Adopted by the City Council in November 2012, the West Harlem Rezoning sought to contextualize the neighborhood's zoning while facilitating new opportunities for transit oriented development and affordable housing. The zoning in West Harlem had last been updated in 1961 under a "tower in the park" philosophy, which promotes tall towers with large setbacks amidst swaths of open space that would have been detrimental to the neighborhood's vibrant and historic streetscapes.
The new zoning provides opportunities for mixed-use development in the area's existing manufacturing district, allows for more development opportunities along the busy and transit-accessible W 145th Street corridor, and attempts to preserve the historic character of West Harlem's historic residential neighborhoods. The Inclusionary Housing Program was utilized to promote affordable housing along W 145th Street as well.
I worked on this project as a planning intern with the Manhattan Office of the New York City Department of City Planning. Most of my work was on the Reasonable Worst Case Development Scenario (RWCDS) analysis required under the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) process. I also assisted with field work, public outreach, and GIS/mapping efforts.
I worked with Manhattan Office staff to create the above development scenario summary grid that organizes the RWCDS alternatives for parcels identified in the map below. It contains details on the potential increases or decreases in floor area, dwelling units, building heights, etc. that could result under a "future without-action" condition (representing a buildout under the existing zoning) and a "future with-action" condition (representing a buildout under the proposed rezoning).
Several sites required a more detailed analysis given circumstances surrounding the parcels at the time. For example, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) was attempting to protect several large parcels within a manufacturing district by designating it an LPC historic district, so we had to create scenarios for each site that estimated buildouts that could occur both with and without future historic district protection.
The materials shown here here were used to develop the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the rezoning project.
This map above shows projected and potential development sites that were analyzed in the final RWCDS report.
The following slides, developed for Manhattan Office staff, represent proposed zoning districts for the 145th Street corridor in West Harlem based building typologies, land uses, and locational factors.
When the zoning designations were finalized, I created and maintained a GIS shapefile for the proposed zoning districts that was used to create this map.
