Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first term was marked by many accomplishments, including the enactment of one of the most expansive inclusionary housing programs in the nation. At the end of the first term, the administration was on track to surpass its 2013 goal to create and preserve 200,000 units of housing, and even increased the goal to 300,000. Yet, one area of the administration’s housing plan had seen slower progress. Efforts to upzone 15 communities to create more capacity for affordable housing across the City encountered fierce resistance. To date, only three of these rezonings have passed, while one stalled and others are making much slower progress to address community and stakeholder concerns.
The public remains in the dark about why these places were chosen, how other neighborhoods will contribute to the citywide goal of addressing the affordable housing crisis, and whether sufficient resources exist to aid communities in accommodating the growth without displacement. The de Blasio administration’s proposed neighborhood rezonings have been almost exclusively in low-income communities of color. While it isn’t wrong for the city to turn an eye toward these neighborhoods — many of which have been disinvested in and ignored for decades — efforts to upzone these and other neighborhoods would be aided by a public rationale for how the neighborhoods are selected, and clarity about how resources will be allocated to ensure fair neighborhood outcomes.
A comprehensive citywide planning framework would provide this rationale. It would create publicly accepted criteria and guidelines for where and how rezonings should occur, and more broadly, it would enable the City to reach a shared vision with community level targets for its accomplishment. Creating an Office of Community Planning would enable more local stakeholders to have a say in the future of their neighborhoods, and could serve to strengthen the entities most likely to engage in neighborhood-level planning efforts, including community boards. More community based plans would be a boon to the city’s planning efforts, as these surface important priorities and ideas that are often broader and more holistic than what can be contained in individual land use proposals, including opportunities for schools, jobs and economic development, daycare, housing, open space and more. Next, increasing transparency in land use processes before and during formal procedures would improve public faith in the city’s land use procedures. In a city with a comprehensive planning framework and strong community planning, less pressure would fall on environmental review studies used to analyze actions that are not as-of-right. Still, transparently revising the analysis tools and formulas in environmental review would ensure stakeholders have the best information available to make land use decisions where environmental review is triggered, and ensuring adverse impacts are mitigated as promised would restore public trust.
As the mayor and New York City elected officials enters their second term, they should explore how land use governance reform can yield better outcomes for all stakeholders, including for developers who seek less local opposition and more predictability, and especially for the most vulnerable in our city who fear displacement from their neighborhoods.
A land use reform working group of over 40 community and land use experts convened to identify strategies for reform. Facilitation was provided by the Offices of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, City Council Member Antonio Reynoso and Regional Plan Association. The working group drew on recommendations from the Campaign for Community Based Planning’s task force, active from 2000 to 2009, with the goal to support and strengthen the role of community planning citywide. The working group updated the task force’s proposals to reflect today’s planning landscape, but the goals remain similar and are perhaps even more relevant as the city’s economy continues to improve, and communities seek to balance the need for growth against the displacement pressures of gentrification. The working group also drew from the white paper titled “Proposal to Increase Community Engagement in Private Development Plans” produced by the Office of Council Member Antonio Reynoso in 2016, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer’s strong positive results with pre-ULURP planning processes and community screening and training initiatives, and Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Regional Plan recommendations on local planning.
