"Mamdani's landslide win and zeal, plus the painful obviousness of the crisis he has vowed to fix, give him an opening to shape a new era in housing. City of Yes, Eric Adams's citywide rezoning, makes it easier to build low- and mid-rise apartment buildings in every borough. In the same election that Mamdani won, voters approved three ballot initiatives that boost the mayor's power to speed up their construction."
"That tool kit makes it possible to build more, but if that's the mayor's only housing goal, he will have missed a generational opportunity. New York must do better than its usual serried towers and clunky blocks; a new cast of leaders can look abroad to figure out how. Our default options provide shelter for a fraction of those who need it and at the same time deaden streets, crowd the sky, and anger neighbors."
Zohran Mamdani will enter office promising massive subsidies to create 200,000 rent-regulated homes over ten years, making housing a defining feature of the city. Citywide rezoning and recent ballot initiatives grant tools to ease low- and mid-rise development across boroughs while businesses continue to support the economy. However, simply maximizing unit counts risks repeating past mistakes of bulky towers and deadened streets. New York should pursue denser, better-designed social housing models observed abroad that balance density, affordability, speed, and living standards to remake neighborhoods and meet deeper housing needs.
Read at Curbed
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