Opportunity NYC
Opportunity NYC was an experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States or any other developed nation. Its initial phases were funded by a number of private partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Starr Foundation, AIG, and Mayor Bloomberg's own Bloomberg Family Foundation. The program is being evaluated by MDRC, a nonprofit research firm, using a random assignment research design. Opportunity NYC is administered by Seedco, a nonprofit community development organization. The program ended on August 31, 2010.
Mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg
Bloomberg was one of the most active big city mayors on the issue of the environment. On April 22, 2007 he announced PLANYC: an aggressive program to vastly improve New York City's environmental sustainability by 2030. On May 23, 2007, Bloomberg announced that by 2012, all the city's medallion taxis will be hybrid cars.
PLANYC aims to improve the city's sustainability through a multi-pronged approach that includes, among other things, the adoption of traffic congestion pricing based upon a system currently used in London and Singapore. Bloomberg contended this measure would reduce pollution and traffic congestion while raising revenue for the city. He also pledged to plant one million trees in New York City, in an effort to clean the air and boost property values.