Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of PAU, has unveiled his firm's analysis, courtesy of The New York Times, which suggests that enough housing could be created for one million New Yorkers.
The PAU founder says there is space for up to 520,245 homes in the city on roughly 1,700 acres of unused land. Most of it would be enacted above existing single-story commercial spaces. The idea of adding density has been debated, though he points out correctly that it does present a viable alternative to the mass-scale conversion of office buildings that have been proven costly and largely unfeasible in structures built before 1980.
His team's analysis follows previous streetscape and rail infrastructure proposals and was conducted using available data on vacant lots, flood-prone areas, and the location of subway stations and other mass transit options. Current estimates have placed the need for over 500,000 new homes, a figure Mayor Eric Adams's official plan put forth in December 2022 used as a benchmark. Suggestions for expediting the construction process were notably absent from the PAU proposal.
"There are many reasons it is so difficult to build new housing in New York City — including zoning, the under-taxation of vacant and underutilized land, the continuing rise of construction costs, the elimination of important tax incentives, and intense and often misguided anti-development sentiments. These challenges can and should be addressed. But please, don’t let people tell you we can’t build the homes New Yorkers need because we’ve run out of room or because it would ruin the city’s character. We are, in fact, a very big apple,” Chakrabarti pleads finally, speaking to the political and zoning obstacles that remain in place.
(Chakrabarti later noted via LinkedIn the plan would call for "80% of the homes [to] be lower cost low- and mid-rises built by small builders.")
The full assessment can be reviewed here via the New York Times.
![Bracket [takes action]: submissions selected and new website launches!](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/05/05kznvyyjy1lqoiq.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=248&h=147 "Bracket [takes action]: submissions selected and new website launches!")
1 Comment
As if The Bronx isn't already dense. How about you just build some half decent transportation to New Jersey where it's all single family housing and parking lots right across midtown.
Why do these same Bloomberg bureaucrats have access to the NYTimes opinion page (Kimmelman's fault, probably). Neighborhoods are a delicate balance of design, architecture, urbanism and economics. Zoning needs a complete revamp first to calculate existing value, structural quality, health, energy use, etc.
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