http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...icle-1.2854137
New York City’s population projected to exceed 9 million by 2040, an increase of 500K
BY ERIN DURKIN
November 1, 2016
Quote:
Relentless growth fueled by immigration, people arriving from other parts of the country and more residents simply staying put will push an already swelling population past the 9 million mark in the decade beginning 2030.
The growth rate — similar to the average increase of 75,054 between 2010 and 2015 — is forcing city leaders and policy experts to confront how to house, transport, and school another half million people.
“New York City is a magnet for people from all around the world,” Mitchell Moss, director of NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation, told the News Tuesday. “We have a problem that is based on our success.”
The population, which was at 8.55 million last year, is projected to reach 9.03 million by 2040 at the latest.
Since 1990, the city has added another 1.2 million people, and in 2011 the city for the first time in decades saw more people move in than move out, according to census data.
Subways are already at their highest ridership level since the 1940s, but the number of annual trips through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority system is projected to reach 3.1 billion by 2030, up from 2.7 billion today, according to an MTA report.
According to the 2013 projections, the Bronx is expected to grow the fastest, 14% between 2010 and 2040, an increase of 194,000 people. Brooklyn's population was projected to grow 11%.
For Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, the highest level of growth is projected to be in the 2010-2020 period, with growth slowing thereafter
Moss said the city still has plenty of room to fit a growing population, with its “special genius” at creating residential neighborhoods where they didn’t previously exist, like Manhattan’s far West Side and the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront.
“There are vast areas of the city that have potential for more housing,” Moss said, citing Red Hook and the Atlantic Ave. corridor in Brooklyn and several parts of the Bronx.
The city's total number of housing units, which was 3,375,000 in 2010, is projected to increase to 3,696,000 by 2040, according to 2013 city projections.
But the challenges don’t end there, and will include making sure the city’s roads and mass transit are up to the task.
That may require expanding the capacity of subway cars, which the MTA is working on now, and bolstering alternate forms of transportation like ferries and modernized bus systems.
“It’s abundantly clear that the transit system we have today cannot support the ridership that it has today,” said Rich Barone, vice president for transportation at Regional Plan Association. “We have to be looking at the surface as well, the streets. Street space needs to be rethought in a way that doesn’t just focus on providing capacity for automobiles. Instead it needs to focus on people, on cyclists and transit.”
Mayor de Blasio, who spoke at a Crain’s New York Business breakfast on preparations for the population surge Tuesday, says the city will need to be taller, denser, and conquer neighborhood fears that development will force locals out.
“It’s true there are types of development that can exacerbate inequality and reduce inclusion. There’s also types of development that can increase inclusion, that can open up opportunity. And we have to have a good and clear conversation about what the difference is,” he said.
For Crain’s, experts and developers dreamed up ambitious ideas like using existing track beds to allow light-rail commuter lines and commercial development, building a suspended tram line encircling the five boroughs and parts of New Jersey, or shrinking city highways to take advantage of advent of self-driving cars and get more space for development.
The mayor has faced resistance in neighborhoods around the city to his construction plans, and said the opposition, while understandable, is wrong-headed.
“The notion of locking things down the way they are ... the danger in that is it bakes in inequality. It doubles down on inequality,” he said. “If you believe in an inclusive city, we have to create affordable housing. And the only way we get affordable housing is through development.”
De Blasio pointed to a rezoning near Grand Central, which allowed a developer to build a 63-story skyscraper in exchange for paying more than $200 million for transit improvements.
“We need height and density if we’re going to be able to create the city of tomorrow and to address a lot of our underlying needs. But look at how much the public got back in that equation,” he said. “We need people to be able to see in very tangible terms how that pathway to 9 million people can be good for them.”
Meanwhile, in the latest test of the mayor’s ambitious building plans, the City Council struck a deal to approve a proposed housing and commercial tower in downtown Brooklyn.
The Willoughby Street project will shrink to 44 stories from the 49 originally proposed by developer Savanna Properties under the deal with Councilman Steve Levin (D-Brooklyn). It’s set to have 203 apartments, 61 of them with restricted rents under new mandatory inclusionary housing rules, in addition to retail and office space.
“I look forward to seeing more mixed use projects in downtown Brooklyn and making a thriving downtown,” Levin said.
The Council’s zoning subcommittee voted to approve the project along with two others in the Bronx under the affordable housing rules.
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