Cea Weaver

Bright - this is an *extremely* troubling thing to suggest when you take even a surface level look at how communities have leveraged zoning to exert local preferences on who is allowed to live where.

we need to move forward towards a citywide plan with social housing/public housing goals as well as towards a robust, democratic planning process that reduces power imbalances and race/class inequality - and really quite far from “local deference” as a proxy for the second

I am a big believer in participatory democracy and figuring forms for working class / collective governance over political processes and decision making but “local” = a problematic shorthand for that in a society as ridiculously segregated as ours.

1) the potential for racist local opposition to development is absolutely there and could be deeply problematic for sure. But two on-the-ground realities must be raised…

2) …first, *most* recent, actual community pushbacks to rezoning plans in NYC aren’t coming from an exclusionary/racist place. They’re in opposition to MIH developments, which are always mostly luxury and offer only crumbs of affordability. They’ve been engines of displacement.

3)…the second & most important thing is that these rezonings are almost always hatched in back rooms with developers & city agencies like CPC & EDC. Absent deep reform of these agencies, any citywide rezoning plan will and should be looked at with suspicion by average NYers.

4) So the solution should probably be a 2-pronged approach balancing out truly public city agencies that sever ties to for-profit developers, and strong community input. Checks & balances. But including developers in planning decisions is literally a conflict of interest.

5) Last point: leftists should stop smearing anti-rezoning activists as racist: that’s an inaccurate OpenNY talking point. If there’s evidence of racism that’s one thing (like in Holden’s district). But activists in Soho/Noho/Chinatown/Gowanus are coming from a place of equity.