The Rise of Rezoning as a Housing Policy: The de Blasio Administration 2014-2021

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Housing Policy

Abstract

The idea that zoning changes allowing higher heights and densities are the best policy to address housing affordability issues and material inequalities has become popular among certain academics and policymakers. However, residents of areas targeted by these types of interventions tend to oppose them. When zoning changes target wealthy, majority-white communities, the literature on urban governance and participatory decision-making tends to assume that these communities would successfully resist rezoning plans. This study revisits the question of how and why local government can succeed in imposing unpopular policies despite community opposition, by comparing New York City’s successful approval of large-scale rezonings in a low-income community of color in Brooklyn and a wealthy, majority-white community in Lower Manhattan between 2014 and 2021. This study draws on the content analysis of tens of thousands of archival documents and 20 in-depth interviews with city planners and officials. By theorizing the local state as a strategic actor, this research unveils the organizational and planning innovations the city government implemented, as well as the governance rationale used to approve each rezoning plan.

Author

• Viktor Bensus, CUNY-Graduate Center