[Click to enlarge image]

If you thought planning and zoning maps were boring, think again. Well, actually, they are boring and confusing. They’re like the law–meant only to be understood by planning and zoning experts so that only they really know what’s going on and the average member of the public, upon seeing the 40-story building going up next store says, “Duh, how’d that happen?” That is what they call an opaque process and New York City has one of the worst in all of m America. But the city does hold meetings to try to explain all this stuff, with the only problem being that .0000000000000000000000001 percent of the population shows up, leaving everyone else dealing with the Duh Factor. That’s why we wanted to run this Coney Island zoning map, just so more people can see exactly how many towers the city would allow with its much pubicized and/or criticized amusement park. This map, which is deep in the city’s hundreds of pages of planning documents is fascinating, though, because it show just how many apartment towers and hotels could theoretically be built un the new zoning as well as the diminished (from the original plan) amusement zone. Those purple blocks are hotels. There are FOUR of them. Who will build four huge hotels in Coney Island is a good question, but by 2090, assuming global warming hasn’t submerged it all, it could happen. The yellowish blocks are apartment towers–a lot of apartment towers. Twenty one of them. If you pay attention to anything on the map just count the number of big buildings that the zoning would theoretically allow.