The public approval process for big NYC projects is about to be reimagined; those projects, or most of them that previously had to go through a laboriously tedious ULURP (Uniform Land Use Procedures Process) public process will now be subject to a much more streamlined process. Mayor Mamdani who is endorsing the streamlining has pointed out that the streamlining process is can be entirely justified because the results of the streamlined process will be the same and just as predicable as the laborious and tedious kind of review as before.
. . . And Mamdani has described the new approach as “dreamy,” boasting that he had a lot to do with dreaming it up. One activist, hearing that, Theodore Grunewald, known for fighting to preserve historic libraries and much other great historic design and relics quipped that “Zohran’s imagination must have been soaring.”
The new streamlined review process is simple and straightforward and so obvious it probably could have, and should have, been thought of a long time ago. It eliminates the tiresomeness of a lot of senseless repetition. Or, more to the point, by observing a superfluity of repetition producing the same results, it takes advantage of the opportunity to collapse that repetition so as to avoid it in the future.
The new “Imagine That!” process (IT for short, already a shorter acronym) reimagines public approvals as follows. It allows a developer to cite a similar public review that has taken place for another project in the past that allows the developer to imagine what the public review of a new project would consist of, so that by imagining from that previous earlier review what the public reaction would be the developer’s own new project, that imagined review (or reimagining review?) can replace an actual new duplicative and repetitious review.
Developers imagining public response to their projects way in advance to the public's hearing about them will no doubt be more sensitive to the needs, wants, and desires of the public.
Mamdani says that, today, with his announcement of these reimaginings, the new approach will only be implemented by his authority as mayor on a trial basis to projects that include imagining affordable housing as a public benefit, but that on the one year anniversary of today, April 1, 2027, he expects reimagination approach to be available universally.
