to the details of placemaking, with strategic interventions and more resources.” One
of Vision Long Island’s community planning roles is to organize
a series of “visioning” sessions for communities to solicit best

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is a 90s thing,” he says. “We do certain things as a convergence of
interests, such as getting county, state and federal governments
to bring resources to places that want the investment. But let the
locals, who are best equipped and trusted by the public decide
what needs to get