Executive
Summary
The Unified Bulk Program is a sweeping reform
of the city’s Zoning Resolution designed
to replace confusing, anachronistic and often
contradictory regulations with rules that are
intelligible, practical and consistent. It seeks
to uphold values of urban form, streetscape, neighborhood
character and scale, while also assuring that
New York City is able to grow and develop the
housing, commercial space and community facilities
that its economy and populace require.
The goal of the new text is to establish reasonable
parameters for new development that give communities,
developers and regulators a clear sense of what
is and is not allowed in a given district, while
allowing appropriate flexibility in the design
of individual buildings. The numerous loopholes
and interpretive gymnastics yielded by the present
zoning will be eliminated. A public review and
approval process will allow for sufficient flexibility
to address unique conditions and allow for architectural
innovation.
Issues with the Current Zoning
The current zoning generally sets appropriate
controls on the amount of floor area that can
be built, but the rules governing building height
and massing reflect several competing visions
of the city's development, often applied simultaneously
in the same zoning districts. This confusing situation
has developed over the years, as the City Planning
Commission has repeatedly adopted amendments to
limit or provide alternatives to the "tower-in-the-park"
prototype underlying the 1961 Zoning Resolution.
Tower-in-the-park zoning encourages the construction
of tall buildings set back from the street, by
allowing greater height and more floor area in
return for the provision of open space. The resulting
buildings have been subject to widespread criticism
as anti-urban and disruptive of the dominant form
and scale of most of the city's neighborhoods
that were built largely under the original 1916
Zoning Resolution.
Rather than eliminating tower-in-the-park zoning
and imposing height limits to address the problem
of out-of-scale buildings, the Commission has,
over the years, taken a less direct approach,
encumbering the 1961 Resolution with limited height
districts, contextual districts, tower-on-a-base
provisions, infill zoning and special districts,
among other innovations. While generated with
the best intentions, these zoning reforms have
in the aggregate produced an unduly complex, incoherent
and unpredictable set of regulations. Only experts
understand the Zoning Resolution, and they often
disagree on its meaning. The average citizen or
property owner has little hope of determining
how a particular parcel of land may be developed.
Not surprisingly, such zoning periodically yields
unexpected and undesirable results in the form
of buildings that are so big they violate the
character of the neighborhoods around them. A
number of specific features of the existing zoning
contribute to this problem:
- Zoning lot mergers are critical
to the successful functioning of the zoning.
They enable developers to assemble small lots
into the larger merged lots needed to build
efficient, economical new buildings. The mergers
also provide an incentive to preserve small
existing buildings that are not built to the
full permitted floor area, by enabling the transfer
of the unused floor area from the site of a
small existing building to the development site.
Additional controls must be placed on zoning
lot mergers, however, to avoid the transfer
of excessive amounts of floor area to a development
site from the already developed portion of a
merged zoning lot. Transfers of floor area that
go too far have produced buildings out-of-scale
with their neighbors.
- Many development sites straddle
zoning districts. The rules governing the development
of these "split lots" are confusing
and too permissive. As a result, split lots
have provided an excuse for erasing the distinctions
between different zoning districts, transferring
inappropriately large amounts of floor area
and producing oversized buildings.
- Many public spaces provided for
in the Zoning Resolution have been successful,
but floor area bonuses for residential plazas
and certain other public spaces have too often
produced larger buildings without providing
meaningful public benefits.
- New commercial buildings contain
increasingly sophisticated technology. Much
of the space occupied by this equipment is treated
as "mechanical space" and is deducted
from the zoning floor area of a building under
the existing zoning. In some cases, these deductions
have amounted to more than a quarter of a building’s
floor space and so have enabled a building to
become much larger than is contemplated in the
zoning. It is certainly desirable for new buildings
to use the new technology and appropriate that
a reasonable amount of mechanical space be deducted
from floor area calculations, but these deductions
should not become so large that they subvert
the bulk provisions of the zoning.
- Contextual rules in some low-density
districts apply to residences, but not to community
facilities and commercial buildings. This reflects
the fact that these nonresidential buildings
require more bulk to fulfill their programmatic
requirements. Zoning should recognize these
differences in shape and size, but also place
reasonable limits on their impact on surrounding
communities.
The realization of some of the less appealing
possibilities inherent in the 1961 zoning appears
with greater frequency now, because market conditions
are more favorable than in most of the preceding
40 years and good development sites are in ever
shorter supply. With each successive boom in the
city’s real estate economy, developers use
the opportunities that remain in the 1961 zoning
to build taller and bigger buildings. Now more
than ever, reforms are needed to rebalance the
zoning regulation and development economics.
Recommendations
The goal of the Unified Bulk Program is to produce
zoning consistent with the following underlying
principles:
- The Zoning Resolution should contain
the simplest regulations compatible with the
city's planning objectives.
- Height and setback controls should
be designed to prevent new buildings from disrupting
the prevailing character of communities in ways
that are not anticipated in the zoning. In the
highest-density areas with post-1961 towers,
outside the central business districts, towers
should be permitted, but should not continue
to rise to ever-greater heights.
- Each zoning district, outside designated
central business districts, should have a height
limit to provide certainty for residents, property
owners and developers that future development
will not exceed clearly defined limits. The
height limits, together with setback controls,
must provide effective caps on as-of-right building
size that cannot be undermined by zoning lot
mergers, deductions of mechanical space from
floor area and other means. Development proposals
that seek to exceed these limits should be subject
to public review.
- The new zoning should not impede
development of the housing, commercial buildings
and community facilities needed to accommodate
the people living and working in the city. Specifically,
the new zoning should accommodate the least
costly building types at different densities,
consistent with the city's planning objectives,
particularly in low-density and medium-density
districts where development is highly sensitive
to costs.
- Current zoning density and floor
area ratio standards are generally appropriate
to meet the demand created by the city's population
and employment.
Unified Bulk Program
The Unified Bulk Program is a sweeping set of
changes to the bulk provisions of the Zoning Resolution.
Below is a summary of the key elements of the
program.
Height and Setback Envelopes. The proposed
height limits and setback rules would replace
the multiple alternative envelopes in the existing
zoning with one or two simple building envelopes
for each zoning district. The envelopes are designed
to be flexible enough that all the permitted floor
area could be used on a typical lot to produce
a variety of designs consistent with the typical
scale of development in the zoning district. They
would constrain the transfer of unused development
rights from existing buildings to a development
site. They would eliminate the complex system
of sky exposure planes, height factors and open
space ratios designed to produce tower-in-the-park
development, as well as several other bulk provisions
adopted as an antidote to tower-in-the-park development.
The Unified Bulk Program would not apply in the
Special Midtown or Lower Manhattan Districts.
Downtown Brooklyn, the Court Square Subdistrict
and eventually other portions of Long Island City
would have height limits appropriate for downtown
business centers. Contextual zoning districts
would not be changed.
In medium-density and high-density districts
(R6 to R10 and equivalents), the proposed building
envelope would permit a contextual building that
would hold the streetwall or a somewhat taller
building set back from the street. Each district
would have a height limit lower than what can
be achieved under the existing zoning. These bulk
controls would preclude the type of out-of-scale
building, allowed under the existing zoning, which
conflicts with the character of the surrounding
district. For residential buildings, maximum and
minimum heights for a contextual building's base
and setback requirements above the base (derived
from the Optional Quality Housing standards) are
designed to provide streetwall continuity and
a scale that corresponds generally to the built
form typical of the zoning district. In high-density
districts (R9, R10 and equivalents), all residential
buildings using the taller envelope would be required
to comply with revised tower-on-a-base regulations,
requiring that buildings hold the streetwall and
setback above a base. Tower-on-a-base rules would,
for the first time, apply on narrow streets and
would be modified to provide greater design flexibility
without jeopardizing the objectives of limiting
height, constraining zoning lot mergers and establishing
a streetwall.
A similar height and setback system would be
established for non-residential development in
low-density districts (R1 to R5 and equivalent
districts). Commercial, community facility and
manufacturing buildings, where permitted, would
be subject to district height limits that would
preserve the characteristic low scale of these
areas at the street line, but provide greater
flexibility on large sites where taller buildings
could be constructed to preserve open space or
to integrate new development with existing low-rise
buildings. Residential buildings in the lowest-density
districts (R1 and R2) would be subject to a contextual
envelope to replace the obsolete 1961 height and
setback rules. These provisions are not needed
in R3 to R5 districts, where residential buildings
are already limited to a contextual envelope.
In the highest-density manufacturing districts
(M1-6), no towers or plazas would be permitted,
because these districts are dominated by large
bulky pre-war loft buildings that hold the street
wall and do not have towers. The one exception
to this effort to maintain the established built
form of these loft districts will be those M1-6
districts close to the Midtown Manhattan core
where loft buildings are already mixed with office
towers.
Split Lots and Zoning Lot Mergers. The
rules governing split lots would be tightened
and simplified to ensure greater predictability
in what may be developed and to assure that split
lots are not used as an excuse for ignoring the
distinctions between zoning districts. Restrictions
on the transfer of bulk across a district boundary
would be relaxed only where comparable districts
have the same floor area, height, setback and
bulk controls. To remove any ambiguity on the
issue of which districts are comparable, the zoning
would include a definitive list of the comparable
districts. This change will prevent inappropriate
shifts of floor area between districts.
The height limits would constrain future zoning
lot mergers, limiting excessive transfers of floor
area by controlling the size and shape of what
can be built. In addition, except in high-density
commercial districts (C4 to C6), all residential
developments using the tower envelope would have
a minimum tower lot coverage of 33%. This requirement
will prevent the massing of development rights
from a large merged zoning lot into a tower on
a small portion of the lot, by requiring that
the tower occupy at least 33% of the entire zoning
lot.
Density Controls. A single set of dwelling
unit limits based on the amount of permitted floor
area in a residential building would replace the
more complicated existing density controls, based
on zoning room counts in some districts and numbers
of dwelling units in other districts.
Bonuses for Public Space. Most public
spaces provided for in the Zoning Resolution have
produced tangible public benefits, but some have
been found over the years to be of limited use.
As-of-right bonuses for residential plazas and
for other public open spaces that have not produced
significant public benefits would be eliminated.
Bonuses for residential plazas in high-density
commercial districts (C4 to C6) would be allowed
by special permit. Bonuses for commercial and
community facility plazas, which are of greater
value because of the more public nature of these
buildings, would be retained.
Authorizations and Special Permits. The
Unified Bulk Program would include bulk waivers
to assure that the tighter bulk constraints do
not impose unexpected and onerous burdens in specific
situations and do not unduly inhibit the design
of architecturally innovative and distinguished
buildings. Minor modifications of all streetwall,
coverage, court and distance between building
regulations would be available by City Planning
Commission authorization, if found to be consistent
with neighborhood character. More significant
modifications, including height waivers and tower
coverage, would be permitted only by City Planning
Commission special permit. The special permit
would require a finding that the proposed development
has a high quality design. A panel of architects
and others concerned with design issues would
be established to advise the City Planning Commission
on the design merits of these special permit applications.
|
