The Zoning Supercycle in Action: NYC’s “City of Yes”
- GreenBuildingWW
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
New York City’s City of Yes is the clearest live example of a zoning supercycle in a major global market: a multi-year rewrite of citywide rules that turns “a little more housing in every neighborhood” into a structured, long-horizon pipeline of density, mixed-use, and infrastructure investment.
In December 2024, the City Council approved City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, billed by state and city leaders as the most pro-housing zoning proposal in NYC history.
The plan is expected to enable roughly 80,000 new homes over 15 years and is paired with about $5 billion in housing and infrastructure investments, including $1 billion in new state commitments. That package layers on top of earlier City of Yes amendments for carbon neutrality and economic opportunity, together forming a zoning framework that City Hall now credits—along with neighborhood rezonings—with authorizing roughly 130,000 housing units citywide.
Three Amendments, One Supercycle
City of Yes is built on three citywide text amendments:
City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality: clears the way for rooftop solar, heat pumps, energy storage, and other clean-energy systems that were previously constrained by height, bulk, or use restrictions.
City of Yes for Economic Opportunity: modernizes rules for small businesses, light manufacturing, and commercial uses to support more flexible, mixed-use ground floors across the city.
City of Yes for Housing Opportunity: the housing-focused capstone that touches FAR, parking, conversions, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and transit-oriented development.
For investors and operators, this is not just policy theater. It is a step-function change in how floor area ratio (FAR), mixed-use potential, and public capital stack into actual deals.
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From an Economic Infrastructure Group (EIG) standpoint, Housing Opportunity is where the zoning supercycle becomes investable: it systematically manufactures new or more efficient FAR in locations where existing infrastructure, transit, and labor markets already exist.
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