Bloomberg Rezoning Didn't Add Much Residential Capacity

A new study out of NYU suggests that the city's feared and reviled rezoning efforts may not have done so much damage after all. It covers a period from 2003 to 2007 when 18 percent of city properties were rezoned under the Bloomberg administration and shows that, unexpectedly, the measures didn't move towards denser residency as a rule. In fact, "on 86 percent of the lots that were rezoned, building capacity was reduced or limited, or limits were placed on the kind of structure that could be built,"reports the Times.

Rezoning created capacity for as many as 80,000 new housing units, or 200,000 more people, adding the most residential capacity in Queens, followed by Manhattan and then Brooklyn. None at all was added in the Bronx. (Clarifying graphic here.) Vicki Been, who headed up the Furman Center report, was surprised by the results, especially considering officials' announcement they were preparing NYC to take on 1 million new residents in the next two decades. “There are an awful lot of downzonings and contextual-only zonings that may limit the city’s ability to do that,” she said.

According to Amanda Burden, the city’s planning director since 2002, the city’s approach was based on a “finely grained” process of considering the individual needs of communities. “We respond to communities where the threat is the greatest to the neighborhood fabric,” she said. “We upzone where it’s sustainable, and where reinvestment is needed.” Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at NYU praised her restraint, in a city that's never been short on crowds. Burden “has done more to reshape the city than anything Robert Moses ever did,” he said

But others worried her "color blind" sensibilities have passed over low-income and minority New Yorkers by preserving mostly-white neighborhoods with higher incomes, and adding density to black and Hispanic areas. Brooklyn city councilman Brad Lander says the city needs to ensure that “communities are receiving their fair share of growth, across boundaries of race and class and borough.”