Roughly 2.4 million New York City tenants will face the biggest rent hikes they’ve seen in nearly a decade after the Rent Guidelines Board approved the increases in a split vote Tuesday night at Cooper Union. — Gothamist

Amid contentious debate on rezonings across the city, the late 2013 hubbub around an upzoning proposal for East Midtown has, for the moment, abated — but hasn’t disappeared. In a bid to spur significant new development for the first time in decades, the de Blasio administration is currently retooling the Bloomberg-era plan to allow developers to construct much larger buildings [...]

Whether this rezoning eventually occurs or not, the buildings in Manhattan’s core aren’t getting any younger. — urbanomnibus.net

Amanda Burden often said that, thanks to Bloomberg, "we are building and rezoning today once again like Moses on an unprecedented scale, but with Jane Jacobs in mind." That's oxymoronic. You can't do both. As for who's winning the future of New York, it's clearly the followers of Moses. The preservationists are the underdogs here. — nymag.com

Serious money is in play in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “Mayors’ Challenge” for cities competing to show they have come up with promising innovations to cope with 21st-century challenges.

“It was a big surprise to hear we’d share our ideas with competitors,” says Gomes. “But it works brilliantly. It’s exactly what you need—everyone sharing and trying to help each other. It’s crazy, but it works.” — urbanland.uli.org

Since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the far west side is the city’s new Gold Coast and Manhattan’s last frontier, a necklace of ravishing projects have been announced along the Hudson River waterfront. The latest reveal is for a new 12-story, 88-unit condominium coming from Herzog & de Meuron Architects. The Hudson Square site at 156 Leroy Street will replace a handful of low-slung buildings that include two auto-body shops, a gentleman’s club and the former Lunchbox Diner. — 6sqft

Can a U.S. organization really tell Europe how to run its cities better? [...]

Following a successful inaugural challenge last year, the city innovation contest crossed the Atlantic in 2014, winnowing down European applicant cities to a shortlist of 21*, all of whom attended a two-day Ideas Camp staged in Berlin earlier this month. [...]

A European organization could not realistically offer anything as substantial as €9 million in prize money. — citylab.com

Twenty-one of what was deemed as the most bold and creative ideas were listed as finalists in the first European edition of the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge Competition. European cities with populations of at least 100,000 residents were invited to submit ideas that address a variety of some of the most common and complex urban issues throughout the continent. — bustler.net

If there is any one lesson that I have learned in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have power. It's not just the number of people using them, it's the even greater number of people who feel better about their city just knowing that they are there.

Public space can change how you live in a city, how you feel about a city, whether you choose one city over another, and public space is one of the most important reasons why you stay in a city. — TED

This is not how most people think of Mr. Bloomberg, who recently stepped down after 12 years as mayor and who is the city’s richest resident. Under his leadership, New York became a land of wealth and plenty, at least for some – in Midtown Manhattan, glassy new high-rises contain the third homes of Russian billionaires; downtown, tourists order $38 steak frites at Balthazar and walk the High Line, an innovative park built with donations from the rich. — theglobeandmail.com

According to Brash, the administration had a singular “grand urban vision”—one of New York as a competitive hub for international business deeply rooted in neoliberal ideals.With a radically different vision of the city than those of the working class, Professor Brash argued, many New Yorkers failed to fully benefit from the mayor’s projects and in many instances were left behind. — untappedcities.com

Almost a dozen major architecture contests are underway. By calling in the pros, city and federal officials are casting a wide net for fixes.

“We don’t have all the good ideas, and I don’t care who does have them,” Mayor Bloomberg said recently. — New York Daily News

“We have beaten the odds and the obstructionists over and over again,” the mayor triumphantly declared in his State of the City address in March. He chose an appropriate venue: the Barclays Center, the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, which was a lightning rod for his all-out development policy. A vigorous opposition was beaten in the courts and the City Council in much the same way he often steamrolled opposition to his comprehensive rethinking of development. — nytimes.com