View this page "Coney Zone"

[Rex]

Apologies for cross posting, there was a hint of interest in Urban
Design on getting to the devil in the zoning text details, however,
that opportunity seems to have slipped away. Perhaps a post mortem.
The draft covers all of the major points. The zoning committee would
like to get this out -- comments on it are requested no later than 23
May.

Click on http://groups.google.com/group/urban-design-committee/web/coney-zone
- or copy & paste it into your browser's address bar if that doesn't
work.

[ReidCurry]

Thoughts on the Special Coney Island District
(note background: http://groups.google.com/group/urban-design-committee

A civil society really wants to be polite and deal in fact, but a
great deal needs to be done in the discourse on zoning that separates
the technical from the political.

Technical zoning means having ratios (or thresholds thereof) that use
measures such as total square feet of floor area per 100 square feet
of land area. These measures are compared to adjacent property to
assess balance and to similar sites to evaluate aesthetic/environment
impacts based on existing conditions. These measures are in the
zoning text. They are used with any number of “risk” variables and
multiples to assess investment possibilities. They define need.

Political zoning describes or defines probabilities of development and
sets out a framework for sequential evaluation. Zoning accepts bonded
rationality, and allows for continuous adjustments that respond to
preferences in the market place. As such the technical measures are
“upped” and “altered” to offer incentives that ostensibly offset the
costs associated with meeting various public policy objectives as well
as serving the market preferences of the consumer. These factors
define want.

This combination need and want, of the technical standard and
political have many examples. The most persistent are policies
calling for income diversity in all new housing developments as
implemented through supply side incentives such as the inclusionary
zoning and demand side subsidies such as rent supplements. While
inclusionary zoning policy is slowly gaining “citywide implications”,
other policies must also be tied to the circumstances of land use in
terms of unique geology.

In the case of Coney Island, we have a barrier beach vitally important
to the dissipation (or capture) of wave energy. Herein lays the main
set of questions inherent in Coney Island zoning proposal. In this
specific case, the regulation of land use takes too small account of
its geology.

Zones defines land use and thereafter the density of use. The Coney
Island Zoning proposal comes along just as a new building code emerges
along with dramatic new demands for conservation of essential
services. By law these essential services as expressed in transit and
communications, water and power are required to make the users the
prime (if not sole) amortization source. Thus, the contradictions
become apparent. Given the added pressure of extremely tightened
credit, development demand presses well beyond the environmental
capacity of a barrier beach.

On this point and at this time, the “zoning/geology” relationship
should carry more weight in both technical analysis and political
rationale than zoning in its traditional role as a producer of city
ratable and developer profit. In a constitutional sense tipping the
measure of political protection may in reference to Coney Island
become less demonstrative as a major development site and hopefully
more of what it should be, something simple and playful by the sea.

Metrics Request

Would it be remotely possible for a team to develop something like the
following for measured approach leading to more rational political
interest in the future of Coney?

The residential and retail development – the text allows for X,000,000
sq. feet of housing and x sq. feet of retail. This is a X% increase
over the ratable total established by Finance in 200X

The use of Inclusionary zoning offers potential for X units of housing
affordable to families at 80% of the median. This is an X increase in
the possible number of units in this range of affordability.

The protected amusement area is x square feet. Of the this total x is
controlled for rent by the City of New York (NYC-DPR/revenue) and
within this envelop the total number of privately owned small business
(< 10 employees) is expected to be x

A statement on coastal protection is needed in the text regarding X
land area subject to a change in text in response to climate change,
sea levels and urban protection regimes. Is it time for the zoning
text to express the need (if not demand) for full integration and
compliance with known geological factors, and that the state has a
responsibility to be retroactive in the text on this point?

The measure of implied demand on the capital budget in Coney Island is
$X as follows:
In addition, subjective factors affecting investor confidence have
been “scored” as follows:

This process builds on a term yet to be fully adjudicated known as
“planners blight” with two documented impacts: 1) development is
halted and does not occur for decades or 2) over development (often
undercapitalized) occurs to meet rising development costs and/or
investor exuberance to produce the usual suspects associated with the
cost of unintended consequences environmental stress, bursting
financial bubbles, and so on has history continues to prove…

To the plannner, urban designer and architect the renewal of Coney is
intoxicating, so much so that addred restraints seem more than
important to prevent a serious license revoking DUI citation where the
"d" in this case stands for design.

[Tony Shitemi]

Rex:
Pretty insightful commentary.
I am sorry I don't participate... just too much on my plate to do anything
meaningful!
Saw Brian Sullivan with a client we share couple months ago, and sited him
at Max Bond's memorial.
Hope you are doing fine!
Best
Tony Shitemi

The residential and retail development - the text allows for X,000,000

financial bubbles, and so on has history continues to prove.

To the plannner, urban designer and architect the renewal of Coney is
intoxicating, so much so that addred restraints seem more than
important to prevent a serious license revoking DUI citation where the
"d" in this case stands for design.

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