Development

Yesterday, Streetsblog looked at Flushing Commons, a mixed-use development in the heart of transit-rich downtown Flushing, where the New York City Economic Development Corporation has mandated suburban levels of parking. We asked the EDC why they required nearly 1,600 spaces in the development, and now we have an answer. It's a revealing look at how the city has relinquished its responsibility to set a coordinated parking policy, much less one in line with the goals of PlaNYC 2030.

It's not every day that a New York City real estate executive name-checks Donald Shoup, but one developer admiringly referred to the dean of progressive parking policy while explaining his project to Streetsblog. If not for the New York City Economic Development Corporation and mis-directed political pressures, says TDC Development President Michael Meyer, the huge mixed-use project he's building at one of the biggest transit hubs in Queens could have made better use of enlightened parking policy. 

Well over a hundred people filled the auditorium of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Church last week for a forum on the future of Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue put on by the Park Slope Civic Council. The stretch of Fourth Avenue on the western edge of Park Slope saw a wave of residential construction after a 2003 rezoning, but walking there still feels akin to navigating the shoulder of a highway. The new buildings and promises of a grand boulevard have raised expectations for the street, however, and the Brooklyn Paper reports that the forum conveyed a clear public desire for traffic calming and additional pedestrian space.

The New Domino development proposed for the Williamsburg waterfront made headlines last week when a Brooklyn Community Board 1 committee voted against enabling its construction. This privately financed project is worth a close look because it exemplifies how developers can embrace certain livable streets goals while ignoring the big picture of traffic. It's the kind of development the city will have to guide with a firmer hand in order to meet the sustainability goals of PlaNYC.

Last week, Comptroller John Liu announced plans to convene a task force to study and issue recommendations about community benefits agreements in New York. While details on the task force are still forthcoming, the renewed public attention on these planning tools provides an opportunity to examine how CBAs have worked in New York and how they are increasingly being used to build livable streets.

In the last eight years, Amanda Burden's Department of City Planning has rezoned 20 percent of New York along relatively transit-oriented lines, while simultaneously promoting quasi-suburban projects at prominent sites and maintaining parking minimums that erode the pedestrian environment. In other words, the planning department is promoting growth in the right places, but enabling the wrong kind of development. So in the next four years, will New York's planners adopt more sustainable practices or continue the status quo?

This is the second installment in a three-part series on the reshaping of New York City and its consequences for sustainability and livable streets. Read the first part here.

We continue our series on the next four years of New York City transportation and planning policy with today's essay by Ron Shiffman. Co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development and a professor at the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning, Shiffman served on the City Planning Commission from 1990 to 1996. Read previous installments in this series here, here, and here.

The $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers -- which was wracked by fraudulent claims after its creation as part of the nation's economic recovery effort -- is on the verge of a significant expansion by Congress.