Building attractive affordable housing on a limited budget is an issue developers and designers throughout the city wrestle with on a daily basis. So YIMBY talked to a few architects behind innovative affordable and supportive projects about what works—materials, layouts, green features—and how proposed zoning changes might shape new buildings.
The city has had grand plans to build a Utica Avenue subway line for nearly a century, and on Wednesday, de Blasio resurrected the idea of extending the 4 train out as far as Kings Plaza in Mill Basin, bringing trains to a transit-starved area of southeastern Brooklyn.
Last July, YIMBY obtained construction documents for the future Nordstrom Tower at 217 West 57th Street, and we translated the diagrams into renderings. And now, we have obtained official renderings created by the architect, depicting Midtown (and potentially, the Western Hemisphere’s) future tallest tower.
If there’s one thing that community boards, developers and architects can agree on, it’s that the city’s zoning code is outdated, restrictive and unclear. So the Department of City Planning is trying to get feedback from architects, planners and communities on its proposed zoning changes, which are meant to spur the construction of affordable and senior housing.
YIMBY has featured two stories on the new Census data so far: the first on the actual numbers, and the second on how New York City is growing far faster than anticipated, already almost reaching its projected population for 2020. But in terms of milestones, the biggest story of all is that the New York metropolitan area has now passed the 20 million person mark, with the 2014 estimate clocking in at 20,092,883 individuals.
