‘Ensuring every New York City neighborhood has the same access and quality of life—whether you’re in Brownsville or the Upper West Side—will require a fair and comprehensive planning process.’
‘In spite of its reputation as a progressive liberal bastion, New York City has failed to adopt a comprehensive and deliberate approach to end its own segregation.’
Corey Johnson says his ‘Planning Together’ proposal will help create a more just and inclusive city planning process. But others raised worries about the costs of the plan, and about how it would engage communities.
‘Upon close examination, the speaker’s proposal falls short and leaves the door wide open for the continuation of City Planning’s top-down, developer-driven rezonings by offering them a new shroud of legitimacy: a comprehensive plan engineered by city officials that fast-tracks rezonings.’
Housing advocacy groups and some elected officials have been pushing for years for the city to adopt a comprehensive plan, and an earlier effort to do so was abandoned during the City Charter Revision process in 2019.
‘Across the city, the mayor and developers are pushing rezonings and development projects that attempt to rip out the fertile roots of people and place, to wholly redefine city neighborhoods for a wealthier and whiter population.’
‘Only a comprehensive planning process with stated equity goals can provide the environment, structure, and scope for analyzing the thousands of considerations and tradeoffs that will get us to a rational and integrated city.’
The 2019 commission began winnowing its work down to the questions that it will put on the ballot in November. And the focus discernibly shifted from the sweeping to the particular.
Vicki Been has warned, ‘[U]nless we have a much more specific proposal, those voters will have no idea what they are voting for, except that comprehensiveness, and planning, sound reasonable – like apple pie and teddy bears.’
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