Report: City must look past vacant land to accommodate population growth
WRITTEN BY: Janaki Chadha
WRITTEN ON: December 18, 2018
New development on available vacant land won’t be enough to keep up with the city’s growing housing needs in the coming decades, according to a new report from the New York Building Congress.
The report, done in collaboration with the architecture and urban planning firm HOK, estimates the city will need approximately 560 million square feet of residential development to accommodate its growing population — which it says will likely exceed 9 million by 2040 and hit 10 million soon after the middle of the century.
The building congress — a coalition of construction groups, engineers, designers and architects — argues in the report that handling that growth will require looking to thousands of acres where existing buildings fall below their permitted density.
There are about 7,200 acres of vacant land around the five boroughs, according to the report, or roughly half the size of Manhattan. But only about 11 percent of that land is within walking distance of existing subway stations.
Meanwhile, the report identified more than 8,000 acres of residential land around the five boroughs that are built at less than half of their permitted density — all within areas either close to existing transit or in places where the report recommends expanding transit access.
“For city planners, developers and existing residents, the city’s sustained growth poses a challenge,” the report states. “These ‘soft sites’ provide significant opportunity for redevelopment given their underutilization.”
For example, 23 percent of the available land in Brooklyn that is either currently accessible through mass transit or could become so through transit expansion is underutilized, per the report. In the Bronx, 35 percent of such land is underutilized.
In addition to prioritizing development on these sites, the report recommends investments to expand the city’s transit access — including expanded bus routes, light rail and unification of the region’s rail network.
The report also calls for reducing parking requirements for market-rate housing development near transit and using tax policy to discourage vacant residential land.
Read the full report here.
