Julie Iovine writes for the Wall Street Journal about "activist" zoning in the Bloomberg administration: "It not only shapes the blocks and writes the skyline, but also aims to curb obesity by offering incentives for fresh-food markets in low-income neighborhoods; buck up the mom-and-pop store; and promote an astonishing range of other quality-of-life benefits."

Regional Plan Association senior fellow and Center for Urban Innovation director Julia Vitullo-Martin observes that, "Zoning has always concerned itself, for better or worse, with social matters, such as banishing noxious uses. What's different now is that the planning commission is moving from zoning that's negative on social issues to being positive, like mandating green markets and bike rooms."

Geoffrey Decker reports for Crain's that the unionized construction industry faces continued uncertainty as nonunion contractors erode its position--the subject of RPA-CUI's Construction Labor Costs in New York City: A Moment of Opportunity.

The concerns continue even after settlement of 23 construction labor contracts in 2011. Some union deals in the last round of talks yielded significant concessions, Decker reports, but "new contracts with the carpenters' union and concrete workers increased wages and offered concessions only on buildings that were no higher than 20 stories." Industry experts, including RPA-CUI's Hope Cohen, think "the most significant development may be the decision of the Building Trades Employers' Association, a large general contracting group and chief negotiator, to opt out of a plan that required its contractors work exclusively with unions."

Jon Lentz reports for City & State on what the $1.5 billion pricetag for Dubai's Burj Khalifa would--or wouldn't--build in New York. Could New York City's construction costs, which are among the highest in the nation, discourage investment and push developers to build elsewhere? "That's the big fear: Have we reached the threshold, or when will we reach the threshold, that people will chose not to build here and build somewhere else instead?" said Hope Cohen, the associate director of the Regional Plan Association's Center for Urban Innovation. "And that goes directly to a question of New York's competitiveness, within the nation and also globally."

Since New York invented zoning in 1916, it has overhauled its code exactly once, in 1961. Perhaps it's time to do so again.

Last month, City Planning Director Amanda Burden opened the discussion by sponsoring a 50th birthday conference for the 1961 revision that regulates building bulk, density, land use and parking, and forms the basis for the current 3,500-page zoning code. Called Zoning the City, the gathering looked at how to update the code to position New York as a more competitive, sustainable, equitable and beautiful city on the world stage.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have accepted the defeat of his proposed football stadium and convention center on the far West Side of Manhattan, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"Why don't we build an addition to the Javits Center?" he said in a recent interview. "That is what the convention business needs--a very big, flexible space. And, as a matter of fact, if we could get somebody who would pay for the whole thing in return for maybe using it 13 Sundays in the fall, wouldn't that be a great thing for New York City?"

Forum to examine the current model for financing transportation projects in New York State and develop a new paradigm for funding these projects.

8am-1pm, Friday, December 2, 2011 @ McGraw-Hill Conference Center

Program description: http://www.navigatingopportunities.com/money/program.php

Register: http://www.navigatingopportunities.com/money/register.php

At a conference this month celebrating the 1961 Zoning Resolution, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel announced the city's 50th birthday gift to its 3,500-page zoning code: a set of "green zoning" proposals that would encourage energy-efficient construction, retrofits and installation of solar panels and green roofs.

Green is good. But the idea whose time has truly come after half a century is performance zoning rather than regulating on the basis of outdated categories.

Expanding bus service between Jamaica and Flushing, extending the Air Train route to make traveling to the Resorts World Casino easier, adding hotels, office space and retail -- these are just some of the ideas the Regional Plan Association envisions as possibilities for the future of Jamaica.

In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., Julia Vitullo-Martin complains, law enforcement and city planners have installed jersey barriers, concrete planters and other "ugly measures that evoke fear rather than safety." In her op-ed for USA Today she calls it "militarized urbanism."

Hulking and obsolete, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center may not look like a well-stuffed piggy bank.

But it is. Or could be.

At a recent meeting of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Council for New York City, Regional Plan Association President Robert Yaro proposed selling Javits for redevelopment--netting the state $4 billion.