Open Letter From the Thriving Communities Coalition to Mayor Mamdani
Dear Mayor Mamdani,
Earlier this summer, your administration released Block by Block, an ambitious plan to address New York City’s housing crisis and create a more affordable city for working New Yorkers. The Thriving Communities Coalition shares your belief that New York must build and preserve significantly more affordable housing if we are to remain a city accessible to people of all incomes and backgrounds.
Block by Block answers an important question: how much housing New York City needs. But as the City moves forward with implementing the plan, another equally important question remains: how do we ensure that all the things that make a thriving neighborhood – diversity, parks, schools, transit access, clean air, critical infrastructure, and more – keep pace with housing growth?
This is where comprehensive planning can help.
For years, the Thriving Communities Coalition has advocated for comprehensive planning as a way to demystify, democratize, and streamline how New York City plans for its future. Comprehensive planning is not about slowing growth or creating additional bureaucracy; it is about helping to ensure a more equitable distribution of housing development and infrastructure investment in the neighborhoods that need it most.
At its simplest, comprehensive planning means: setting transparent, equity-focused goals across city agencies and neighborhoods; giving communities a meaningful role in shaping how those goals are met; and allowing projects, investments, and land use decisions that advance those goals to move more efficiently.
New York has already begun building pieces that can be part of this framework. But without comprehensive planning, each piece won’t be as effective and may even lead to unintended consequences. For example, the City’s Environmental Justice NYC initiative, Industrial Action Plan, and other efforts passed by the Council, provide important tools, data, and strategies to guide the city’s growth. And City of Yes and the 2025 Charter amendments create faster pathways for housing and land use actions to unlock it. But these important initiatives and reforms, collectively, lack a more coordinated planning system in their relation to Block by Block.
For Block by Block to succeed, housing targets alone will not be enough. New housing requires parks, schools, transit, climate resilience infrastructure, and other public investments that allow neighborhoods to grow successfully and sustainably. Just as the Fair Housing Growth Strategy establishes housing goals for every Community District, New York should begin considering how to establish similar goals and accountability mechanisms for the infrastructure that supports growth.
Comprehensive planning offers you a framework for doing exactly that. It can help connect housing, infrastructure, climate resilience, environmental justice, and economic development into a cohesive and coordinated citywide vision. It can help ensure that every neighborhood contributes to meeting our shared challenges while also receiving its fair share of investment and opportunity.
Most importantly, comprehensive planning can help answer the question at the heart of Block by Block: not only how much housing we need, but where growth should occur, what investments should accompany it, and how New Yorkers themselves can help shape that future in ways that meet the needs of tomorrow while addressing historical challenges that have led to many of the inequities we see today.
We were encouraged by your support for comprehensive planning during your campaign and by the thoughtful conversations our coalition recently had with Commissioner Sideya Sherman and her team. We look forward to continuing that dialogue and exploring how comprehensive planning can help provide the framework needed to realize your ambitious vision for an affordable and equitable city.
Respectfully,
The Thriving Communities Coalition
Members
Ascendant Neighborhood Development
Asian Americans For Equality
Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD)
Chhaya CDC
Citizens Action of New York
Cypress Hills LDC
Fair Housing Justice Center
Fifth Avenue Committee
Good Old Lower East Side
Los Sures
Municipal Art Society of New York
North Brooklyn Neighbors
New York Appleseed
Our Bronx
Pratt Center for Community Development
Queens Community House
Regional Plan Association
Riders Alliance
Transportation Alternatives
WE ACT
Learn more about the The Thriving Communities Coalition here.