Editors' Note: Brick by Brick, Rule by Rule

Sometimes with editors’ notes, the goal is to convince readers that a given topic is worthy of their attention. Many issues of Vital City have focused on fairly niche (but important!) subjects, such as the role of the nonprofit sector in running cities, the use of social science evidence in crafting public policy or the size of the jail population on Rikers Island. Vital City editors have spent thousands of words explaining why you should care about these topics.

This issue is different. Almost no one needs to be convinced that housing is important. Indeed, housing has been the topic of preeminent concern in New York City for months. In the mayor’s race, upstart Zohran Mamdani has leaped to the front of the polls, driven in no small part by his campaign’s relentless focus on affordability, including his pledge to freeze the rent for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments.

Meanwhile, the national policy discourse of late, at least on the left side of the spectrum, has been dominated by the debate over the abundance movement. Sparked by the publication of “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, YIMBY advocates have been aggressive in extolling the virtues of loosening government rules and regulations as a means of sparking more building. (Their exuberance has been matched by their progressive critics, who have been equally vocal in attacking the idea that fewer rules and regulations will produce more housing, or more affordable housing, as opposed to more profits for wealthy interests.) There was even a crossover moment when, in an interview with Thompson, Mamdani embraced some of the language of abundance as part of a concerted effort to convince moderate voters that he is not a crazed ideologue.

Whatever the merits of Mamdani’s campaign and the abundance movement, much of the public discussion of these topics has tended to focus on political questions: Who is going to win the mayor’s race, Mamdani or his rivals? Who will control the future of the Democratic Party, abundance advocates or their opponents? As a result, these conversations have also tended to shed more heat than light. (If you want to encounter unhinged vitriol, try searching for @ZohranKMamdani’s mentions on X. It ain’t pretty.)

At Vital City, we acknowledge the importance of the current political debate between left, right and center. But politics is most meaningful when it is connected to policy and practice on the ground. And that’s where we focus our attention with this issue. While there are, of course, references to the mayor’s race and President Trump and the future of the Democratic Party here, we want to wrestle with the thorny challenges of how to actually improve housing in New York and other cities — making (and preserving) more of it, making it more affordable and making it more beautiful, too.

We are joined in this effort by an A-list collection of writers, including activists and architects, planners and developers. Our contributors don’t all agree with each other, but they do share a desire to do something more than curse the darkness — each in his or her own way attempts to offer concrete proposals for solving the housing problems that are currently roiling New York. 

Generally, these solutions fall into five categories (we hope the mayoral candidates are taking notes):

Zoning and land-use reform. The City’s approval process for development projects — the Uniform Land Use Review Process, or ULURP — is rigorous and thorough, requiring approvals by several different levels of government. It works better in theory than in practice, however. With staggeringly few exceptions, the whole process hinges on the judgment of the council member in whose district a project happens to be located. A development project can win the endorsement of everyone else in the chain, including the mayor and the City Council speaker, and still fail thanks to the Council’s tradition of deferring to the local member. Several of our contributors call for reform of this process, as well as expanding City of Yes for Housing and pushing for legislative changes in Albany to ensure that suburban counties contribute to solving New York City’s housing challenges.

Transit, transit, transit. Public transit is the lifeblood of New York, so it comes as little surprise that several of our contributors choose to underline the need for more development around transit hubs and to better coordinate transit planning with housing production. Other places (think Tokyo) have done this to far greater effect than New York City.

Reducing the cost of construction. In New York, it is a fact of life — and a call to political action — that the rent is too damn high. Our contributors highlight a not-unrelated phenomenon: The cost of building is also too damn high. Attacking this problem will not be easy. Among the ideas floated in this issue: Repealing New York’s unique Scaffold Law, which inflates insurance premiums by imposing strict liability on contractors; modernizing building codes to allow for innovations like single-stair buildings and new forms of piping; and using bulk procurement to scale modular housing, something Sweden has pioneered.

Addressing neighborhood concerns. The specter of displacement has haunted many efforts at economic development in recent years. In New York and other cities with strong progressive traditions, the accusation of gentrification is a powerful political weapon that has been used to derail numerous projects. Even as they call for a massive effort to build more housing, our contributors understand the need to be responsive to community worries. They offer a number of ideas to ensure that development benefits local residents, including the use of new vehicles like Mixed-Income Neighborhood Trusts that are designed to empower local voices and reduce the chances of displacement.

Making Cities Beautiful Again. One major impediment to winning public support for a massive expansion of housing construction is the reality that many new developments are, in a word, fugly. They don’t look good in the first place, and they look even worse after five or 10 years. If we are to build, let’s build beautifully, this issue suggests. This includes investing in attractive design and taking seriously the idea of integrating new buildings into the existing character of their neighborhoods.

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Few things evoke more powerful emotions than the idea of home. Home, at its best, means safety, love and a sense of belonging. Those without housing, or struggling with substandard housing, find themselves in a uniquely vulnerable position: It is hard to make progress in any aspect of your life if you do not have a stable roof over your head.

That’s why the current focus on building more housing, and making it accessible to every New Yorker, is such a welcome development. We hope this issue of Vital City will make a small contribution as policymakers wrestle with how to translate the interest in this topic into tangible progress on the ground.

This issue would not have been possible without the contribution of Kaley Pillinger, a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School with considerable expertise in affordable housing. Kaley was a crucial thought partner and coconspirator as we put the issue together. We thank her for her insight, hard work and good humor.