Trading Parking Lots for Affordable Housing
18/09/2014.
9x18 is a collaboration between Peterson Rich Office and Sagi Golan. [NYC] USA
metalocus, ÁNGEL BLANCO
metalocus, ÁNGEL BLANCO
What is the solution to affordable housing in New York?
Site Analysis, New York.
Site Analysis, New York.
Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
East Harlem: A Case Study. Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
East Harlem: A Case Study. Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
Before. Current parking at a superblock-size East Harlem housing development. Image © Peterson Rich Office/Sagi Golan.
After. The same site could include a parking garage and multiuse development.
Parking spaces have similar dimensions to the standard unit sizes of affordable housing in New York City.
One number has been repeated over and over — 200,000 subsidized units, to be built or preserved over a decade. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised it, but has yet to explain how he’ll get there.
Here are two other numbers: 9 x 18. In square feet, that’s 162, smaller than the most micro micro-apartment.
It is the size of a typical parking space. That lowly slice of asphalt has prompted three young architects — Miriam Peterson, Sagi Golan and Nathan Rich, fellows at the Institute for Public Architecture — to come up with what could be an innovative way to ease the housing crisis.
Description of the project by Peterson Rich Architects
9x18 is a collaboration between Peterson Rich Office and Sagi Golan.
In 2014, Mayor de Blasio unveiled “Housing New York: A Five Borough, Ten-Year Plan”, announcing the ambitious goal of building and preserving 200,000 affordable housing units. The Mayor's office boldly states that the city has reached a “crisis of affordability” and that “things must change”. In a time of “crisis” our team firmly believes that innovation is needed and that the city cannot rely on one-off projects or piecemeal rezoning; a strategic and fresh approach is critical.
9x18 rethinks the role of parking as an agent of change in the current affordable housing discourse. We believe focusing on the citywide issue of parking could help shift affordable housing debates away from project specific nimby-ism and toward a conversation about neighborhoods, lifestyle choices, mobility and social justice.
9x18 is a study of how current parking requirements in the NYC zoning regulations have manifested in underutilized space and problematic urban design, and it asks whether challenges to the code could create new potentials for affordable housing. We propose revisions to existing zoning regulations that reflect a fine-grained approach to parking requirements. The project also strives to reveal the enormous potential of existing surface parking lots on New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) land in strategic locations throughout the city as an untapped resource for development.
There is 20,360,000sf of surface level parking on NYCHA sites citywide, much of which is vastly under-utilized. Our project considers several ways that this land can play a role in addressing the affordable housing crisis by reducing the burden of parking requirements on private developers, and generating revenue to help preserve affordable housing on NYCHA sites. At the same time, strategic infill developments present opportunities to better integrate NYCHA sites into the surrounding urban context and neighborhood.
In the attached booklet, we have visualized an analysis of existing zoning regulations and proposed fine-grained alternatives that consider the size and type of unit, proximity to transit, the level of affordability, and other relevant factors to further refine parking regulations in new construction.
In tandem, we have conducted a citywide analysis of NYCHA’s surface parking lots to emphasize its potential for change throughout the city. The project then takes a closer look at East Harlem as a case study to illustrate how a design and planning intervention could have an impact at the scale of a building, a block and a whole neighborhood. Here we propose to bank surface parking from existing NYCHA campuses and new developments across the neighborhood into municipal parking structures in order to free up surface parking sites for future development. These locations provide opportunities to construct additional affordable housing units while providing needed cultural and community facilities, resident services, and other creative programming to service NYCHA residents and the surrounding community.
The “need” for parking isn’t part of the popular discourse around housing in general and affordable housing in particular. We think that bringing parking into the discourse will engage major stakeholders: private developers, residents, government officials, social groups and NYCHA officials. Building consensus around the importance of neighborhood planning and the role that each stakeholder plays will influence how each might benefit from being part of a strategic plan to re-envision the future of housing in NYC. Folding NYCHA into the discussion is politically complicated but it represents an important social and urban asset and affords the potential to have a city-wide impact.
In the long term, we strongly believe that the 9x18 approach could and should be implemented. We are already in discussion with City council members who have sympathetic ambitions, including Councilmember Margaret Chin from District 1. Adopting the 9x18 approach could create new potentials for affordable housing development city-wide. At the same time, the project proposes that we embrace this moment of change to generate a conversation about lifestyle and urban priorities.
More information
Nathan Rich, Miriam Peterson, Sagi Golan. PETERSON RICH OFFICE y SAGI GOLÁN
Peterson Rich Office (P.R.O.) is an interdisciplinary architecture and design studio founded in 2011 by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich.
Nathan Rich brings a breadth of experience with global reach. He received his BA from Wesleyan University and his Masters in Architecture from Yale University where he was awarded the James Gamble Rogers Memorial Fellowship. In 2004-2005 Nathan was a Henry Luce Scholar in Beijing, where he taught at Tsinghua University and researched the impact of rapid growth in Asian cities on the built environment. He recently published on the topic as a contributing author for the Routledge publication Architecture and Capitalism. Nathan worked at Steven Holl Architects for five years before leaving in early 2014 to join Peterson Rich Office.
Miriam Peterson received her BA in Italian Literature and Economics from Cornell University in 2004 and a Masters of Architecture from Yale School of Architecture in 2010.
Her graduate work at Yale University School of Architecture and her professional research has focused on the interface between the built environment and its surrounding physical and economic context. Gaining her masters degree in 2009, Miriam was awarded the William Edward Parsons Memorial Medal for the student who shows the most promise in the field of Urban Design. She worked for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Tod Williams Billie Tsien over the course of 8 years before leaving the firm in February of 2012 to start Peterson Rich Office.
During her time at TWBTA, a practice with a focus on materiality and constructability, she polished her detailing skills and gained invaluable experience in the field. She played key leadership roles on notable projects including the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (completed in 2012), and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, a state of the art nanotechnology facility to be completed in 2015.
Sagi Golan is an architect and urban designer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Tel Aviv University (2011) and an M.S. in architecture and urban design from Columbia University (2013). He has participated academically in collaborative workshops in the field of architecture and urban design in Tokyo, Berlin, and Jerusalem. At Columbia Sagi was awarded the GSAPP award for excellence in the Urban Design Program and the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize (2013). He gained teaching experience working as an instructor at the School of Continuing Education and as a teaching assistant for the urban design studio at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP).
Sagi gained research experience working at the Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab. He currently holds a teaching position at Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP) as well as an Urban Designer position at the Office of the Chief Urban Designer at the New York Department of City Planning where he is involved in conducting complex research investigations and studies, urban design plans, and participating in the city’s efforts in achieving its affordable housing goals.
