Mayor Eric Adams rarely speaks ill of Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor with whom he enjoys a warm relationship. But a top Adams official delivered a barely concealed rebuke recently to one of Bloomberg’s most consequential legacies: changing zoning laws to restrict housing growth across the city.
During his dozen years in office, Bloomberg was known for authorizing several high-profile rezonings that boosted density in low-rise neighborhoods, helping to transform areas like Hudson Yards, Williamsburg and Long Island City into mazes of towers. But, more quietly, the Bloomberg years also saw dozens of neighborhood rezonings that did essentially the opposite, freezing existing streetscapes in place or even “downzoning” areas to restrict growth.
Years later, however, the city’s affordability crisis has reached untenable levels and a consensus has formed about the need for more housing construction to ease rents. That is prompting a reevaluation of the Bloomberg-era downzonings, which are now looked upon less favorably — even by some of the people who helped implement them. Mayor Adams is pushing a housing plan that would ditch the Bloomberg-era approach of allowing some neighborhoods to limit construction, instead boosting density nearly everywhere in the city.
That contrast became unusually explicit last month, when Maria Torres-Springer, Adams’ deputy mayor for housing, announced the release of a report examining the consequences of 15 rezonings passed under Bloomberg in 2009. In a March 28 speech on housing at New York University, Torres-Springer revealed the conclusions: Seven of the neighborhoods saw a decrease in housing in the decade after they were rezoned.
“It offers a pretty telling snapshot of our city’s planning politics in the 2000s,” she said. “As recently as 15 years ago, as the demand to live in our great city continued to rise, we did the opposite of what we should have — we made it harder to build housing.”
Many of the downzonings took place in whiter and wealthier areas in the outer boroughs, where residents were pushing back against “out-of-character” development. In the wake of a 2009 rezoning in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn that imposed height limits and reduced residential density, new permitted housing units dropped from 743 in the decade before the rezoning to just 164 the decade after — a 78% decline.
In North Corona, Queens, a 2009 rezoning was adopted with the specific aim of scaling back a 2003 plan that had allowed more four- to five-story buildings, to the dismay of local politicians and community groups. After the revised plan, the construction of new units dropped from 1,232 in the 10 years before 2009 to just 100 in the decade after, according to the new study.
The Adams administration was legally required to release the “lookback” report under a 2021 city law. But others are making similar arguments. Howard Slatkin, who served as a City Planning official during the Bloomberg years, said in an interview that the city’s stagnating housing growth “calls into question how much those downzonings may have prevented new housing, even beyond the intent at the time.”
“There’s a lot of evidence that downzonings played a big role in the virtual disappearance of new housing from low-density neighborhoods,” said Slatkin, who now serves as executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Housing & Planning Council.
Dan Doctoroff, an architect of much of the Bloomberg administration’s zoning policy, said in an interview that he remains proud of most of the development he helped usher in. But he conceded that the city passed up opportunities for growth.
“In retrospect, we could’ve been more aggressive, particularly around transit,” said Doctoroff, who served until 2008 as deputy mayor for economic development.
The Bloomberg-era plans were often more nuanced than simple downzonings. Instead, the administration pursued what it called “balanced neighborhood rezonings” — allowing some growth on main commercial streets but reducing density and adding height limits on side residential streets. A prototypical example was Park Slope, whose 2003 rezoning raised density along 4th Avenue but put height limits on the adjacent, brownstone-lined side streets.
“The expectation was that these would control height, rather than stop new housing,” Slatkin said. “But they likely did a bit of both.”
“Not what New York City needed”
The Bloomberg downzonings were hardly the only contributor to the present housing crisis. But any policy that stifled growth is bound to be seen more critically now, with the city facing a shortage of some 560,000 homes, by some estimates.
Amanda Burden, who led City Planning for the entire Bloomberg administration, said she has no qualms about the city’s zoning policies in those 12 years. The administration took every opportunity to add density in transit-rich areas, she said, while allowing downzonings in neighborhoods where traffic problems or narrow streets made it impossible.
“Where it could handle the density, we built very, very, very high,” she said.
Bloomberg presided over 124 neighborhood rezonings in his time as mayor which began in 2002, and no studies have examined exactly how many limited growth. But a 2010 study by the NYU Furman Center found early warning signs: Of the 188,000 lots that were rezoned between 2003 and 2007, just 14% were upzoned, 23% were downzoned and 63% were otherwise restricted through “contextual” zoning that essentially froze the existing building types in place.
The study added another troubling dimension: White and wealthier neighborhoods tended to be the ones where new housing was limited, while upzoned neighborhoods were disproportionately Black, Hispanic and lower-income.
Vicki Been, who co-authored the Furman Center report, said the studied neighborhoods “are exactly the areas Mayor Adams is now saying should step up.”
“Those downzonings and contextual rezonings — those were probably not what New York City needed,” said Been, who later oversaw housing as a deputy mayor under Bill de Blasio.
Adams’ City of Yes housing plan, as his administration sells it, would add “a little more housing in every neighborhood.” Outer-borough commercial streets and neighborhoods near transit would be upzoned to allow buildings about four or five stories tall, affecting many of the neighborhoods where growth was limited under Bloomberg.
That could include places like North Flushing, Queens, where new housing units dropped 90% from 266 to 26 in the decades before and after its 2009 rezoning, according to last month’s City Planning report. Or Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which saw a 39% decrease following its 2009 rezoning that aimed to “preserve neighborhood character and scale.” As a whole, the city built 15% fewer housing units in the decade since 2009 than the decade leading up to it, according to the report, although it made no claim that zoning was the sole factor.
“We’re in a different environment”
There are multiple reasons why the Bloomberg administration took the approach it did. The housing crunch had not yet reached crisis levels, and fewer policymakers paid attention to whether growth was spread evenly. City Hall also felt political pressure to limit development — Been pointed to Staten Island, which saw a nearly borough-wide downzoning in 2004 and which had pursued a high-profile secession plan in the 1990s, something that may have been fresh in Bloomberg officials’ minds.
Another factor was the city’s 2007 sustainability plan, PlaNYC, which called for limiting growth in car-dependent areas in the name of fighting climate change. That policy was likely “too successful” at stopping new construction in low-density neighborhoods, Slatkin said. (The 2010 Furman Center report was critical of how Bloomberg upheld those goals, however, since 59% of downzoned lots were within a half-mile of a train station entrance.)
Given those political realities, some former Bloomberg officials still strongly defend what the administration was able to accomplish. Seth Pinsky, who ran the city’s Economic Development Corporation for five years starting in 2005, pointed to rezonings that transformed areas like Jamaica, Queens and the South Bronx that had seen little investment in prior years.
“Neighborhoods where for decades there had been no development whatsoever, the rezonings that were passed by the administration — plus all of the other policies that the administration put in place — led to a dramatic change,” Pinsky said.
If the Adams administration passes its housing plan, it may end up undoing much of what Bloomberg oversaw. But Burden, Pinsky and Doctoroff, three top Bloomberg officials, take no offense at Adams’ plan — all said they strongly support it.
“We’re in a different environment now,” Doctoroff said, “and we have to respond to the demands of the city.”
Nick Garber , 2024-04-08 11:48:05
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