New York City is one of the country’s last municipal users of Number 6 oil, whose harmful chemical composition has sparked new regulations requiring buildings to use more environment-friendly heating fuel.
Tag Archives | Mayor Bloomberg
The Great NYC Heating Oil Changeover (Is Not Why You’re Sweating)
What, you weren’t thinking about your apartment building’s boiler? Well, why not?
Making The Law, Making The Law: Suite of New Green Laws Curbs Bad Heating Oils, Boosts Recycling
We take a break from our New Domino fixation to note… some good news, actually, courtesy of the City Council.
New Domino: Worst Mega-Development in NYC, Or Just One of the Worst?
New Domino: we obviously don’t like it very much. But dang it, we respect it for its ability to keep finding new ways to make us like it less.
Gowanus Update: Green Condos, Brown Canal, Fleeing Developers, Superfund Adventures, Et Cetera
The Toll Brothers bounced on The Gowanus after Superfund designation, but life goes on there — and the LEED Gold Third and Bond condos are open for business.
Not-Green Buildings NYC: Brooklyn’s Tampa-esque New Domino Development Gets Go-Ahead
Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar plant is one NYC macro-development that has never even made a nod to green building practices. It still isn’t, and it’s going forward anyway.
Annals of Urban Planning Ambition: Getting To Know The South Bronx Greenway
See this picture? Per the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s plans for the South Bronx Greenway, Lafayette Avenue in the South Bronx will eventually look like this.
Where Have All The Flowers Gone: Why Have Green Roofs Not Caught On In New York City?
They’re about as beautiful a manifestation of green building as exists, and benefit from a generous tax credit. So why aren’t green roofs catching on in New York City?
Brown Canals NYC: Federal Ruling Tasks Bloomberg, Developers With Putting the “Fun” in Superfund in Gowanus
The Gowanus Canal just sort of sprawls, slack and flat and brown and grease-slicked and awash in pesticides, PCBs and metals, across 1.8 miles in South Brooklyn. It is one of the most polluted waterways in the United States, which is a fact that essentially no one disputes. So in one sense, it’s not a surprise to read that the Gowanus Canal was tagged a Superfund site by the EPA on Tuesday. If there has ever been a more deserving Superfund site it… well, it would’ve had to have been pretty freaking nightmarish. But while the Gowanus is certainly apocalyptic enough in its noxiousness to deserve the Superfund label, there were some in New York City — including Mayor Bloomberg and several big real estate developers — who fought against that designation. Some of this is easily explained — the Toll Brothers at one point planned a 600,000-square-foot mixed-use development (with a freaking esplanade) along the Gowanus; Michael Bloomberg has almost certainly never been to Brooklyn — but what’s the debate, here?
Zone Defense: Streetsblog on Greening NYC Zoning
By David Roth on February 23, 2010 in Hudson Yards, Manhattan, New York City, Urban Planning, Zoning
Noah Kazis does a pretty tremendous job limning the gordian knot of issues surrounding New York’s zoning policies and politics, but he paints a favorable picture of the Bloomberg administration’s ultra-ambitious zoning work overall — nearly one-fifth of New York City has been re-zoned since 2002, and generally it has been re-zoned fairly thoughtfully. In the instance of Hudson Yards (pictured), for example, the city’s decision to essentially create a new neighborhood was predicated on the extension of the 7 train. Not all the development has been that wise, of course. “Even while the Bloomberg Administration has zoned for growth to be centered around transit, it has also closed off the possibility of more intensive transit-oriented development,” Kazis writes in part one. “The overall effect is positive, but it could be even better.” It’s a story gbNYC readers already know: this is a very green city, but it’s also one in which some very real green accomplishments are tempered by agencies that sometimes seem to be operating at cross purposes and the hugely powerful (and hugely regressive) influence of Real Estate Mega-Developers.
