Equitable Development Index
New York, NY
Year
The lasting effects of gentrification, rezoning, historic red-lining and economic and health disparities have rendered a built landscape — and its attending processes — fraught to navigate. The EDI provides an opportunity to make sense of some of this. Factors such as community hardship, displacement, quantity of affordable units, environmental impact, infrastructural demand and capacity, and quality of enforcement for community benefits can be collected, weighted, and algorithmically scored. As a web-based platform, the EDI will leverage existing demographic and property data resources to provide contextually accurate, and up-to-date metrics for every development and site analyzed. The scoring process allows the Land Use Committee to clearly evaluate proposed community benefits like affordability, green space, economic opportunity, preservation, cultural cohesion, specific district needs, Black plurality and more, against the requested benefits for the developers such as rezoning, use-change, FAR increase, among others.
All parties involved in land-use decisions stand to benefit from having a comparative tool such as the EDI. Community Boards and their constituents will be empowered to consistently evaluate projects on their merits, council members and planners may use the EDI scores to justify their support or dissent for a project, and developers can understand how a proposal will be evaluated, and tailor it to address the community’s equity goals before a single public hearing is convened. Traditional planning tools, land use studies, rezoning mandates, development tax incentives, and recent indulgence of community participation and participatory design have not yielded results capable of taming inequitable development. The EDI created for CB10 will act as a pilot project, with the potential to expand iterations of this tool to decision makers across the city. The criteria can easily be adjusted to accommodate different districts and priorities, allowing for efficient adoption in new areas. By creating objective standards for new development proposals, the EDI helps community boards make well-informed decisions and improves the approval process for developers, reducing the discord surrounding current processes. New York City will benefit from the improved understanding of development risks and reward, thus facilitating a more equitable path to much needed affordable housing and community defined assets.
Team
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Updates
Alden Copley
