Plan to Revitalize Public Housing Stymied by NYC Parking Requirements

New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea says that the city's own parking minimums are making it difficult to make public housing sites more mixed-use, mixed-income and financially sustainable.

1 minute read

October 17, 2011, 9:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


A group called Community Solutions has developed a popular plan to add infill to the Corbusian, "tower-in-a-park"-style public housing in Brooklyn:

"A plan put forward by Rosanne Haggerty, an advocate for ending homelessness, for four adjacent housing projects in Brownsville would build between 700 and 1,000 units without displacing a single resident, she said. Her organization's design would break up the existing superblock by restoring the original streets back through the housing project and put new buildings facing the sidewalk, recreating the traditional pedestrian environment."

But as Noah Kazis reports, parking requirements are making the plan impossible to implement, a fate that many worthwhile projects have faced in New York City.

Thanks to Noah Kazis

Monday, October 17, 2011 in Streetsblog

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