Dreaming Big by Thinking Small: NYC’s Plan for Small Lots
Emily Pollock posted on March 07, 2019 |
The “Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC” competition asks the public to develop affordable housing that can be built on smaller lots, like this one. (Image courtesy of the New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development.)
New York City is a hard place to find affordable housing. In January 2019, the average two-bedroom apartment went for $3,656 a month. The city’s latest solution to the problem? Oddly shaped lots.
The “Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC” competition asks the public to submit plans for building affordable housing on small, oddly shaped pieces of city land. Cocreated by New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the city’s chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the competition will give contenders until March 25 to submit their designs. Five lucky finalists will move on to the second stage of the competition, and receive a $3,000 stipend to continue developing their ideas. At the end of the whole process, the HPD may choose one or more designs to develop further.
It may be an unusual solution, but it’s not an unworkable one. The city owns almost 900 of NYC’s
1,200 vacant lots, as a result of a scheme to revitalize “distressed land” in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of the usable pieces of land have already been developed, leaving the city with lots in the shapes of trapezoids, triangles and…