Hey Ariana! GREAT blog post! I really feel like your post helped me understand the significance of rezoning a lot better!

I found it very interesting that you kept bringing up rezoning as a way that was meant to “better the City” or “help the City” in city planners’ eyes (although you do effectively argue against rezoning as a beneficial practice in my eyes). On the surface, rezoning seems to be an effective method of redevelopment, but your blog post made me really curious as to what what making the City “better” really means and what people actually benefit when planners try to make the City “better!”

I think, from the readings this week and the extra articles you provided, that rezoning isn’t the best method for redevelopment. In your blog post you saw the significance of rezoning through the impacts on the areas being rezoned themselves, using gentrification as an example. I’m so glad that you mentioned the expansion of Columbia University in your blog because I had a lot of similar thoughts on the issue as you did. No doubt, Columbia brings diverse groups of people to the area but I’m just as skeptical as to how beneficial this expansion is on the surrounding residents as you are! Will the 19% of families that make between $10,000 to $25,000 in the area really benefit as much as people traveling to Columbia will? I also think that redevelopment of the area will invite gentrification to take place. So how does this make the city “better?” It makes it “better” for those outside the area, but those within it become victims to the raising costs of living. It seems like rezoning only accomplishes to make the city “better” for another group of people rather than the current residents of an area.

On a side note, isn’t gentrification sort of expected as a result of rezoning areas in a capitalist society and urban landscape like ours? It’s totally normal and logical that people are driven to areas with lower rent, so is it necessarily a bad or unexpected thing that the- as you put it- “ethnic landscape” changes because of gentrification? Perhaps shifting the current populations of residents to a more “desired” (as according to whomever is planning or contributing money to the rezoning efforts) population has to do with what city planners refer to when wanting to “better” the City? In other words, is gentrification the desired effect of rezoning practices in making our City “better?” And if gentrification is a natural process in our capitalist society, then perhaps rezoning as a tactic for redevelopment isn’t the main issue to tackle, but looking at why populations of people can’t make enough money to support themselves is? 

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times articles exemplify your point exactly! Although de Blasio’s rezoning efforts are to help residents, he might essentially be pushing residents out because of increasing housing prices. I found it interesting that in the Wall Street Journal article, it quotes several administration officials saying, that “it was impossible to build units for low-income families in East New York through zoning alone because of current market conditions in the neighborhood.” It seems that rezoning doesn’t achieve everything city planners might be aiming for! And it’s evident that this rezoned area is “better” for everyone, except current low-income residents! Going back to my discussion on gentrification, it’s ironic that de Blasio is rezoning an area as part of his Affordable Housing Initiative, yet the area might end up gentrified! 

Overall, wonderful blog post! I had a lot of fun trying to decipher what rezoning does to make the City “better” and who a “better” city really serves.