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NYC launches new office to help everyday New Yorkers shape their own neighborhoods
By
David Brand
Published Feb 23, 2023
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Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Riverside Park Conservancy
By
David Brand
Published Feb 23, 2023
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Communities will soon be getting a bigger say in neighborhood development decisions under a newly created office.
The Department of City Planning is unveiling a new division on Thursday that aims to break the agency’s top-down development approach and help everyday New Yorkers shape their own neighborhoods.
Director Dan Garodnick said the City Planning and Engagement Division will reach deeper into communities and work with students, young people and grassroots groups to determine what gets built where. The team will also work with other city agencies to overcome a tendency for neighborhood proposals to be removed from the demands of the actual people who live there, Garodnick said.
“The work of City Planning is built with local communities – and that means from the ground-up,” he said. “We are serious about our collaboration with community residents, workers, advocates and elected officials as we tackle our city’s biggest challenges.”
DCP shapes the map of New York City by greenlighting building plans, researching their potential effects and advising policymakers. It also proposes or signs off on changes to the city’s zoning code — at times in sweeping neighborhood-level reforms. But DCP has faced consistent criticism for a top-down approach in an urban planning field characterized by wonky regulations and inscrutable jargon.
Garodnick said the new division will work with communities beyond the rezoning phase to plan affordable housing, employment programs and solutions to daily problems, like trash-strewn parks and backed up sewers. The agency said its engagement team will also explain Mayor Eric Adams’ land use policy proposals — like changing arcane parking requirements and converting Midtown offices into apartments — to average New Yorkers.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who has long called on the city to reform its planning processes, said he hoped the division was “the start of a new chapter that puts community voices first.”
Lara Mérida, a DCP official for five years, will lead the new division, the first since the agency created a regional planning office in 2016. She said the team builds on DCP’s “civic engagement studio,” which led a youth program at a Bronx high school and launched an interactive website with neighborhood data on affordability, equity and displacement risk.
Mérida said DCP staffers spent more than two months working with seniors at the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology in the South Bronx to create solutions to community problems. She called the program a model for the kind of work her new team will perform citywide.
“By expanding how we think about community engagement, we can make sure that good planning policy is crafted hand-in-hand with members of the public, leading to better results and a better future for all,” Mérida said.
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Politics
eric adams
David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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