In “Five Boroughs. One City. No Plan.” Jarrett Murphy talks about the vast increase in zoning that has taken place during the Bloomberg administration. Zoning designates the permitted uses of the lands, such as for residential, commercial, manufacturing, the style and size of buildings, and the size of yards, amongst other things. During nine years of Bloomberg’s administration, there were 108 rezonings, and since 2002, 9,400 blocks in New York City have been rezoned. This is especially astonishing when compared to the 1980s and 90s when it took five years to rezone five blocks, and it seems like it doesn’t take much work or effort or thought to rezone during the Bloomberg administration.
Amanda Burden, head of the Department of City Planning, said that the rezonings “are setting the conditions for sustainable, transit-oriented growth” and are “designed to accommodate a population of 9 million New Yorkers projected by 2030.” This sounds nice in theory, but I wonder what happens if the developments and projects don’t work out. Maybe a certain type of zoning won’t work in an area. If the neighborhoods and areas do not develop like expected or people don’t live or go there, what happens? It would be a waste and it could leave neighborhoods empty and ruined.
Something interested mentioned in the article that we have also discussed in class was giving developers the right to build large structures if they also build affordable housing, protect cultural institutions, encourage bike racks, and other things that are supposed to help the people of the city and make it better. This sounds like a good way to make sure that there is benefit to everyone, not just the developers and a certain part of the population, but it would only work if done correctly. One thing to look at would be how having affordable housing mixed in regular market housing would affect who lives there. The article also says there would be bonuses for builders who protect neighborhood grocery stores, but I wonder how this would be done since by developing the area, rent would probably go up thereby kicking people out since they could no longer afford it. There is also the question of whether or not developers do what they are actually supposed to.
In the article, Pratt Center’s Eve Baron writes that planning is not just about the physical, but also about having day care, schools and other services. That along with transportation, parks, and health care is part of a comprehensive plan, but New York has never really taken a comprehensive approach to planning. This sounds good, but I think it’s difficult to do when an area is already developed. If you have a very little developed area, then it much easier to put things where you want, but if it’s a developed city with a lot of people and businesses you would have to see where an upcoming neighborhood is before deciding to add more transportation or school or something. There is not point in planning and building something if you aren’t sure that people will go there. Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean people will go.
Right now, the plan or agenda in place for the city is PlaNYC. It isn’t a really plan, but I don’t believe that a complete developed plan is really needed for it to succeed. It’s more of a vision of what the City should be like in the future, and perhaps there is not really a concrete strategy to everything outlined in PaNYC, but having it is a start and it could be decided on later on. What might work in area might not in another, like with parks and open spaces, so catering the plan to each area would be best.
