Mamdani Taps an Equity Advocate as Chief Planner

New York’s new planning chief faces a steep learning curve.

Courtesy Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

Almost two months into his term, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has finally announced his choice for the chair of the City Planning Commission (CPC) and director of the Department of City Planning (DCP), a key city government position. Sideya Sherman, the appointee, until last December served as the city’s Chief Equity Officer and Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice under former mayor Eric Adams.

In announcing the appointment, Mamdani praised Sherman’s “record in community engagement and equitable development,” calling her “exactly the leader we need at City Planning.” That’s a stretch. Sherman is taking on a large responsibility, and I wish her well. But she faces a steep learning curve as she steps into a role very different from those she has recently held.

The City Charter defines the CPC’s mission as “the conduct of planning relating to the orderly growth, improvement and future development of the city.” It’s a broad mandate, in which zoning is a principal tool, along with changes to the city map and the siting of public facilities like schools and parks.

Sherman will lead the 13-member CPC, whose approval is required for many zoning and other land-use changes, and which was given additional powers under charter amendments approved by voters last November. DCP provides staff support to the CPC, undertakes citywide and neighborhood planning, and initiates many zoning changes.

Sherman’s new job requires constant engagement with the real-estate and business communities, which depend on the commission not only for approvals of specific land-use applications but also for clarity and consistency on broader policy questions that shape investment decisions across the five boroughs. Mayoral appointees in this role have in some cases been trained city planners. More often, however, they have been non-planners with substantial exposure to planning or related fields, such as real-estate development.

By contrast, Sherman’s recent experience is not very relevant to her new job. The Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice—where Sherman most recently served as commissioner—describes itself as “dedicated to creating a fairer and more equitable city for New Yorkers” and “to working across all city agencies to create the first NYC Citywide Racial Equity Plan, with the goal of implementing policies, practices, and programs that promote social justice.” The office has its own City Charter mandate, defining “equity” and requiring preparation of a citywide racial equity plan by April 2024. (That deadline was not met, but Mamdani has committed to the plan’s publication.)

In her new role, Sherman’s principal task will be to develop a strategic land-use planning approach that addresses the city’s housing supply crisis and economic stagnation. That will require a pragmatic acceptance of the limits on city government’s ability to achieve equity via regulatory mandates rather than the interplay of market forces.

Hopefully Sherman will quickly become conversant with the nationwide movement for zoning reform. New York City, like many other U.S. cities, has proven adept at using a wide range of zoning tactics to prevent housing from being built. These are often packaged with pro-equity language—as if low-income New Yorkers, who are in fact the victims of such policies, are really the intended beneficiaries.

One such policy is mandatory inclusionary zoning, which requires a certain percentage of units in new housing developments to be provided at below-market rents. New York City imposes such requirements and then only partly offsets the cost to developers with (increasingly less-generous) property tax exemptions. Despite the eye-watering expense of these exemptions, property owners often find themselves unable to make an acceptable economic return on development without securing additional cash subsidies from the city. With those scarce, land that is theoretically zoned for new apartment buildings often sits unused.

In Oregon, the state Senate recently passed legislation banning inclusionary zoning mandates unless local governments fully fund the cost. That’s something New York City could also do, which would result in more housing construction and make households at all income levels better off. But it might result in less “equity,” in an ideological sense. Will Sherman display the requisite flexibility?

New York City is also well versed in using zoning to prevent private businesses from creating jobs for people at lower levels of skills and education while protecting favored incumbents. For example, the city has effectively banned new hotels and made the construction of new large supermarkets unnecessarily difficult. These restrictions “protect” union jobs, but they harm consumers and people who need jobs. Sherman needs to understand how the complexities of land-use regulation interact with equity concerns in unanticipated ways.

Housing supply and neighborhood economic development, critical as they are, will not be Sherman’s only challenges. She will be responsible for planning the future of New York’s Manhattan business core.

I have previously criticized DCP’s Midtown South zoning proposal for being insufficiently attentive to the scale and character of some affected neighborhoods, while at the same time ignoring the potential for large apartment towers in Midtown itself. Sherman has an opportunity to take a more coherent approach, accounting for the successful implementation of congestion pricing and the recent wave of residential conversions of obsolete office buildings. But here, too, the priority should be sustaining Manhattan’s competitiveness and attractiveness to businesses—not equity.

Sherman’s status as a city-planning outsider means she will need to quickly get up to speed on a broad range of issues with many dimensions. An equity focus alone will not take her far.