Department of City Planning
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Flawed DCP Studies Might Undermine DCP’s Own Parking Reforms
What appears to be an internal rift within the Department of City Planning could disrupt attempts to reform the city's parking policies for the Manhattan core, in the face of opposition from the powerful real estate industry.
October 26, 2011
Promising Parking Reforms Brewing Inside Department of City Planning
A generation ago, every new building in New York City had to include parking. Even in downtown and midtown Manhattan, the law required developers to build parking spaces for 40 percent of all new residences. The most walkable, transit-accessible districts in the country had mandates to set aside space for car storage.
October 25, 2011
NYCHA Chairman: Parking Minimums “Working Against Us”
Leaders in New York City's public housing community are interested in transforming city-owned superblocks into mixed-use, mixed-income communities that engage with the pedestrian realm. There are of course many obstacles to this kind of ambitious project, but only one was identified specifically in a Municipal Art Society panel on the topic last Friday: the city's own parking requirements.
October 17, 2011
At St. George, EDC Wants Suburban-Style Parking for Its “Vibrant Downtown”
St. George Staten Island could become the region's next great downtown. That's the plan over at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is about to redevelop two waterfront sites immediately adjacent to the ferry terminal.
August 12, 2011
Vacca Watch: Transpo Chair a Big Booster of Parking Minimums
The Bronx is booming. Over the last decade, no borough added more new residents or posted faster wage growth.
August 1, 2011
Take a Tour of the Sheridan Expressway (While You Still Can)
When taking a tour of the Sheridan Expressway, the first thing you realize is that you're also taking a tour of the Bronx River Greenway. The two pieces of infrastructure -- one a 1.25-mile stub of highway, the other a still-piecemeal bike and pedestrian path reconnecting Bronx neighborhoods to the water -- both run through the low river valley. The greenway and the cleaned-up river, products of decades of community activism, are signs of the incredible revitalization of the South Bronx.
July 29, 2011
Department of City Planning Continues to Restrict Development Near Transit
The Department of City Planning's commitment to rezoning the city along more transit-oriented lines is a critical component of its sustainability agenda. Allowing more people to live and work next to transit means more people will ride transit and fewer will drive.
July 6, 2011
Rezoning to Encourage Street Life on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue
When the Department of City Planning put forward its rezoning of Park Slope in 2003, one of the earliest of the now 111 rezonings under Mayor Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, it was intended to help turn Fourth Avenue into "a grand boulevard of the 21st Century."
June 22, 2011
DCP Official: Parking Minimums Buy Support for Upzonings
We reported yesterday that Department of City Planning Sustainability Director Howard Slatkin recently announced that his agency "believe[s] there are opportunities to lower parking requirements" in a ring of neighborhoods around the Manhattan core. This would be an important step forward in overhauling decades-old policies that lead to more traffic and less affordable housing. Importantly, Slatkin also revealed a major reason why the department sees mandatory parking minimums as so important -- it's all about the politics of development.
May 11, 2011
DCP Likely to Propose Lower Parking Minimums for NYC’s “Inner Ring”
In its recent update of PlaNYC, New York's long-term sustainability plan, the city committed itself to the proposition that “requiring too much parking to be built in a dense city like New York can encourage driving, contribute to congestion, and unnecessarily raise the cost of new development.” That was a major breakthrough given the Department of City Planning's previous reluctance to admit that parking minimums induce traffic, but PlaNYC's lack of substantive commitments to parking reform left many wanting.
May 10, 2011