erickober.bsky.social
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute. All opinions my own.
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To succeed, it needs comprehensive reorganization of rail operating entities, labor's cooperation and agreement by the Federal and state governments on who will pay for what. A lot to ask in the current, or perhaps any conceivable future political environment.
www.city-journal.org/article/nort...
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Thanks, 38 years as a city planner, you learn something.
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On the second, I conclude that while the city's Office of Management and Budget should continue to have the dominant role in drafting the capital budget, the comprehensive planning framework could allow the City Planning Commission to provide more useful input than it does currently.
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My answer to the first is that a well-drafted comprehensive planning requirement could provide a constructive path to adopt a citywide housing framework, while also identifying the capital improvements necessary to make it work.
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The testimony addressed two questions put to me:
Should there be a comprehensive planning requirement in the Charter?
Should the City Planning Commission's co-responsibility for the capital budget be restored?
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Thanks.
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And the of course 1975, when the mayor remained in office, but not in power.
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Yes, for a considerable period the City Planning Commission was down to four members -- the minimum number needed to pass anything, because the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens seats couldn't be filled. Each member had a de facto veto.
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There's a development site at 44th Drive and 23rd St. that has a zoning floor area bonus for that connection. Unfortunately, never pursued.
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NYC land use history is full of such edifying tales.
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Sunnyside Gardens homeowners found loopholes in the seemingly ironclad zoning text enabling them to alter their houses. Thus the deal for the historic district.
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They couldn't just map the PC District at Fresh Meadows because that would be spot zoning. So they also mapped it at Sunnyside Gardens, Parkchester and Harlem River Houses.
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The PC District was created in the 1970's after Fresh Meadows built a new apartment building. An NYC DCP staffer was a tenant activist there and wanted to stop any more building.
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The Suunyside Gardens historic district exists as an outcome of a political deal to lift the Planned Community Special Preservation District (PC) zoning. The PC District is a kind of super-landmarking.
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True. Also, zoning requires a city planning commission special permit (ULURP) for supermarkets over 10,000 sf in manufacturing zones, as well as a super-high parking requirement in most of the city. Moreover, Walmart has no stores in NYC, not least because of opposition from the city council.
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Congratulations!
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Yes. Sadly, those were not difficult or controversial. But the effect was to build support on the council for very consequential upzonings.
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So let's credit everyone who has tried over the years to mitigate the housing crisis.
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De Blasio ramped up public spending. Not my preference, but certainly had a highly visible impact. And at the end of his administration, the Gowanus rezoning.
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Under Bloomberg: Downtown Brooklyn, Greenpoint-Williamsburg, Hudson Yards, West Chelsea, Dutch Kills, Astoria, Bedford-Stuyvesant and much else.
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Subsequent mayors focused on areawide rezonings, and many of these were notably successful. Under Giuliani, Downtown Flushing, Long Island City.
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In the mid-1980's Ed Koch announced his own $5 billion housing plan. He also pushed through the Quality Housing citywide zoning reforms, which undid many of the 1961 restrictions on new apartment buildings. Quality Housing (1987) was the most comparable effort to City of Yes.
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The first effort to do something about the 1961 zoning was Ed Logue's UDC, a state superagency with zoning override powers. That failed in the 1970's.
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Before 1961, NYC had very permissive zoning, which allowed the ubiquitous six-story apartment building almost everywhere. The 1961 comprehensive rezoning was much more restrictive outside Manhattan.
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That's correct. Override powers in towns and villages were removed in response to Ed Logue's attempt to build low-income housing in the suburbs in the early '70s. City powers have been used from time to time, e.g. Atlantic Yards.
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This all happened around 1984-5.
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Trump owned the New York Generals, a franchise in a new rival league, at the time. Mario Cuomo was governor.
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I was in those discussions. Surprisingly, the offer was not as attractive as it seemed. Good times.
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The City Planning Commission and the City Council have not adjusted their demands on residential developers to subsidize affordable housing privately merely because these developers are no longer as well compensated through the property tax exemption. So we get vacant lots.
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Instead, the legislature created a new tax exemption program, "485-x" which is much less generous and requires that the developer not only subsidize affordable housing but also pay "prevailing" (union) wages.
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Just to solve this mystery, Project B was dependent on the New York State legislature reinstating the very generous property tax exemption program known as "421-a".
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1944-60 zoning worked brilliantly in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, not so well in Manhattan where tower coverage was capped at 25 percent.