The 'Rosetta Stone' Of Zoning Handbooks

The New York City Department of City Planning releases a new, easy-to-use handbook to make zoning understandable -- at least compared to the old, arcane Zoning Resolution.

1 minute read

March 22, 2006, 8:00 AM PST

By David Gest


"Critical differences [in zoning rregulations] are hard to extract from the arcane Zoning Resolution, the document that governs land use in New York City. But they are made graphically clear in the Zoning Handbook, which the Department of City Planning released last week. It is the first new edition of the handbook in 16 years.

'The multivolume Zoning Resolution is like hieroglyphics, known only to the priests of zoning,' said Prof. Ross Sandler, director of the Center for New York City Law at the New York Law School in Manhattan. 'Opening the Zoning Handbook is like discovering the Rosetta Stone.'"

Thanks to Jennifer Torres

Sunday, March 19, 2006 in The New York Times

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