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.
Several speakers urged opening up the city to much greater densities near transit nodes -- including dramatic steps such as tripling allowable densities in midtown or developing a land bridge that would connect Battery Park with Governors Island.
Citizens Housing & Planning Council offered more immediately feasible ideas, based on the council's own Making Room project that commissioned five teams to design new housing types, unbound from a wide array of city and state regulations -- including all four kinds of zoning rules. CHPC argues that the existing rules drive costs up and severely limit housing options in a socially varied world.
How to produce more parks and open space was a major theme at Zoning the City. Speakers pointed repeatedly to the success of the High Line as both a magnificent park and a generator of development and economic activity. Urban planner Alex Garvin argued that zoning should be recast to focus on the public realm -- on a park, street or plaza, rather than on the building lots surrounding it. Advocate for the homeless Rosanne Haggerty stressed the importance of looking at neighborhoods holistically, so as to spend public resources on "the right things" rather than on prisons, hospitals and shelters.
Perhaps most strikingly, Harvard professor Jerold Kayden, developer Jonathan Rose, architect Robert Stern, and Real Estate Board of New York chairperson Mary Ann Tighe, among others, advocated overhauling New York's prescriptive approach to regulating use, which essentially dictates what is allowed rather than what is forbidden.

And what of parking, the third rail of the zoning code? City Planning continues to hone a set of much-anticipated changes to the code's parking rules. Possible revisions include easing minimum parking requirements outside Manhattan. The agency stayed largely mum at Zoning the City, but it seemed possible that the city may soon release a new set of parking proposals.
Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Steel unveiled a new set of "green zoning" proposals that would eliminate regulations that now block green construction, energy-efficient retrofits and installation of solar panels and green roofs. To be released for public review shortly, these proposals will likely focus on the shape, size and placement of buildings -- for example, by allowing limited new structures on rooftops.
In sponsoring the conference, Burden recognized that New York can and should lead zoning innovation for a new century, as cities throughout the U.S. grapple with similar issues of complexity and limited flexibility. Harriet Tregoning, Washington, D.C.'s planning director who is working on overhauling the U.S. capital's permanent regulatory structures, observed at the conference: "Every 50 years or so, you should re-examine your zoning code. New York is right on schedule."
