“New York City is indeed built-out to its edges and yet it is now undergoing unprecedented immigration and population growth. This is a tremendous challenge to those of us in charge of planning this city. We must find places to channel this growth, while preserving neighbourhood character. We have a challenge to provide, in those neighbourhoods where we can grow, enough density to ensure affordability. Enough density to leverage open public space. Enough density to provide vitality and vibrancy of neighbourhoods, while respecting the built fabric of adjacent communities.”
“We see incentives in zoning policy and the links between additional density and the creation of affordable housing as a bedrock way of fighting the potential increased segregation that the city may face as the result of rising real estate values. There has been attention in social policy in the US on how to break concentrations of poverty. Compared to this “pull” of integration policy, not enough attention has been given to the mechanisms to insure that any new community that we are creating, e.g. through re-zoning, is inclusive from its very beginning in terms of both income and race.”
“I get quite impatient with how architects discuss what the city is. They are often insular and small in their view of what urban and social issues are. One of the things that we need is to change the bourgeois point of view and then begin to see the city from the point of view of poor people, in fact the majority of the people that live in cities today. When you take that standpoint you begin to understand concepts such as ‘community’ in a different light. Upper-middle class professionals may feel that urban societies have left the need for community behind. But for poor people community is essential, they need to aggregate in order not to be powerless and to create change. The same goes for inclusionary zoning, increasing FARs from 4 to 4.7 in re-zoning schemes to create affordability so poor people can live there does not really address the needs to replace the lost jobs so that the same people can secure their livelihoods.”
