At last week's Municipal Art Society Summmit in New York City, one panel of experts attempted to answer just that. Neither overbearing zoning rules, contextual zoning, or the current environmental review process was left untouched.
Noah Kazis provides a recap:
"Each of the panelists endorsed a move toward what moderator Vicki Been, a professor at the NYU Law School, called the 'Vegas principle' of zoning: 'What happens in the building, stays in the building.' Zoning, they argued, should be more concerned with how buildings meet the public realm or impact public infrastructure than what people choose to do inside their property. 'There's nothing unsafe about having a business on the same floor as an apartment, if the people in the building agree to it,' said Michael Kwartler, a national expert on planning who helped write the zoning laws for midtown Manhattan."
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