Land Use Regulation

Land use regulations affect the built environment, including the capacity for new growth, the provision of affordable housing, and quality of life measures, such as access to transportation and open space. We analyze the impact of land use regulations and regulatory choices, such as the designation of historic districts, on the amount, nature, and cost of housing. We also study the impact of historic districts on the price and supply of housing, and how transferable development rights could be used to support the production of affordable housing. In 2010, the Furman Center released the first comprehensive analysis of the effects of the city’s large-scale rezoning on New York City’s capacity for new residential construction.

Current Research Agenda

Our researchers are currently studying a variety of land use regulation issues that will help inform policymakers in making decisions about construction, housing, transportation and the environment.

Our current reseearch projects include:

  • Minimum Parking Requirements: A Continuing Role in a Dense Metropolis?
  • Rezoning, Housing Capacity and Neighborhood Characteristics
  • Soft Sites: Why Do Some Sites Remain Underdeveloped In Strong Markets?
  • The Effect of Historic District Designation on Property Values, Building Activity, and Neighborhood Demographics
  • Transferable Development Rights in New York City
  • What Teardowns Tell Us About Land Value

View all Land Use Regulation research projects »

For a list of all the Furman Center’s current research projects, download our Current Research Agenda.

Featured Researcher

Zhan Guo

Zhan Guo studies transportation and land use, public transit, and pedestrian behavior at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.  He is interested in understanding the multiple travel options faced by individual travelers and how government policies could affect the availability of these options and the subsequent individual decisions.  His research has focused on two interesting and interconnected questions.  First, how does the governmental regulation over the built environment (e.g. land use planning and infrastructure investment) limit travel options and encourage one particular travel means-car driving?  Second, how do travelers perceive different travel options? Could we reinforce, change, or even deceive that perception in order to promote the “right” behavior.  Within this framework, He has conducted empirical studies in Boston, Chicago, London, Portland, and New York City.

Latest News & Events

Latest Publications

  • Chapter

    Matching Words and Deeds? How Transit-Oriented are the Bloomberg-era Rezonings in New York City?

    Anticipating that New York City will grow to more than nine million residents by 2030, the City has launched an ambitious planning agenda focused on development in neighborhoods well served by public transit. Between 2002 and 2009, New York City’s government enacted 100 significant changes to its zoning code, constituting the most significant change to the City’s land use regulations since the original version of the current zoning code was adopted in 1961. This chapter explores the cumulative impact of the individual zoning actions on residential capacity, and how the rezonings match the City’s stated development, environmental and transportation goals. The authors found that, consistent with desired development patterns, there has been a modest overall increase in residential capacity concentrated in neighborhoods near rail transit stations.

    Simon McDonnell, Josiah Madar, Vicki Been. Transportation and Economic Development Challenges (Edward Elgar Publishing) . May 2011.

    land use, neighborhoods, transportation, zoning

  • Working Paper

    Updated: Minimum Parking Requirements and Housing Affordability in New York City

    Do requirements for residential developers to provide minimum off-site parking spaces actually increase housing costs by creating excess parking and reducing the number of units developers could otherwise fit on a given lot? Our results indicate that the per-unit parking requirement is, on average, lower in areas near rail transit stations, but the required number of spaces per square foot of lot area is higher, on average, in transit accessible areas. We also find that by and large, developers tend to build only the minimum parking required by zoning, suggesting that the requirements are binding, as argued by critics, and that developers do not simply build parking out of perceived market need.

    Simon McDonnell, Josiah Madar, Vicki Been. February 2011.

    housing policy, land use, parking

  • 15 Years of Research, Analysis and Insight

    In celebration of our 15th year, the Furman Center assembled a report taking stock of our accomplishments and outlining a plan for the future to ensure that we remain a distinctive and trusted voice at the forefront of academic and public policy debates.

    Furman Center. February 2011.

  • Article

    How do New York City’s Recent Rezonings Align With its Goals for Park Accessibility?

    In 2007, New York City adopted a long-term sustainability plan that announced a goal of ensuring that almost every New Yorker lives within a ten minute walk of a park of substantial size. At the same time, policymakers are rewriting the City’s land use map through an unprecedented series of neighborhood level rezonings that involve changing the use type and residential capacity of affected lots or groups of lots. Despite the confluence of these interventions, no research has analyzed how the rezonings interact with the City’s park infrastructure, and specifically, whether residential capacity changes in areas close to parks differ from those in areas further away. In this research, we employ a database of every tax lot in New York City to investigate how well the City-initiated rezonings correlate with the goal of providing New Yorkers with good access to the City’s parks. Our results indicate a mixed picture; while most ‘upzoned’ lots (lots where residential capacity was added) were near parks, we also find that the majority of ‘downzoned’ lots (lots where residential capacity was reduced) were also close to parks. The net impact of these rezonings was a modest increase in residential capacity for the City as a whole, but the increases were disproportionately focused in areas further from parks.

    Simon T. McDonnell, Josiah Madar, and Vicki Been. Cities and the Environment Volume 3, Issue 1 . December 2010.

    green space, land use, zoning

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Land Use Regulation in the News