Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Department of City Planning

The Next New York: How NYC Can Grow as a Walkable City

By Noah Kazis | Feb 22, 2010 | 12 Comments

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?

The Next New York: How the Planning Department Sabotages Sustainability

By Noah Kazis | Feb 19, 2010 | 18 Comments

The Argyle, a new arrival on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, is close to transit but cedes the ground floor to parking rather than retail or even a stoop. Parking requirements throughout New York compromise walkable development. Image: Brownstoner. This is the second installment in a three-part series on the reshaping of New York City and its […]

Shaping the Next New York: The Promise of Bloomberg’s Rezonings

By Noah Kazis | Feb 18, 2010 | 7 Comments

The Department of City Planning has mostly zoned for growth near transit, as in its plan for downtown Jamaica (left). Where the city has encouraged growth far from transit, however, car-oriented developments have followed, like Schaefer Landing in Williamsburg (right). This is the first installment in a three-part series on the reshaping of New York […]

NYC Agencies Team Up on Guidelines for an Active City

By Mike Lydon | Jan 28, 2010 | 6 Comments

City officials, architects, planners, and public health advocates crammed into the Center for Architecture last night for the unveiling of New York City’s Active Design Guidelines. Heralded as a first-of-its-kind collaboration between four city departments — Health, Transportation, Design and Construction, and City Planning — the effort underscores that New Yorkers, as much as we […]

Coming Soon: Ped-Friendly “Urban Umbrellas” for NYC Sidewalks

By Noah Kazis | Jan 21, 2010 | 23 Comments

Image: NYC Department of Buildings Walking through parts of New York can feel like walking through a tunnel. The city’s ubiquitous sidewalk sheds — typically blue scaffolding holding up green plywood to protect pedestrians from construction overhead — corral people into cramped, dark spaces wherever development or building repairs are underway. There are about 6,000 […]

Smart Growth Leader Tells Planning Commission: NYC Can Do Better

By Noah Kazis | Jan 5, 2010 | 12 Comments

According to the Smart Growth Manual, "It is the planner’s role not to incentivize driving, but to create a transit and pedestrian experience that makes not driving a pleasure." New York may be the most transit-rich city in the nation, but that doesn’t mean big changes to the city’s planning policies aren’t necessary. That’s the […]

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