New York City’s ongoing prosperity depends on creating more jobs and more housing. However, as the City’s land use decision-making process has become more contentious, it too often stands in the way of housing and job creation. Furthermore, the process hampers New York’s ability to adapt to climate change as well as changing commuting, office market, and retail patterns.  

CBC’s new report, Improving New York City’s Land Use Decision-Making Process, identifies the current system’s problems—from its length and cost to its inability to balance neighborhood concerns with citywide needs. The report also compares New York to other jurisdictions and recommends six areas to improve with options policy-makers can choose in each area.  

Specifically, CBC found that: 

• The median private rezoning application takes two and a half years, excluding often lengthy informal pre-review negotiations; 
• A two-year review process increases development costs by 11 to 16 percent, adding up to $67,000 to the cost of building each new apartment; 
• New York’s discretionary review process takes longer than other comparable cities, except San Francisco; 
• New York is one of just seven states that require environmental review for discretionary land use approvals; 
• Absent standards to evaluate proposals, City Council Members are naturally incentivized by term limits to prioritize short-term, local concerns rather than longer-term citywide benefits. 

The status quo risks New York’s economic and environmental future by increasing housing unaffordability, limiting job growth, and impeding its ability to respond flexibly to growing environmental needs. CBC recommends both State and City changes to modernize environmental review and public engagement. Options include:  

• Modernizing environmental review laws by reducing the number of projects subject to review or by simplifying requirements to speed up review times; 
• Streamlining approvals of projects that help achieve identified regional or local housing and job-creation goals;  
• Holding advisory reviews at the community level earlier in the process, when input can still inform project scopes and design; and
• Better balancing citywide needs and neighborhood concerns by creating a process to appeal applications rejected by the City Council or requiring a Council supermajority to reject an application. 

CBC lays out a Three-Stage Roadmap so the State and City can hit the ground running with some impactful but more easily implemented changes while they consider more substantial transformation. 

Improving the land use decision-making process will require a heavy lift by government, and entail collaboration and potentially compromise by many private stakeholders, but the need is clear and urgent and the potential benefits substantial.