Most New Yorkers think zoning is a bad word, and that tough change is afoot when the city planning department comes to their neighborhood. Amanda Burden, who chairs the city planning commission, works long hours to fight that perception.
Walk with NYC planner Amanda Burden as she rezones the lower East Side
She looks at each neighborhood block by block, lot by lot. To her, the city is a jewel that needs constant care and safekeeping.
"Each neighborhood has its own personal DNA," says Burden, who had an immediate impact on the city when she took her position in 2002 by allowing restaurants, bars and cafes additional sidewalk space for outdoor dining. "It's my job to find it and save it."
To understand communities, Burden walks miles of city streets. Armed with a tape measure, sunglasses and comfortable yet stylish shoes (she is, after all, a former socialite), the planning commissioner eyes building heights, studies the flow of people and contemplates how an area's past relates to its present and future.
"This wasn't here two weeks ago," Burden says, sneering at a vacant lot. "There was a building. Once you lose a building, you lose character and history. The Bloomberg administration is about growth and preservation. This is why we have to act fast to change the zoning, so developers aren't allowed to come in here and build whatever they chose. I don't mind a building that is in context with the others, meaning the same height with architectural guidelines, but small streets shouldn't have large development."
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"The existing zoning implemented in 1961 allows out-of-character buildings," says Burden. "It is crude and simplistic, allowing developers to build as high as they want.
I don't mind a building that is in context with the others, meaning the same height with architectural guidelines, but small streets shouldn't have large development."
Once you lose a building, you lose character and history.
Without scale, a neighborhood suffers, people want to leave, and apartment prices rise."
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We all know this. Funny how stuff like this gets written in Manhattan-centric publications.
The question is why is developer friendly city planning is saying this and not the preservation community.
Why are people in Queens not hearing this from their politicians, or see this in thier blogs or newspapers?
Thank you Crappy for publishing this.
The Bloomberg administration is about growth and preservation.
Can someone tell me WTF this means?
The damn papers will publish garbage like this but come out in favor of preservation in Queens and you get all kinds of examination of statements to prove the community preservationists wrong, or at least the pro-preservation lobby liberally quoted to confuse the issue.
Hopefully Amanda Burden (and John Young for that matter) follows Bloomie out the door next year. Everything she said in that article is phony. She got orders from Bloomie to stall many neighborhoods from being rezoned. Plain and simple.
Hey Amanda:
What about Flushing?
Why would she want to walk around Queens if she is not going to the Airports or riding through on the LIE to the Hamptons?
After all if you ignore and allow the best of Queens to be demolished, then she has done her job for Mr Gloomberg. After all why waste time on Queens preservation!
Amanda talks but won't take her walks through our borough because she'd have to go for her immunization shots and have her passport stamped in order to cross the Queensboro Bridge, from the way she sees it!
I'd lay off getting any more face lifts Ms. Burden, or at least learn to smile more cautiously.
Any overexertion may cause your skin to crack open!
"I'd lay off getting any more face lifts Ms. Burden, or at least learn to smile more cautiously.
Any overexertion may cause your skin to crack open!"
OUCH!
OMG that is such a load of shit! Every word she said or wrote is such crap! How are these people allowed to do this? I am so sick of the bullshit of these people. Do they ever get any REAL PEOPLE into these positions?
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/08/everyday-chatter_08.html :
"Amanda Burden frightens me so very, very much. Reading between the lines of her preservation talk, we see her underlying plan for the EV/LES: "we want five- to seven-story buildings and small retail on the first and second floors... By encouraging retail on the side streets and allowing developers more floors in their buildings..." This means that landlords who could not sell their tenements for towers, will soon be able to sell them easily for 7-story condo developments loaded with high-end and chain retail. In summation: Long-term and below-market residents in this neighborhood are deeply fucked."
www.forgotten-ny.com
Amanda Burden: High-priced streetwalker
Oh, come on don't be ridiculous.
She wouldn't be high-priced.
Oh, I wouldn't mind being that rich streetwalker's gigolo if she promised not to smile at me.
Maybe she's out looking for "trade"
while she's slumming.
Amanda is definitely a burden on NYC!
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