According to the article Five Boroughs. One City. No Plan written by Jarrett Murphy, New York City has gone through 9,400 blocks of rezoning process. Amanda Burden, who is the head of the Department of City Planning, believes that rezoning “are setting the conditions for sustainable, transit-oriented growth and are signed to accommodate a population of 9 million New Yorkers projected by 2030.” Some parts of the city were heavily occupied, for example downtown and midtown Manhattan, while other parts of city were quiet vacant, lack of livable conditions.

I do agree that there should be different policies for different neighborhood. However, as this article pointed out that sometimes these policies raised public questions. Areas that were supposed to get downzoned were instead becoming denser. As Jarrett Murphy pointed out in this article, there seem to have certain pattern in which the area that got downzoned were mostly white and wealthy neighborhood. I think that the process of zoning may not necessarily good for the neighborhood, but sometimes benefits developers.

Since 1916, there were regulations on what can be built in the city.  For example, the old “wedding cake” rule, which states that “builders had to set back the upper floors, so that building looked like cake layers stacked one atop another,” I think this is definitely a great way to construct skyscrapers because it allows more sunlight passing through the city. However as time progressed, the desire of building modern style of skyscraper may not fit into this “wedding cake” rule. It’s not surprising to me that the zoning resolution has been constantly changing.

My favorite part of this article is when Eve Baron was describing what planning is all about; he says “Planning is about more than the physical.” Neighborhoods that are livable should include schools, day care center, medical centers and other public facilities that make up basic elements of a community. The whole process of zoning started with government regulating what can and can’t be built. It was the private market that decides what gets built, but the problem is that these private real estate market only focuses on constructing apartment buildings and can’t satisfy what a neighborhood’s actual needs.

In order to build a neighborhood with all those transportation infrastructure, parks and health center, there should be a comprehensive plan. However, “New York has never taken a comprehensive approach to planning.” It seems like the whole project was only focused on real estate development without actually thinking about what really makes a good neighborhood to live in. This is why the process of rezoning in New York City usually takes a long time because there is no cohesive plan for building the city.

In “Five Boroughs. One City. No Plan,” Jarrett Murphy talks about the immense amount of rezoning that has taken place under the Bloomberg administration. This rezoning poses a disturbance because it changes the regulations governing the way land is used, the style and height of buildings, the size of yards and the distance between houses. Although the rationale behind the rezoning is to make New York ready for a larger population to live in, I think that it can cause disturbances for the current residents and planners in New York City. I find it interesting that as a part of the rezoning initiatives, planners were giving incentives to build larger buildings as long as they were providing affordable housing. This makes sense since it would provide people with more living opportunities and would help the low-income families with finding an economic residence.

I think that it would make sense to develop the infrastructure near areas of public transportation so people would be inclined to settle there and it would also make traveling around the city more convenient. However, since all of the rezoning was not done at these transit locations, there were other economic goals that were more important for the city planners to consider, such as locating people to the waterfront. I also find it interesting that most upzoning projects were for the whiter and wealthier areas, which shows that the city planners had economic plans for their changes.

The fact that the zoning was being done to accomodate the developers’ visions of how the city should be growing seems very dangerous to me. If their visions do not come to fruition, then the results may be unexpected and can cause the city and the residents of the specific rezoned neighborhoods to suffer. This is another way in which rezoning can fail when estimations are made for future populations and lifestyles. I was surprised that New York started the trend of city-wide zoning regulations which describe what can be built on every square foot of the city. I thought that New York would have used another city that had a proven story of such a plan being effective before it took such a major step.

The transformation of the zoning regulations also shows some of the overall changes made across New York City itself. As it becomes more modern and holds more people, it needs to find a way to accomodate more residents while also looking like an urban oasis. It is also interesting that so many of the major cities across the nation have such different zoning regulations and what they limit or call for. For example, in Chicago’s zoning regulations, they laid out streets but also plotted where cultural facilities and parks should go, unlike New York’s original zoning regulation.

It is an interesting thought that Manhattan could have been less dense had the city made proper and more detailed zoning regulations. This would certainly have solved many issues plaguing the city today. Also, the possibility of the city having more of a balance of jobs would be a huge positive had such regulations been created. However, even though the past cannot be changed, planners are still not making amends to the city’s zoning regulations that would help the future of New York City be more sustainable for its growing population. I guess that Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC is the closest thing yet to a plan for a sustainable city. However, the plan is more of an agenda than a plan so the future of the city still remains uncertain as planners are yet to come up with a sustainable idea for the future of the city.

“Free market may be imperfect, but they’re far better than the alternative—the blight of arbitrary government control and the uncertainty that it creates.” Nicole Gelinas conveys this message throughout her article, Eminent Domain as Central Planning. Over the past few years, the use of eminent domain in central planning has heightened greatly, but its outcome is not necessarily as beneficial as many may assume. Gelinas brings to light the stark reality that “the [government’s] duty to design a perfect economy trumps…constituents’ right to hold private property.” What is even worse is that a perfect economy is rarely the realized result.

According to the US Constitution, the government can legally seize property if it is intended for “public use” and only if “just compensation” is given. Generally, “blighted” property is grounds for public seizure. Over the years, however, the definitions of each requirement have changed, broadened, and have become much more subjective. According to Gelinas, in the 1930s, “blighted” meant “families and children dying from rampant fires and pestilence in tuberculosis-ridden firetraps.” By 2006, this definition encompass isolated graffiti, cracked sidewalks, and underutilization of land that does not “generate the social and economic benefits the government desires.” This has allowed for many more opportunities to seize land that otherwise would have been left in private hands. More importantly, such subjective and arbitrary decisions actually violate due process, according to Gelinas—one of many reasons that eminent domain should not be too freely exercised.

Although there seems to be a trend towards increasing use of eminent domain for positive economic benefits, there are many examples that portray quite a different reality. Gelinas points to multiple government projects—the Atlantic Yards and rows of homes slated for demolition, the Spalding Building now abandoned, vacant lots where lively businesses once stood—where land is now decaying due to the governments impeding of genuine private improvement.  It is ironic that central planning is perceived to be superior to free-market competition if these are some of its results. To remedy this, Gelinas advocates the state should not interfere in people’s property.

If the government does not intervene, can any progress be made? Gelinas proposes the organic growth of communities, rather than large-scale public intervention. The government should provide public necessities such as policing, infrastructure and the like. In turn, this will allow local residents to constantly improve their communities, albeit slowly. Unfortunately, the opposite has been occurring. In Willets Point, for example, the city “is starving the private sector of public resources,” making it much easier to deem areas “blighted” and exercise eminent domain.

After many weeks of reading about public housing and government intervention in the economy, it would be wrong to say that central planning is completely bad. Gelinas’s article, however, made me realize that the broadening jurisdiction of eminent domain seems to be hurting neighborhoods more than it should be helping. Increasingly creative definitions are becoming the new central planning model, but this model may not be the best. I agree with Gelinas’s decision that clearer standards for the government’s power to seize property are necessary. The government should stick to providing communities with necessities and letting them better themselves slowly but surely.

Over the past couple of years one major issue that has been voiced regarding the Atlantic Yards project has been the law of Eminent Domain. One of the fundamental principles included in the United States Constitution, is that everyone has the right to own property, and that the government must do all that is in its power to protect this right. However, according to the law of Eminent Domain, which stems from the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, the government can legally seize private property for a “public use,” as long as they provide the owner with just compensation. Over the years, this law has been misrepresented and altered to include the fact that the government can seize land, not only for a public use, such as the construction of roads and railways, but also for a public purpose, which includes rebuilding blighted areas that have been underutilized.

Nicole Gelinas, author of the article, “Eminent Domain as Central Planning,” believes that in the case of the Atlantic Yards the government is overstepping its limits. She states that government officials believe that “central planning is superior to free-market competition.” It is their opinion that “their duty to design a perfect economy trumps their constituents’ right to hold private property.” They believe that an arena and high-rise buildings are better than a low-rise neighborhood, and are therefore invoking their power of Eminent Domain to achieve their goals. However, in reality, who’s to say which alternative is better than the other. While residents may believe that a low-rise community is better than one filled with high-rise office towers, developers may take the opposite view. She believes that the first step in combating this law, is to get rid of the term “underutilization” as a justification for taking ones property. If “underutilization” remains as a criteria of Eminent Domain, it will ultimately create a policy in which all property will require commercial development.

One part of her article that I found to be extremely interesting, was when she described how West Harlem owners won their court case. In order to prove that their neighborhood does not fall under the category of “blighted” and therefore does allow the government to seize their property under the law of Eminent Domain, the owners conducted a  study to show that their neighborhood was not blighted. They understood that the government would conduct a report showing that it was blighted and therefore believed that a good way to combat the government’s case was to create their own study. Furthermore, they provided a former government study showing that their neighborhood was being revitalized. However, after discussing this case, Gelinas correctly stated that property rights should not depend on the owner’s creativity to prove, but should be a law that is followed and kept without any hesitation.

One point concerning Eminent Domain, which Gelinas failed to mention, is in regards to the definition of “just compensation.” The question that remains is who gets to determine the amount of compensation that the government must pay the owners for their property? While the owners may believe that their property is worth more due to sentimental value, the government may believe that it is worth less because sentimental value is not included in the market price. This creates a battle between the government and residents, in which they can’t decide what the market value of the property really is. Furthermore, what happens if a family cannot find a home that suits their needs with the “just compensation” that they are offered? Besides for the fact that confiscating private property is wrong, there are no clear guidelines stating the grounds on which “just compensation” is to be determined.

At the end of the article, Galinas makes a great argument, which really goes to show you the destruction that Eminent Domain can cause. She states that if you walk through Prospect Heights you can finally see the decay that the government wants you to see. Land where historic buildings once stood are now vacant lots, leaving the area “gap-toothed.” The decay, however, was not caused by the market, rather it was brought about by the developer who urged the government to invoke its powers, just so they can make a profit.