« Forest City Announces Completion of Secondary Offering | Main | Mid-Summer Classic »
July 25, 2007
Grand Vision
Mayor Mike’s plan for a more sustainable city is surprisingly comprehensive.
Metropolis Magazine
Karrie Jacobs gives Mayor Bloomberg a standing O for PlaNYC, with two caveats: the enormous hedgerows of luxury waterfront condos and Bruce Ratner's 22-acre Atlantic Yards megalopolis.
Unfortunately, the plan casts some of the administration’s existing policies, such as rebuilding the old industrial waterfront into glam new residential neighborhoods, as moral imperative: housing must be built on every available site. The argument is that increased supply will lead to affordability, but that equation doesn’t always work in this city. (To be fair, the plan promises 22,000 units of middle-class housing and strategies such as inclusionary zoning, which grants developers bonuses for building affordable units in or adjacent to market-rate properties.) Housing, the plan says, should also be built on sites that don’t currently exist. PlaNYC calls for methodically decking over rail yards and sunken highways to acquire large tracts. The theory is exciting, but in practice so far the approach has spawned Atlantic Yards, a gargantuan scheme conceived with indifference to surrounding communities.
NoLandGrab: Atlantic Yards critics were quick to note that Bruce Ratner's controversial plan is antithetical to nearly every principle outlined in Bloomberg's PlaNYC.
Though many urban planners currently support the concept of increased density at transportation hubs, the historic extreme density of Atlantic Yards is on an inconceivable scale that strains or counters nearly every one of the Mayor's objectives.
Now that PlaNYC is getting high fives all around, it might be the right time for the Mayor to quietly and casually withdraw his support for Atlantic Yards.
Posted by lumi at July 25, 2007 8:55 AM