The worse laid plans
New York City’s land use process needs a fullbody makeover. City-sponsored rezonings keep hitting major obstacles and failing. The public and City Council members are suspicious of not just private developers but of City Hall’s planning officials. Developers and city planners are frustrated with Council members whose reflexive opposition to new construction is hampering the ability to grow.
But legislation introduced in December by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, aiming to reshape the city’s land use process and make it more holistic, is a misfire. The legislation requires a 10-year comprehensive plan, tying together land use, budget and strategic planning processes. The bill’s ambition is enormous, and enormously optimistic. Under the proposal, experts would, with community input, draft citywide goals for “housing, jobs, open space, resiliency infrastructure, City facilities, schools, transportation, public utilities, and other infrastructure.” Officials would use those goals for a long-term plan outlining zoning changes, resiliency measures and other policies needed in each community district. Then the city would analyze the environmental impacts of those proposed changes in each neighborhood.
Underwriting the entire process is a potentially very naive assumption that the “community,” this mess of 8.3 million people, who can’t even agree on who makes the best pizza or where to stick a bike lane, could form consensus around a detailed, decade-long vision for the city and each of its neighborhoods’ specific housing, jobs, arts, schools and transit needs.
The land use procedure deserves an overhaul, but this legislation wouldn’t actually replace the cumbersome Uniform Land Use Review Process. It would simply, in some instances, add another layer to the already wedding cake-sized planning bureaucracy.
Johnson decried as “absurd” the $500 million price tag that city planning chief Marisa Lago assigned to the legislation, but Johnson’s office couldn’t provide their own cost estimate. Meanwhile, city planning officials, asked what reforms they’d make to the current dysfunctional land use steps, seemed fresh out of alternatives. Something’s gotta give.
A 4-year-old girl was abandoned on a Bronx street after midnight, leaving cops to try to figure out who the adorable tyke’s family is, authorities said Sunday.
The girl, who told investigators her name is Sidaya, was spotted standing by herself near Prospect Ave. and E. 156th St. in the South Bronx at 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, police said. It was 40 degrees out, and little Sidaya (inset) was wearing a sweater but no jacket.
After a concerned passerby called police, cops picked up the tot and took her to Lincoln Hospital for evaluation
She was released from the hospital into Administration for Children’s Services custody in healthy condition, police said.
Heartbreaking surveillance video shows the girl walking with a woman four blocks from where Sidaya was found alone 10 minutes later. The woman walks far in front of the little girl on Fox St. near Leggett Ave., stopping to look back as little Sidaya almost catches up with her. Eventually, the woman just walks away.
Cops released the video Sunday along with photos of Sidaya after her rescue. They are asking the public’s help identifying the woman and Sidaya’s family.
The woman seen with Sidaya is described as in her 20s and 5-feet2 with a medium complexion and thin build. She was wearing a black headscarf, light blue denim jacket, black pants and white sneakers.
Sidaya was wearing a blue sweater, pants and rain boots.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.
All calls confidential. will be kept