NYC Zoning Specs Web Site

An example from the site. Source: NYC.gov

The NYC Planning Department has a web site with a very thorough presentation of the city’s zoning specifications.  I like how its drop-down menu allows you to select any of the city’s 53 zoning categories, or any of its special use districts, and get its basic information.  The layout is clean and straightforward, and the specs tables are concise, illustrated with form-based graphics (to the extent possible), and supplemented with neighborhood photos.

NYC zoning is still deeply, unrepentantly Euclidean.  But this method of presenting separated uses helps to cut through some of the legalistic cobwebs that often accompany an empirical approach to urban land use law.  (Think: a lawyer or planner burning the midnight oil; an unfurled map on a library table; and a heavy binder of obtuse statutory language.)  Proper respect to the NYC Planning Department for using its resources to shed light on what is often an arcane and inaccessible area of the law.