The Use of Land

The use of land (more commonly land use, but I’m hoping you notice) is about who gets what, when, and how. What can be built, where, at what scale, and for whom is settled years before anything goes up, in applications most people never…

The use of land (more commonly land use, but I’m hoping you notice) is about who gets what, when, and how. What can be built, where, at what scale, and for whom is settled years before anything goes up, in applications most people never see.

So I put everything I’ve built for reading that record in one place: bkcb6.app/useofland. Twenty tools, all public data, covering 59 community districts, 51 council districts and 388 neighborhoods.

A few of them: Block by block, the Mayor’s housing plan read against ten years of district data. Rents, every StreetEasy listing since 2010; play the timeline and watch rent move month by month by neighborhood, board, council district or borough. Land use map, every lot in the city shaded by land use or zoning. Less expensive housing, what you may qualify for by household and income, every open lottery, and Mitchell-Lama. NYS DHCR & Neighborhood Preservation, free housing help near you and where State housing money went. NYCHA, every development in the city, with the four in CB6. Plus the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the Gowanus rezoning, what R, C and M actually allow at any address, every Landmarks application, all 70,832 homes in CB6 across 13,755 lots, who owns what, everything built since 2010, and every ULURP.

Why bother? Advising on policy well means starting from what is actually there. Our Statement of District Needs opens every year on the same premise: budgets are moral documents, and politics is who gets what, when, and how. Building and preserving housing has been our top priority year over year. The Mayor’s Block by Block plan lines up with what this board has been saying for a long time, and you can’t argue for adding to a list if you can’t read the list.

I’ll be adding to it, but let me know what you think. Also, if anyone is a non-iPhone user who would be interested in demoing the app so that it can be in the Google Play Store, let me know.

The Use of Land Hub →