Historic: What's In and What's Out?

The humor of this cartoon, drawn in an earlier decade, is less apparent at the present time when, as Richard Babcock and Clifford Weaver comment, "historic has come to mean practically anything that... is not run-of-the-mill." The term "conservation" more accurately describes much that goes under the name of "historic preservation." The aesthetics impulse has gotten ahead of its labels and mistaken rationale, creating needless confusion. The solution: call the thing what it is and manage it through more finely tuned conservation zoning, not through spurious claims of historic value.

The humor of this cartoon, drawn in an earlier decade, is less apparent at the present time when, as Richard Babcock and Clifford Weaver comment, "historic has come to mean practically anything that . . . is not run-of-the-mill." The term "conservation" more accurately describes much that goes under the name of "historic preservation." The aesthetics impulse has gotten ahead of its labels and mistaken rationale, creating needless confusion. The solution: call the thing what it is and manage it through more finely tuned conservation zoning, not through spurious claims of historic value.

## Trumped!

How could Donald Trump build a tower 310 feet taller than the United Nations? The answer: a "zoning lot merger" plus a little help from a plaza bonus. These diagrams show how he did it.

Trump buys a building lot of 20,083 square feet. The tower he can build is ten times that size, or 200,830 square feet. It is shown in green. Shaping this tower into a narrow slab increases its height. It also clears a zone of empty space around the base. Zoning calls this empty space a "plaza." It is shown in yellow.

plaza adds 20% to building size

The plaza earns Trump a "plaza bonus": a twenty-per-cent larger building. Trump adds 40,166 square feet (shown in yellow) to the tower. Meanwhile, Trump is negotiating with his neighbors. Through private business deals he merges his zoning lot with seven other lots covering much of the block. The buildings on these lots are shown in blue.

Right: the same steps as below, from the pedestrians' point of view.

The neighboring lots all have buildings on them, but they are much smaller than the zoning allows. The difference between them and the new buildings that could be built there is shown in red. This difference equals the development rights that now belong to Trump. These rights are substantial. They are like a large but imaginary building...a building that doesn't exist but could exist.

purchase of unused air space of surrounding buildings adds more size to building

extra-high ceilings add yet more

Trump scoops up his imaginary building—his development rights—and places it on top of his own building, adding 526,105 square feet of floor space. The result: a tower of 767,301 square feet. But this tower keeps growing! Because the zoning has no height limit, Trump pumps his tower yet further skyward by raising the ceiling heights to twenty per cent above average.

Though the zoning resolution limits the floor space of a building on Trump's site to ten times the size of its lot, Trump World Tower will be more than thirty-eight times the area of its lot. A building that should have been under 250 feet tall will be almost 900 feet tall!

## Trumped!

extra-high ceilings add yet more.