Jarrett Murphy’s article regarding New York City’s rezoning and future plans under Bloomberg’s administration is lacking in various areas. Government regulation on land use changed since 2002 with the 9,400 rezoned block in New York City. This large amount of change during Bloomberg’s administration makes me wonder why it was all even necessary. Under Koch, the maximum amount of rezoned blocks was five, and this was even into the 90s, which was not too long ago. Although the claim that rezoning was done to pursue “transit-oriented development” it does not appear to be the case. About more than half of the rezoned areas downsized actually had good proximity to transit. Thus, it seems that City Planning is working against its supposed goal and is just reshaping New York City as it pleases.
As the first city to apply zoning on a citywide basis, we had started off other cities rezoning such as Chicago and Miami. Although a different tactic was taken, the plans of these two cities were successful. Efforts to succeed in our rezoning plans in 1939, 1950, and 1969 all failed. According to Tom Angotti, if comprehensive plans were made and succeeded, New York would be different than what it is today. This would not be too much of a big deal in my opinion, if the article had not mentioned that City Planning is not working on long comprehensive planning and is instead narrowing down their focus to individual proposals and neighborhoods. From my perspective, why do areas have to be rezoned anyway? Either way all the different areas make up New York and the districts are fine the way they are. Even if they are rezoned, people in the area most likely will not know that they have been rezoned. I know I would not.
With the name PlaNYC, one would think it is a plan to help New York City’s future. However, according to Murphy’s article that is not the case. Apparently, “PlaNYC was never intended to be what its name implies,” instead it is supposed to be an “agenda.” This is the simplest, yet biggest mistake that could be made. The name of something should tell the audience or give the audience an idea of what it is, yet this name was chosen because it was “cute.” Even when planners had told them that the name gave off the wrong meaning, it was still decided that the agenda would be called PlaNYC. From this, I think that this group needs to rethink their name or fulfill the meaning of PlaNYC with real plans instead of agendas. To get things done, the city needs plans more than agendas.
The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure creates a difficult path for plans. The developer must first gather paperwork to be reviewed by City Planning, mainly a complete environmental impact statement. The EIS is not only costly for the developer, it is also risky as the market involved in the proposed plan fluctuates as the plan is being reviewed. As time is of essence, approval of the EIS in a timely fashion is crucial, but even for a short project it takes three to six months to review. Besides time being a problem, some developers “downplay obvious concerns.” I think this is a bigger problem than time, since not going into depth of problems in the environment can lead to future harm and damage. If a developer does this, I do not think their proposal should be considered, because this small action can lead to bigger more harmful actions.
Although New York City is always growing and changing, a long comprehensive plan to ensure its future is possible. Without a plan, how will New York solve the present and past problems that will affect its future? People cannot just rush ahead without a plan, so neither should the city, and officials should understand that and start working on a plan.
