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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Vishaan Chakrabarti, Founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism on unlocking low- and mid-rise housing potential
1:18:06
·
7 min
Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti argues for policies enabling NYC to grow towards 10 million people, focusing on unlocking potential for low- and mid-rise housing construction. He presents research identifying numerous sites suitable for such development near transit and outside flood zones, emphasizing the lower construction costs of these building types compared to high-rises, and recommends creating as-of-right pathways and streamlining approvals for these projects.
- Chakrabarti believes growth benefits the city financially and culturally.
- Research found potential for over 520,000 units, primarily mid-rise (5-15 stories), on infill sites meeting specific criteria.
- He highlights construction cost differences: 3-story (no elevator, light gauge steel) is cheapest, then block-and-plank mid-rise, then high-rise.
- Proposes as-of-right zoning for low/mid-rise housing meeting context/transit criteria, potentially via state action (GPP).
- Suggests using minor modification process to unlock trapped FAR (Floor Area Ratio) by easing use/bulk rules without full ULURP.
- Supports comprehensive planning but stresses need for immediate as-of-right action.
Vishaan Chakrabarti
1:18:06
Commissioners, thank you.
1:18:07
Thank you for your service.
1:18:08
Thank you for inviting me.
1:18:09
Unlike many of your other panelists, I don't represent a nonprofit, but as a practicing architect, I'm familiar with the term.
1:18:17
So, I wanna talk to you tonight about a project we're working on in our office, a kind of research project, but I firmly believe that this should be a city of 10,000,000 people or more.
1:18:29
We have the capacity to be a city of 10,000,000 people or more.
1:18:33
We would be a much more vibrant place.
1:18:35
We'd have much more innovation.
1:18:37
But the thing that we should really keep in mind as we think about some of the discussion we just had, the question about infrastructure that was just raised, is that if we were a city of 10,000,000 people, we would be a much wealthier city that could afford to solve the problems that we have in front of us because every new resident pays more in taxes than they draw on services.
1:18:56
And if you need the evidence for that, all you have to do is look at when we went from 7,000,000 people to 8,000,000 people and how the budget expanded.
1:19:03
So we need to make the room and have an affordable city that's at least 10,000,000 or more.
1:19:09
And so I have some slides.
1:19:11
This was actually for a project we did with the New York Times.
1:19:14
Some of you might have seen it last year where we just took on we didn't look at zoning at all.
1:19:19
We just said, where are the sites that can handle development across the city using city's database and using, metrics that, we ourselves established within a half a mile of transit outside of the flood zones.
1:19:34
We found over 10,000 sites enough for, over 520,000 housing units, which would easily get us to 10,000,000 New Yorkers.
1:19:49
Just changing the slide here.
1:19:51
So one of the major things that we wanted to address was this question of neighborhood character.
1:19:55
We hear this a lot, and you just heard a lot of that in the borough president's testimony.
1:19:59
How do you have buildings that aren't out of scale?
1:20:02
So instead of looking at the zoning, we as I said, we said, let's look at places near transit out of the flood zone and then, find all of these infill sites through the city zoning.
1:20:13
And we found enough acreage that was twice the size of Central Park.
1:20:16
And this is very important in terms of construction and affordability.
1:20:20
We tend to talk about affordability as programs and subsidies.
1:20:25
We need to understand more about construction to understand affordability because it's a step function.
1:20:31
There's single family houses.
1:20:33
There's three story housing units that are built with light gauge steel, don't require elevators because the American Disabilities Act says you don't need an elevator for a three story building, lot less concrete.
1:20:44
Block and plant construction out to about 15 stories and then larger forms of high rises.
1:20:50
Each of those are significantly higher in construction cost per square foot as you go up the scale.
1:20:59
So we focused on the three in the middle, kind of that that low scale apartment, that five to 15 story and that 30 to 50 story.
1:21:07
And we said in terms of neighborhood character, basically, we said we wouldn't allow a building that was taller than the tallest building within the radius of a given site.
1:21:18
And so we there are some before and afters.
1:21:20
And so this is a transit rich neighborhood in The Bronx, single family neighborhood for the most part, but not all single family.
1:21:26
And there, we proposed a six unit apartment building.
1:21:29
This is the one I got the most hate mail on.
1:21:32
A six unit, apartment building, in The Bronx.
1:21:37
In, in Brooklyn, a one story building, right, that goes to basically the same height as the, neighboring apartment building over to the left, about a 58 story building excuse me.
1:21:52
A 58 unit building or 58 stories.
1:21:55
That's block and plank construction.
1:21:56
And then in Queens, about a 250 unit building, again, near a lot of mass transportation.
1:22:04
And then we did look at office residential conversions.
1:22:06
Obviously, it delivered very little housing.
1:22:11
So this is the interesting thing.
1:22:12
Of the 520,000 units, the lion's share came from the mid rises, the 58 unit buildings in Queens and Brooklyn.
1:22:23
We do not believe most of those sites are as of right, but here's the most interesting thing in terms of the response to this article.
1:22:29
We actually got a lot of positive response from civic organizations, community organizations, and so forth.
1:22:35
We didn't get a great response from the real estate community.
1:22:38
The real estate community said, we really don't have the wherewithal to build 58 unit housing projects in Queens and Brooklyn.
1:22:45
We're basically built to build much larger housing units.
1:22:50
And so you understand the dilemma.
1:22:52
We've got the sites.
1:22:54
We can build to scale near transportation, but we don't have the builders.
1:22:59
And and if we're gonna say these sites aren't as of right, that means that small scale builders have to go through Euler, which is almost impossibility to build where we have the most capacity for housing near transit and out of the flood zones.
1:23:14
So I just have a couple of very specific recommendations I wanna go through in terms of trying to achieve this.
1:23:20
I think we need an omnibus method either through Euler, which I think would be tough because a lot of these would be map amendments or a state GP to create as of right low rise housing and low rise neighborhoods and mid rise housing in mid rise neighborhoods when those neighborhoods are near transit out of flood zones.
1:23:40
In mid rise areas near transit, we should make 50 to 60 unit housing projects as of right as long as they comply with MIH.
1:23:48
Such projects can be built out of less expensive block and plank construction.
1:23:53
In low rise areas, make multifamily housing projects lower than 35 feet as of right.
1:24:00
These are really important.
1:24:01
You could provide a lot of housing at that small scale because, again, you don't need elevators.
1:24:05
You don't need concrete.
1:24:06
The cost of construction is dramatically lower.
1:24:10
In addition, the city has over a billion square feet of trapped f a r.
1:24:17
Right?
1:24:17
Meaning, the places, they can't utilize the density they've got on their sites, not because they don't need more density, but because of use and bulk restrictions.
1:24:27
And, I believe it'd be difficult, but I believe we should use the minor mod process, not the major mod process to avoid Ulerp to change use and bulk restrictions on any number of sites, and we can unlock a lot of FAR without doing any upzonings.
1:24:44
I'm gonna stop there.
1:24:46
I I just wanna close with this thing.
1:24:48
We've heard a lot about comprehensive planning.
1:24:50
I'm I went to planning school with commissioner, Greenberg.
1:24:54
I'm all for comprehensive planning, but, at the same time, we have to, you know, we have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
1:25:01
We clearly have a housing crisis.
1:25:03
We are going the opposite of having 10,000,000 people in the city as Vicky has already talked about.
1:25:09
And so and we have to put the folks in orange shirts behind us to work.
1:25:12
Right?
1:25:13
And so we have to do that by creating more as a right housing as soon as possible while we work on a comprehensive plan.
1:25:20
Those two things are not contradictory to each other.
1:25:23
And lastly, I really like the idea of the borough president going last, not, not before council.
1:25:28
So I'll stop there.
1:25:29
Thank you.