Many buildings in distinctive Manhattan neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Upper East Side and Washington Heights could not be erected now: Properties in those areas tend to cover too much of their lots (Washington Heights), have too much commercial space (Chinatown) or rise too high (the Upper East Side). [...]
“It’s ridiculous that we have these hundred-year-old buildings that everyone loves, and none of them ‘should’ be the way they are.”
— nytimes.com
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6 Comments
No, you can't build the Empire State Building again, it's true.
You also can't legally discriminate based on race anymore. Nor can you legally drive without seatbelts, or sell cigarettes minus health warnings, or beat up your wife, or deprive a child of an education, or smoke in most public places, or pay an employee a buck an hour. All of these things were once legal (or not illegal), but public policies evolved over time in connection with shifting mores.
The answer(s) may well be to change a more recent policy--in the article's case, land-use regulation-- to look like an earlier version, if that's what the community wants.
Also: The "you can't build this anymore" cry also ignores the vast zoning category of legal, non-conforming uses and structures.
The most interesting (to me) story of US planning history in the last generation has been this very tale. After a half-century of single-use zoning that prioritizes off-site parking, we could see the many problems wrought, when such a simple concept was applied over so vast an area as the population (and development) boomed for so long.
Smart Growth, New Urbanism, and Transit-Oriented Development all ascended as planning models as a result of this concern over the scale, function, and ultimately quality of urban and suburban places. Because public planning (and private lending) policies are always slow to change, these models have been used as promotional devices to gather support in the long, often arduous campaign to change zoning and infrastructure planning, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Elected officials, bureaucrats, lenders, landowners, design and planning professionals, and especially voters are all involved in this gradual shift.
Citizen, I think you're missing the point by turning this into a pro/anti form-based planning choice. Nobody is calling for the elimination of all form-based regulations. The point is that if non-conforming buildings currently exist, we can observe their effects on the city. If those effects are not negative, its casts doubt on the legitimacy/necessity of certain limitations.
citizen: You can get a a zoning map change in NYC in 2 years. That's not slow. That's not slow at all.
Carry on.
davvid, I was just making the obvious point that public policies change over time, for reasons good or otherwise. This is irrespective of what codes one prefers. And, yes, the survival of (some, good) non-conforming structures offers loads of lessons.
And that's interesting about relatively quick zoning changes in NYC, null In many cities, the notion of adopting a fundamentally different land-use regime is met with intense and organized opposition that's political poison and can put the issue on hold indefinitely. This is why the New Urbanists and Smart Growthers have had a full-time job for the last 25 years, I think... providing a kind of advance assault on the status quo via publications, presentations, etc, for when new code changes are actually proposed in particular jurisdictions.
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