// ZoLa//

Not Zola Jesus, the singer, but Zoning and Land Use! This is a very new, useful app on the NYC Department of City Planning’s website. You can check out the zoning everywhere, and then look up what uses are allowed. I could spend all day on this:

As you can see, you can zoom into any of the 5 boroughs and check out zoning and many different kinds of land use within New York City—with everything from Empire Zones to FRESH designations. I will probably get into these cool things in another post.

Here’s a quick closeup of what the Zoning looks like for Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO-Vinegar Hill-Downtown Brooklyn:

The zoning reflects the oldest neighborhoods’ small-scale original development, and I believe that the zoning helps to maintain the original (we’re talking 19th century, here) character/development of said areas. Back in the day when people wouldn’t travel that far! Some other parts of the city are also zoned that small, while other places, like the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, is a vast block of good old R6, for the most part (you can go check that out yourself).

For now, enjoy and have fun!

// Hudson Yards Plan//

I know I keep posting NY Times articles—I promise I have more on my mind with that, but they seem to sum up some of the City’s development’s so easily! I have to start following more infrastructure/development blogs and start reading more books. As soon as the applications to grad schools are over!

So, here’s one on the Hudson Yards. I can’t help but thinking what would have happened to the LIRR Yards nearby where I live in Brooklyn had the stadium not been passed. Perhaps they would have rezoned it to Residential with some kind of commercial overlay on the bottom, allowing for some nice pocket parks and greenways to be built. Instead they decided that it was “urban blight” without looking at the thriving neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene on either side. Only time will tell if these neighborhoods will continue to be as prosperous as they’ve been for the past decade—coming along with small restaurants and restoring the houses to their former beauties—and hopefully the new stadium will not deter Brooklynites from living their lives just because a large and unsightly stadium looms nearby.

Here’s a look at the plan for the Yards (look at that nice park—just slice right through those tall buildings on a sweet diagonal. How perfect!):

This area is mostly zoned as commercial (C6-4 is a regional commercial district with a middle amount of parking provided), but also as M2-3 and M1-5 in certain pockets. Residential buildings can be built in commercial districts, but not in manufacturing, unless they are zoned as MX (which designates mixed-use).

// Low Line//

NY Times does it again. This time with an article about an underground park in the LES This is absolutely unreal:

it would be like turning this:

into this:

Beyond words!

// Jane Jacobs and the Power of Women Planners//

I really need to get on reading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities. After I finish Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot! And that’s after I get off tumblr…Perhaps I’ll get it as a christmas present, like I got William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces last year… (hint?)

Enjoy this article sent to me by a friend about women planners by Roberta Brandes Gratz (and whose book I also need to read!). Hooray for the little plans.

// “The question now is can the city become nimble again?”//

There are probably many planning related blogs out there, but as a prospective planning student and current intern at the NYC Department of City Planning, I thought this would be a really wonderful place to start posting some of my musings and inspirations regarding planning and related topics.

Welcome! I am very excited.

To start, here’s an article from the NY Times about new models of housing for New York:

“Isn’t the idea to improve mental health? Isn’t architecture a part of that?”