Department of City Planning

A hearing on the Riverside Center mega-development yesterday revealed a popular hunger for a more walkable West Side and perhaps some interest from the City Planning Commission in the same. Extell Development is looking to build a housing and retail complex, including 1,800 parking spaces, on this waterfront site equivalent in size to two Manhattan blocks. Public testimony called for a slew of urban design improvements to their plan, including reducing the amount of off-street parking, integrating the site with the surrounding streetscape, and working towards burying the elevated Miller Highway.

At a panel sponsored by the American Institute of Architects last night, two of the city's top transportation planners joined one of its hardest-working bike advocates to discuss how to make cycling a mainstream mode in New York.

More New Yorkers are riding bikes than ever, but a new report from the Department of City Planning further complicates the effort to precisely determine how much cycling has taken off. The report, which looks only at cycling in Manhattan bike lanes from 2001 to 2008, shows a significantly slower rate of growth than estimates based on other measurements.

In a surprise to few, the wannabe-suburban East River Plaza big box mall can't fill its 1,428 space parking lot.

The City Planning Commission approved plans for the Flushing Commons development yesterday, sending the project forward through the land use approval process. Officials' portrayals of this development, which will put 1,600 parking spaces in the middle of a transit-rich downtown, put the city's tortured relationship with transit-oriented development into perfect perspective.

The City Planning Commission certified Extell Development's parking-filled Riverside Center proposal yesterday afternoon, setting in motion the city's land use review process. Certification is more about completing paperwork than rendering judgment, but the discussion of the proposal did offer a few clues about which aspects of the three-million square foot project are front and center in the minds of planning commissioners.

City Hall has another big vacancy to fill. This morning the Bloomberg administration announced that Robert Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development, is returning to the private sector. Lieber's portfolio includes the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of City Planning. His departure could create a window of opportunity to fill some of the biggest gaps in the city's sustainability agenda, PlaNYC 2030. 

Reforming New York City parking policy is a critical component of reducing automobile use and building better public spaces. It's becoming increasingly clear that rethinking how we store cars can help address New York City's housing crisis as well. Requiring parking not only creates traffic, it also prevents housing from being built and drives up prices.

Last week the Department of City Planning announced an initiative to promote car-sharing in New York City. The new zoning amendments remove some of the uncertainty for car-share companies by spelling out where shared cars can be stored. At a hearing on the proposed changes last Monday, one member of the planning commission suggested an additional step with big implications for livable streets -- tying car-share to reduced parking requirements -- but the planning department has declined to draft rules that go that far.