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

A solar future (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Climate change is here – and it is here to stay unless we take immediate action. One simple but meaningful way to make an impact is to empower property owners with the tools they need to reduce or altogether eliminate building emissions. 

Fortunately, the New York City Department of City Planning’s proposed

Max Politics Podcast: A Pro-Housing Agenda for New York, with Annemarie Gray

Gov. Hochul at a housing event (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)

New York faces an acute housing crisis: rents are sky high, not enough housing is being built, homeownership is increasingly out of reach, and there is a looming eviction crisis coming out of the covid pandemic. But while the issues contributing to the problem have long been simmering, solutions from state and city leaders have been halting and piecemeal, far from meeting the need wherein 53% of New York City tenants are...

Mayor Adams building housing (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Five-and-a-half months into his administration, Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday released a comprehensive plan for housing and homelessness that aims to build new mixed-income rental housing, preserve existing affordable units, improve public housing stock, expedite the creation of supportive housing, cut red tape that prevents homeless people from accessing housing, and help New Yorkers buy affordable homes. 

The mayor’s plan, dubbed “Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness,” reflects a paradigm shift from

City Council Member Francisco Moya (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

November 20, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: City Council Member Francisco Moya on Zoning Battles, Running for Speaker, & More

City Council Member Francisco Moya joined the show to discuss his work chairing the Council's zoning subcommittee, recent land use debates and larger issues of development, and his bid to become the next Council Speaker.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter ...

Time to crack down on zoning fraud, the author argues (photo: mayor's office)

Most of the world now knows the Kushner name for the widespread political corruption of the Trump administration, but the family company has been ripping off New Yorkers for years. How did a slumlord developer get all the way to the White House? 

Fittingly the answer lies with the President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who paved the way as Mayor of New York City by shifting enforcement of vital building regulations to an honor system. But an honor system only works when there

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

The first day of school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

In New York City, nearly half of elementary school children are overweight. The city’s Department of Education is in charge of the largest school food service program in the country, serving over 177 million meals per year. But despite the city’s efforts, such as providing free breakfast for students and placing restrictions on snacks sold in school vending machines, childhood obesity continues to pose a major challenge. In recent decades there have been significant

AARP members pack City Council chambers (photo via @aarpny)

There are about 800,000 AARP members in New York City and Mayor Bill de Blasio has been arm-in-arm with them of late. The organization has come out in strong support of key pieces of de Blasio's affordable housing agenda and his plan to create a city-run retirement savings program for private sector workers.

De Blasio has sought and embraced the support, frequently engaging with AARP members and regularly citing AARP's endorsement as validation for his housing plan, specifically controversial changes to the city's zoning

New York City Hall

What to watch for this week in New York politics:

This week will be another busy one when it comes to budgets: the City Council continues its preliminary budget hearings and state budget negotiations enter their final ten days - a state budget is due by April 1 and some say a deal could be announced before the end of this week. Don't count on it, though, state budgets usually come in just before (or, as was the case last year, just after) the March 31 midnight

De Blasio rallies for his housing plans (photo: Demetrius Freeman, Mayor's Office)

After months of public discussion and weeks of private negotiation, the City Council is on the verge of passing, with tweaks, two sweeping changes to the city's land use rules that are key to Mayor Bill de Blasio's housing plan.

Sources familiar with negotiations say that some details are still being worked through, but that the major tenets of the controversial changes to city zoning text are all but set. A deal may be announced as early as Monday

Council Member Greenfield leads a press conference (photo: William Alatriste) 

The next ten days are an especially critical period for Mayor Bill de Blasio's housing plan. While negotiations around a new state-level program to incentivize affordable housing production continue and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised to soon flesh out general affordable housing plans he announced during his recent State of the State speech, city-level changes being sought by de Blasio are on the move.

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photo via @NYCulture

Earlier this month, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs announced a promising new program aimed at strengthening cultural organizations in targeted neighborhoods. The initiative, known as Building Community Capacity, was introduced in conjunction with Mayor de Blasio's rezoning proposal in East New York, where the program will be launched.

The new initiative is

Hope Knight (photo via @rorylancman)

"It's an exciting time to be joining the City Planning Commission," City Council Member Brad Lander said Tuesday to Hope Knight, a mayoral nominee to the commission at the nexus of controversial housing-related policy being pursued by the de Blasio administration.

"It's a tough time to be joining," Knight said during her appearance in front of Lander's committee, which is tasked with vetting potential appointees to several commissions. Knight, who is all but sure to be approved Wednesday by the

photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York

Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday 

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Mayor de Blasio signs legislation creating the city's new Department of Veterans' Services, via Joe Bello, @NYMetroVets

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New York City Hall

What to watch for this week in New York politics:

After a quiet Thanksgiving weekend, New York politics springs back into action Monday. As the week gets going we're watching as discussions continue around the mayor's rezoning policies, which have been seeing some significant pushback from community and borough boards.

The Speaker & the Mayor (photo via the City Council)

Speaking at separate events over a two-day span, both Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito acknowledged significant community pushback against the mayor's rezoning proposals and said that those plans will be tweaked before the Council votes on them.

On Monday, de Blasio was asked about the largely negative reaction across the city to the zoning

Red Hook Houses harvesting (photo via @GreenCityForce)

In the midst of city-wide controversy surrounding two new zoning proposalsconnected to Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s affordable housing plan, health and housing experts gathered to discuss how zoning could impact something else: food.

“I

BK BP Adams at an event (photo via @bpericadams)

At Brooklyn Borough Hall on Monday, Borough President Eric Adams held a public hearing on the de Blasio administration’s controversial East New York Community Plan. After remarks from City Council representatives at the packed-to-capacity hearing, stakeholders from the affected area urged Adams to reject it.

“What I’m gonna stand here and talk about is

photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York

Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday November 20, 2015

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Mayor de Blasio, former Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Mark-Viverito and others at Friday's tree-planting ceremony, via @NYCCouncil; former

New York Law School's Ross Sandler & HPD's Vicki Been (Phoebe Rosen for NYLS)

Vicki Been, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said that the city’s affordable housing plan is on track and responded to critics on Friday, emphasizing that the plan is less about simply building units and more about “making neighborhoods better.”

Speaking at a breakfast hosted by the CityLand publication of New York Law School, Been gave a balanced, thorough

A Movement for Justice in El Barrio rally

An East Harlem tenants group is gearing up to battle Mayor Bill de Blasio over his housing plan, saying that the plan will see local mom-and-pop stores bought out by chains, further incentivize landlords to push tenants out, and destroy the culture of Spanish Harlem.

The group, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, is countering the de Blasio rezoning proposal that they call a "luxury housing plan" with a 10-point agenda of its own designed to preserve current housing stock and protect the community from gentrification. It

A new MTA MetroNorth facility (photo: MTA/Patrick Cashin)

At an Urban Land Institute conference last week, two panels of transportation experts – one from the public sector, the other from the private sector – discussed the issues plaguing tri-state transportation systems and the potential of public-private partnerships to address them.

“Transportation agencies are great at delivering state-of-good-repair projects, delivering normal replacement

The community school forum (photo: @JoAnneSimonBK52) 

As rezoning problems plague some city school districts, leaders in one area of Brooklyn are looking to avoid similar pitfalls while reducing overcrowding.

In Carroll Gardens last week, local officials and parents gathered in the PS 58 auditorium to discuss overcrowding issues facing three elementary schools. Like others across the city, District 15 - which includes the schools at