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Department of City Planning Continues to Restrict Development Near Transit


http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/07/0...-near-transit/

The Department of City Planning’s commitment to rezoning the city along more transit-oriented lines is a critical component of its sustainability agenda. Allowing more people to live and work next to transit means more people will ride transit and fewer will drive.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, upzonings have indeed been concentrated near transit. But what the administration gives with one hand, it takes with the other. Over the last decade, the Department of City Planning has also downzoned large swaths of transit-accessible land, preventing further development in these locations.

Indeed, under one representative five-year period of Bloomberg and Burden’s city planning, three-quarters of the lots rezoned for greater density were located within a half-mile of rail transit, but so were two-thirds of the lots where development was further restricted, according to research by NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

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