Abstract
In 2007, New York City adopted a long-term sustainability plan that announced a goal of ensuring that almost every New Yorker lives within a ten minute walk of a park of substantial size. At the same time, policymakers are rewriting the City‟s land use map through an unprecedented series of neighborhood level rezonings that involve changing the use type and residential capacity of affected lots or groups of lots. Despite the confluence of these interventions, no research has analyzed how the rezonings interact with the City‟s park infrastructure, and specifically, whether residential capacity changes in areas close to parks differ from those in areas further away. In this research, we employ a database of every tax lot in New York City to investigate how well the City-initiated rezonings correlate with the goal of providing New Yorkers with good access to the City‟s parks. Our results indicate a mixed picture; while most „upzoned‟ lots (lots where residential capacity was added) were near parks, we also find that the majority of „downzoned‟ lots (lots where residential capacity was reduced) were also close to parks. The net impact of these rezonings was a modest increase in residential capacity for the City as a whole, but the increases were disproportionately focused in areas further from parks.
Highlights
Urban green space provides many benefits to City residents, from recreational opportunities to improved air quality
Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis and a database created through a related study (McDonnell et al In Press), we estimate the impacts of these rezonings on the residential development capacity of individual lots located within and outside a quarter-mile walk of City-operated parks
Nor does this research attempt to estimate the impact of City-initiated rezonings on the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) Technical Manual park density guidelines of 2.5 acres of open space per 1,000 residents (Mayor's Office of Environmental Coordination 2010) as our focus is the connection between residential capacity and park accessibility rather than estimating resultant population density changes1
Summary
Urban green space provides many benefits to City residents, from recreational opportunities to improved air quality With these benefits in mind, New York City‟s long-term growth and sustainability plan includes the goal of having a significant open space within a ten-minute walk of every home in the City by 2030. Some of these have covered only a few blocks while others have encompassed dozens or even hundreds of blocks. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis and a database created through a related study (McDonnell et al In Press), we estimate the impacts of these rezonings on the residential development capacity of individual lots located within and outside a quarter-mile walk of City-operated parks. We calculate the total change in residential development capacity for lots in these two groups to better understand whether or not the rezonings will help the City meet its open space accessibility goal
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