The Urban Plan

New York is aggressively rezoning its city blocks, despite the slow market.

Over the past eight years, New York City has seen some 8,400 city blocks—20 percent of the city’s land area—rezoned. Most rezonings have allowed conversion of industrial space or parking lots to residential and mixed-use developments.

Pier 64, Manhattan’s newest green thumb of parkland, confidently thrusts its sloping lawns and grove of English Oaks out into the Hudson River as if hailing a water taxi.

The idea of turning Manhattan’s 42nd Street into a car-free crosstown artery, with low-floor light rail running river-to-river and the rest of the street converted to pedestrian space, has been kicked around for years. A generation ago, there was little support for it. The consensus was, “First, clean it up. Then we’ll see.”