Zoning and housing in focus (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Zoning is often discussed like it’s an occult force with mystical powers. I’ve spent decades overseeing New York City’s zoning, and I promise, it’s not magic. It’s an important planning tool to direct where the housing, jobs, and other facilities the city needs can be added, but its mystique can obscure important realities. 

The misuse of zoning, often driven by good intentions, is a major cause of the structural housing shortage that drives up housing

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso outside Borough Hall (photo: office of Brooklyn Borough President)

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed and exacerbated widespread disparities in communities across the city, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso launched an effort to create a comprehensive plan that would drive long-term decisions in the borough with a focus on public health outcomes. Later this month, Reynoso is expected to release the final recommendations from that effort after months of soliciting input on the public’s priorities

Climate resiliency envisioning (photo: mayor's office)

Superstorm Sandy’s impact on New York City must not be forgotten: 44 people died citywide, over 69,000 homes were damaged, and Brooklyn’s waterfront neighborhoods flooded in an area more than twice as large as the 100-year floodplain. Over 2 million New Yorkers lost power, stranding some residents – especially those in public housing – for weeks before power was restored. 

Now it’s a decade later and we’re still recovering from the last storm and completely

Closed storefronts (photo: Office of Manhattan Borough President)

Occupied storefronts in New York City make neighborhoods lively, convenient, and livable. But there is a big difference between thriving retail and retail vacancy. When metal grilles and empty spaces dominate, ground-floor retail becomes a community and citywide liability. Vacant stores are ugly, make people feel less safe, attract graffiti, and fail to offer needed neighborhood services. 

Even before the pandemic, many neighborhoods were blighted by

Development rendering (image: NYC mayor's office)

Over the past several years, our cityscape has continued to transform before our eyes. Gentrification and displacement have pushed deeper into working class communities, while shiny new towers throughout the five boroughs remain out of reach. At the forefront of this reality is the way our government makes planning and land use decisions. They shape what our city looks like. And equally as important — they shape what communities are served.

The fact is, the way we plan is broken,

Mayor de Blasio surveys damage from Ida (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

When the long tail of Hurricane Ida brought record rainfall to our region earlier this month, public officials claimed they were blindsided by the damage that resulted. While it’s notoriously difficult to accurately predict rainfall, the devastating societal impacts of the storm were not a surprise to those who follow these issues closely.

An inundated transit system, flooded homes in lower-income neighborhoods, residents trapped in basement apartments.

City resources on offer (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

The New York City Inclusive Growth Initiative -- an effort organized by three major nonprofit groups -- this week released a “blueprint” of 50-plus recommendations for the next Mayor and City Council to guide an equitable recovery from the devastating covid pandemic. Noting the propensity for change during times of crisis and the history of disasters like Hurricane Sandy and the

The mayor and others cut ribbon at new park (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

The New York City Department of City Planning on Tuesday unveiled a new website that details its ten-year strategy for building and enhancing city infrastructure, including everything from housing and schools to transit systems, roads and bridges, parks, and water and sewage piping. 

The ten-year capital strategy

New Yorkers participating (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)

On February 23, public hearings began for City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s “Planning Together” legislation, which would institute a process for creating a comprehensive plan for New York City. I fully support city planning, but believe Planning Together’s top-down approach needs fundamental change. 

New York City is virtually the only major city in this country that does not have a comprehensive city plan. Instead, we rely on a piecemeal approach to zoning

Rendering (photo: mayor's office)

The City Council held a hearing this week on a bill to implement comprehensive long-term planning in New York City. With the right amendments, we think this legislation has the potential to foster a more equitable and rational planning process to guide land-use changes in New York City — one that will balance local and citywide needs.

But comprehensive planning is about much more than land use. Done right, comprehensive planning touches on decisions in nearly all aspects of city life: education,

New York City (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)

City Council members and officials from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration clashed at a Tuesday hearing over proposed legislation to overhaul, consolidate, and in some ways expand the city’s planning processes into a singular ten-year procedure that would align budget, policy, and land use decisions.  

The proposal was released by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson in December and seeks to replace what he calls redundant, antiquated, inequitable, and ineffective existing

New York City development (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would overhaul New York City’s long-term planning processes, eliminating duplicative procedures, streamlining agency coordination, and establishing a more proactive, holistic approach to land use and budgeting that prioritizes racial and economic justice. 

For decades, the city’s zoning, land use, and development have been subject to disparate sets of mandates and guidelines, some overlapping and redundant, in

Council Member Brad Lander (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

What's The [Data] Point? Episode 97: 8,200 - the Gowanus Rezoning with City Council Member Brad Lander [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

City Council Member Brad Lander joined the show to discuss the Gowanus rezoning proposal that is entering final stages of negotiation and the

The mayor at a ground-breaking ceremony (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

The Department of City Planning (DCP) has announced that it is resuming the city’s rezoning process after a five-month suspension due to the pandemic. But DCP has neither adapted the process that leads to significant land use changes to overcome the obstacles created by the pandemic nor the underlying structural racism embedded in land use decision-making. As DCP said in a recent statement reaffirming its commitment to dismantling institutionalized

An argument for a regional approach to recovery (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)

Even for a metropolitan area that experienced the trauma of September 11, 2001 and the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, nothing could prepare residents of New York and their neighbors in New Jersey and Connecticut for the COVID-19 crisis. The death toll has already far surpassed that of the World Trade Center attack and will continue to climb. The economic damage is certain to exceed the job and income losses of those events and the 2008 financial crisis combined. The impacts on

Mayor de Blasio makes an announcement (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)

What was ostensibly meant to be a City Council hearing on the proposed preliminary budget for the Department of City Planning on Tuesday turned into a debate about the de Blasio administration’s approach to neighborhood rezonings. Several Council members expressed their displeasure with rapid gentrification and resident displacement, and what they believe are the city’s insufficient efforts to stop those trends while at times exacerbating them through rezonings, while Mayor

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

New York City doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for the future. There is no single guiding document that determines how housing will be built over the next decade, for example, overlaid with a strategy for meeting infrastructure needs like transit options and school seats, with unifying visions for social services and economic development. But such planning should exist, according to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is making several moves toward the type of planning that has mostly

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City’s housing crisis is getting worse. While a significant number of luxury units sit vacant, the population of homeless children is growing, we have only a ...

(rendering via the Mayor's Office)

The New York City Council is crafting legislation to mandate the creation of a comprehensive plan for the city that would guide long-term decisions on land use, zoning, and investments in infrastructure. The effort is being led by Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso.

Last year, the City Council urged the 2019 Charter Revision Commission to propose to voters an

Council Member Rodriguez with a constituent (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

Shortly before Christmas a judge of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan issued a ruling annulling the rezoning plan for Inwood that had been in the works since 2017 and was approved by the City Council in August 2018. The City has appealed the decision to the Appellate Division; the case may well go all the way to the Court of Appeals before it is finally resolved. But even if ...

City-owned building at Vernon Blvd & 44th Dr (photo: Memo Salazar)

2019 may go down in history as the year public disenchantment with New York City’s land use policies reached a boiling point.

In June, protestors disrupted a meeting about a neighborhood study for a potential rezoning on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx, claiming that city agencies did not really want their opinions. In August, a judge heard arguments in a lawsuit challenging the 2018 Inwood rezoning, with groups in that Upper Manhattan neighborhood charging that the environmental impact study

(photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)

New Yorkers heading to the polls this fall have the opportunity to vote on amendments to New York City’s Charter – our city’s foundational governing document – that include changes to how we vote, police accountability, and budgeting. But one big topic will be missing: truly addressing our city’s broken land use system.

This didn’t have to be the case. When the City Council, then-Public Advocate Letitia James, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer came together to create this Charter Revision Commission

City Planning Director Marisa Lago (photo: May Vutrapongvatana)

In a Friday morning speech about how New York City’s limited space is used, Marisa Lago, director of the Department of City Planning, discussed some of the department’s approaches to the housing, employment, and equity challenges facing the city.

The city has a population of 8.4 million and is “the only older U.S. city that has surpassed its 1970s-era population peak,” said Lago, who was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to direct the Department of City Planning and chair the City

(photo: John McCarten/City Council)

July 31, 2019 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Planning for the City's Future

City Council Member Brad Lander joined the show to discuss his efforts to institute better long-term city planning, to desegregate city schools, and to punish reckless drivers. He also weighed in on the presidential race and the candidacy of Mayor

(photo: NYC Planning)

This past week, amidst flooded streets, blackouts, overheated jails, and subway failures, New Yorkers saw the consequences that result from a failure to engage in strategic long-term planning for the future of our city. In the final decisions of the 2019 Charter Revision Commission, we also missed a big chance to do something about it.

The dangers of failing to invest strategically in the infrastructure that sustains our city will grow in coming decades, as temperatures