New York New Urban News: Village Preservation Event Tuesday, BrooklynSpeaks Addresses the Future of Atlantic Yards, and An Open Letter to Mayor Mamdani On Affordable Housing

Village Preservation Takes a Hard Look at Landmarking in NYC in 2026: Zoom Webinar Tuesday, January 27 at 6 PM

CNU NYC is proud to be a sponsor of an important historic preservation event online this Tuesday. Village Preservation Director Andrew Berman will present the group’s findings from its report, Analyzing New York City Landmark Designations: A Review of Mayoral Influence and Policies, 1965–2025. The program will be introduced by newly appointed City Council Landmarks Subcommittee Chair Christopher Marte, who represents Lower Manhattan, and will culminate in a Q&A with members of the audience.

Sixty Years of Landmarks Designations: Has a Golden Age of Preservation in NYC Ended?
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Zoom Webinar – FREE – Registration Required
REGISTER

BrooklynSpeaks: How Can We Fix the Failing Public-Private Process?

THE LONG, TORTURED HISTORY of Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park continues. Empire State Development (ESD) is refusing to honor a 2014 settlement that provided for monetary damages if commitments to construct affordable housing weren’t met by June 2025 (they weren’t). Instead, the REBNY-dominated state agency proposes trying a new version of the same risky single-source strategy under which two previous developers failed. CNU NYC was a sponsor of an excellent panel discussion that can be seen online. Norman Oder analyzed the event for the Atlantic Yards Report.

Mayor Mamdani – We Can Build the City We Want

CNU NYC Chair John Massengale has written an Open Letter to Mayor Mamdani on Affordable Housing in New York.

QUOTE: In so many aspects of city life and politics, the rich and powerful have empowered themselves at the expense of others. No group in New York is more powerful and influential than Big Real Estate, aka the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). For more than two decades, City Hall, New York City Planning, and state and city economic development agencies have catered to their interests, making it more expensive to live here than ever before….

We the People have the right to the city we want. Paraphrasing CUNY geographer and urbanist David Harvey, the question of what kind of city we want cannot be separated from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire, or what city we want to see.

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