New York’s New Head of City Planning Gives First Interview

Kathryn Brenzel reports on the first media interview from New York City’s new head of city planning, Dan Garodnick, who said “the department of City Planning does not plan to ‘lead’ with neighborhood rezonings, but will work on at least two over the next several months.”

According to Garodnick, “The department intends to work with communities on rezonings rather than announcing them first and selling them later.”

“Any lack of urgency on rezoning would disappoint groups that see it as crucial to alleviating the city’s housing crunch and providing opportunities for ordinary New Yorkers to live in high-income neighborhoods,” the article notes. “His agency is now looking into ways to allow other types of construction in [Midtown East] and others — an acknowledgment of how the office market has changed during the pandemic and of the city’s continued need for affordable housing.”

Garodnick says “There is an opportunity for adaptive reuse of obsolete office space. In some cases it is the state’s multiple dwelling law that is our limiting factor. In other cases it is zoning.” He says his agency will examine how to enable more flexibility to acknowledge these changes. The interview outlines other plans the agency has for the future, how they plan to make the land use review process more “user-friendly for applicants,” and how to “enable higher densities in a thoughtful way.”