Urban Planning
Streetsblog Basics
Planners Tackle Big Questions About How to Shape NYC Development
New York City’s unpassed 1969 comprehensive plan. Photo: Historic Districts Council Though the Charter Revision Commission looks likely to take a pass at reforming the city’s land use process this year, the door will remain open in the years to come to tackle the complex and controversial issues that surround planning and development in New … Continued
July 22, 2010
Charter Revision Report: Land Use Process Should Stay Untouched, For Now
The Charter Revision Commission's preliminary report is out, and the headline news is that while term limits and instant runoff voting got nods, the Bloomberg priority of non-partisan elections didn't make the cut. The land use process, which was the subject of an entire commission forum last month, will likely remain unchanged for the time being.
July 9, 2010
Talking Planning, Diversity, and Cycling With the Women Behind Velo City
Naomi Doerner, Samelys Lopez, and Karyn Williams are planners, New Yorkers, and cyclists who set out about a year ago to change their profession. Responding to the lack of diversity in the planning and design fields -- and within the bicycling community -- the three of them formed the non-profit Velo City last September. Their goal is to introduce young people from diverse communities to the fields of urban planning and design, using cycling as a gateway.
June 29, 2010
Land Use Process Likely Safe in Charter Revision, But Major Issues Simmer
Former Staten Island Council Member Stephen Fiala defends the role of borough presidents in land use decision-making. Image: SI Advance. The city’s Charter Revision Commission held its fifth issue forum last night, discussing the city’s complex land use process. Based on the commentary of a panel of expert witnesses, a major revision of the city’s … Continued
June 25, 2010
“Our Cities Ourselves”: Imagining the Future of Urban Transport
Today, Manhattan's AIA Center for Architecture debuted an exhibition that envisions a new era of sustainable mobility. For "Our Cities Ourselves," the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy invited architects to take on the evolving transportation needs of the world's cities, which in two decades are expected to be home to 60 percent of the global population.
June 24, 2010
Jackson Heights Groups Unveil Bottom-Up Plan for Green Neighborhood
Last week, Jackson Heights residents won a summer-long car-free street, and it turns out that local activists have many more initiatives for a greener, more livable neighborhood in their sights.
May 28, 2010
RPA Panel: Walkable Urbanism Key to NYC’s Housing Policy
The key to building better and more affordable housing in New York City is that oft-cited but elusive quality: urbanism. So said a panel of housing policy experts and real estate developers at Friday's RPA regional assembly.
April 20, 2010
Feds Begin Redefining ‘Affordable Housing’ to Include Transport Costs
The process of expanding the federal government's definition of "affordable housing," a stated goal of the Obama administration's sustainable communities effort, began in earnest yesterday with the introduction of a new index that integrates transportation prices into the cost of living for hundreds of metro areas.
March 24, 2010
Community Benefits Agreements: What Do They Mean for Livable Streets?
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.
February 26, 2010
The Next New York: How NYC Can Grow as a Walkable City
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?
February 22, 2010