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“Zoned In” was an in-person and virtual workshop series, and 6 month awareness campaign to get local nightlife communities involved in “City of Yes” — an initiative proposing city-wide zoning reform in NYC.

Hosted with the NYC Office of Nightlife, Small Business Services, Department of City Planning and Tara Duvivier from Pratt Center “Zoned In” aimed to spread awareness to nightlife and creative communities. We shared a 101 on zoning, how this reform could affect or open opportunity in different neighborhoods, and how to get involved in the public hearing process.

In 2023 NYC’s Department of City Planning announced “City of Yes” to address economic opportunity, carbon neutrality, and need for housing. This initiative has been years in the making, involving the input of many different agencies and organizations across NYC, however NYC’s history of top-down zoning reform is contentious and has often overwritten what local communities need or want for their neighborhood, ultimately resulting in displacement.

In the United States, the laws that govern our use of land, i.e. zoning, are intrinsically linked to a long history of discrimination. When we look at nightlife in NYC, the type of space where you can dance or perform live music is dictated by rules that haven’t changed since the 1960s. Why should zoning have anything to do with freedom of expression? Echoing a century of complex factors including redlining, criminalization, divestment, racist lending, skyrocketing property values, and general NIMBY-ism, grassroots and diverse nightlife has had fewer and fewer places to go. Known as the entertainment capitol of the world, this might seem surprising. But a map of where one can “legally” have a venue where people dance and perform music tells a different story. At the root of it, nightlife and by de facto these types of expression, are zoned out across wide swaths of the city.

In 2017 the Cabaret Law was repealed thanks to advocates and city council member Rafael Espinal, but vestiges of this discriminatory law remained encoded in land use policy.

What does this mean for nightlife? Nightlife remains sidelined or on the losing end of many urban planning and policy decisions. But here was a timely opportunity to shift that needle with Proposal 9, which sought to simplify regulations so that these cultural and small business activities would be allowed in smaller spaces across all 5 boroughs. The challenges of zoning go hand-in-hand with the escalating expense of commercial rent, so this change intended to open up more affordable entry points to start a small business and social spaces. Rezonings have a long history of driving gentrification when the local community and affordability are not centered in the process. However, decoupling zoning from cultural expression and allowing more flexible use space is a crucial starting point to allow different industries to co-mingle.

Current and aspiring small business owners, curators, artists, residents and nightlife advocates attended from across the 5 boroughs and word spread.

City of Yes for economic opportunity was passed in June 2024. For nightlife and culture, this makes thousands of potential spaces eligible to host or open for dancing and live performance across all 5 boroughs.

With more doors open, the next and most important question to tackle is: who will get the keys?

“Zoned In” is an evolving project, future sessions will be announced.