The Abundance Agenda
For a growing share of New York leaders and voters, Abundance is a watchword—a value that affirms we can have more than enough of everything we need to thrive. But “Abundance” is contested: what, in practice, does Abundance demand?
This Agenda is our attempt to move Abundance in New York from north star to roadmap. Building on the research and advocacy of trailblazers and partners, it answers many of the questions that the nascent Abundance movement has left open.
Our report examines the challenges New Yorkers face across housing, transit, energy, and governance; examines the root causes of scarcity; and lays out a set of concrete reforms—sourced widely from policymakers and practitioners—that would make it meaningfully easier to build what New Yorkers need. Download the full agenda here, and see below for topline recommendations.
New York confronts a set of interlocking crises that threaten its affordability, safety, and long-term vitality. For New Yorkers, these crises are experienced in deeply personal ways: struggling to find a home they can afford or to pay their electric bill, wasting hours each week on slow commutes or navigating systems to access public benefits, or facing growing risks from extreme heat, flooding, and storms.
Taken together, these individual experiences reflect systemic failures that have made it increasingly difficult for the city to welcome new residents, retain families, and deliver the basic infrastructure a thriving city requires.
New York has made essential goods and services artificially scarce. Homes are scarce because building is constrained. Transit capacity is scarce because projects are slow and expensive to deliver. Clean energy and resilience infrastructure are scarce because permitting and coordination delay what is needed most. In each case, the problem is not a lack of demand or public support, but systems that limit how much can be built and how quickly it can be delivered.
New York’s Challenges: Scarcity and its Consequences
The Solution: An Abundance Agenda
We reviewed a wide range of policy proposals to identify reforms that directly address these constraints: making it easier, cheaper, faster, and fairer to build what New Yorkers need. Rather than cataloguing every idea, we focus on solutions that expand capacity, reduce delay, and can be implemented at scale—so shared priorities translate into real improvements New Yorkers can feel.
Our 41 policy proposals reflect a diversity of approaches. Some need to be implemented at the state level, others at the city level, and some require intervention across multiple agencies at multiple levels of government. Some reforms would unlock impact across multiple issue areas; others are hyper-specific, pertaining to a single policy vertical. What unites these recommendations is a set of guiding principles that define our approach:
Build the future, don’t ration it. New York’s core problems stem from shortage. We need more housing, more transit capacity, more clean energy, and more public sector capacity to deliver.
Abundance of what we want, less of what we don't. Abundance reflects priorities about what kind of city and state we are building: one that is dense, dynamic, and diverse. Given New York’s climate goals, we prioritize increasing the supply of renewable energy over fossil fuels; given the real scarcity of street space, we prioritize abundant public transit over car dependence.
Process should serve, not obstruct, outcomes. Environmental review, community input, procurement rules, and permitting should exist to improve projects—not to block them. When procedures undermine housing, transit, or climate goals, they must change.
Power lives in coalitions. Transformative change requires working across traditional divides and focusing on shared interests rather than ideological purity.
Policy Recommendations
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Modernize Environmental Review
The State should reform the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) to exclude environmentally beneficial projects from additional SEQRA review, including: infill housing outside flood zones, clean water infrastructure, resilience infrastructure, renewable energy, pedestrian and cyclist safety, and transit infrastructure, at least to a certain project size.
Staff Up New York
The State should make civil service exams more flexible and job-relevant and allow for work experience to replace degree requirements permanently. The City should adopt the same reforms. Further, the State and City should increase the use of flexible temporary appointments for special projects, short-term programs, and emerging needs.
Faster Public Building
The State should reform constraints on procurement, delivery method, Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), and zoning for all of the City’s builder agencies to mirror the powers of the NYC School Construction Authority (SCA). The City should continue its efforts to streamline the government’s capital construction delivery process.
More Agile Procurement
The City should continue to reform procurement policies by embracing challenge-based procurement, allowing for more flexible payment methods, and advancing additional procurement and grant capabilities based on the federal “other transaction authority” to give the City more flexibility to work with the private sector to deliver high quality services.
Well Designed Access to Public Services
The State and City should overhaul the application process for housing, food benefits, cash assistance, health care, and other public services to improve the user experience and reduce the time tax. In the immediate term, the State and City could simply extend the reapplication timeframe.
Create a Public Reinsurance Fund
The State should create a public reinsurance fund focused on construction, development, property, and business insurance with a focus on lower overall insurance costs.
Reform the Scaffold Law
The State and City should reduce insurance costs by reforming the Scaffold Law and Local Law 11 to fairly share liability.
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Build Housing Near Transit
The City should rezone along transit corridors, including planned transit corridors, using denser zoning near subway stations (the closer the denser), with more density at higher capacity stations (where ridership is below capacity) and where multiple lines intersect and pursue tax increment financing for newly upzoned communities.
Build Housing Near Rail
The State should upzone around regional rail stations, including Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North.
Streamline Permitting
The City should streamline the building permitting process, including through use of pre-approved templates and combining other agency inspections into Department of Building (DOB) inspections.
Property Tax Reform
The State should reform the property tax system to be fairer, especially for renters, easier to understand, and more progressive.
A Faster Housing First
The City should advance a housing first policy on homelessness from multiple directions by expediting permanent supportive housing projects and overhauling the CityFHEPS application process.
Save Rent-Regulated Homes
The City and State should preserve existing rent-regulated units by reforming the “hardship” program while ensuring tenant protections.
Accelerate Affordable Housing
The State should expand its Housing Acceleration Fund and the State and City should give housing development agencies “other transaction authority”-like powers to pursue flexible term sheets.
Build Cheaper and Safely
The City should reform its building code to reduce minimum elevator size, reduce the cost of building material and licensing, and expand single-stair allowance.
Expand Innovative Construction Methods
The State and City should scale mass timber and modular construction through a combination of disciplined investing and process reform.
Tiny Homes, New York Style
The City should build on the City of Yes success by legalizing Single Room Occupancy (SROs) citywide through changes to building and fire codes.
Don’t Require Parking
The City should eliminate parking minimum requirements citywide to follow the success of City of Yes.
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Aggressively Reduce Transit Construction Costs
The State, City, and MTA should continue to reform transit construction practices to reduce building costs by improving interagency coordination, bringing design and engineering expertise in house, and right-sizing station design.
More Busways, Faster Buses
The City should expand busways, build out curbside boarding, and the MTA should enable all door boarding; further, the City and the MTA should consider potential routes for true bus rapid transit and include planned routes in the next streets master plan.
Streamline Accessibility Projects
The City and the MTA should streamline elevator construction and related improvements for accessibility at all transit stations to make the entire system accessible by 2035.
Automate, Boost Uptake, and Expand Fair Fares
The City should boost the uptake of the Fair Fares program through automatic enrollment and expand the program to 300% of the poverty line.
Modernize Regional Rail
The State and MTA should invest in the reforms that would bring regional rail travel time in line with driving statewide.
Capture Transit Value
The City should pursue value capture financing where appropriate for the Second Avenue Subway extension, Interborough Express, and all new lines.
Increase Transit Revenue
The MTA should generate more transit revenue by building capacity of MTA's real estate management team, aggressively pursuing commercial and residential development of underused MTA land, expanding commercial use of in station space (e.g., small kiosks, coffee stands), offering additional fee services (e.g., express airport shuttles, reliable WiFi), and continuing to implement smarter fare gates.
Better Parking Management.
The City should reform parking management in New York City to efficiently charge for public space, and generate revenue for pedestrian, cyclist, and transit infrastructure through multiple strategies.
Smarter Deliveries for All
The City should accelerate innovative freight management and sustainable last-mile delivery solutions to reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality, and enhance urban livability through a combination of strategies.
Throw out the Trash
The City should speed the implementation of the trash containerization program, including extending containerization to all waste streams, accelerating implementation, and prioritizing containers over parking preservation.
Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety
The City should improve street safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists by leveraging physical changes to streets and expanded automated enforcement, starting with the most dangerous streets and implementing universal daylighting.
Calmer Neighborhoods
The City should dramatically expand the amount of pedestrian and cyclist-only and low traffic streets and neighborhoods across all five boroughs, including bold, high-profile projects, and previously identified Greenways.
Places to Go
The City should streamline building codes and approval requirements to place public bathrooms throughout the city. In some areas, these bathrooms could require a fee (possibly paid for with OMNY) to offset the cost of the system.
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Unleash More Solar
New York can and should do more to cut red tape to enable more solar energy. To generate and transmit more electricity from solar power, the State should pass a law preempting local authorities’ ability to effectively ban solar projects and automate solar permitting and the City should streamline permitting.
Expand Solar Subsidies
The State should update the residential solar tax credit––increase the cap from $5,000 to $10,000, make it refundable for low-income households, include energy storage, and remove system size restrictions that exclude co-ops and condos.
Faster Transmission Buildout
The State should prioritize highway and railroad rights-of-way for transmission siting and direct the New York Power Authority to build transmission infrastructure proactively.
Implement interconnection reforms
The State should improve transparency of utility upgrade costs; enable developers to self-perform eligible distribution upgrades under clear safety and labor standards; establish cost-certainty measures to limit utility overruns; create a statewide flexible interconnection program with smart-grid management and curtailment limits; streamline timelines for utility review and approvals; and proactively expand hosting capacity through targeted distribution system investments.
Integrated Resource Planning
The State should pass a law to develop a statewide centralized, integrated resource planning model similar to the newly passed Illinois system.
Expand Nuclear
The State should continue to expand nuclear power throughout New York by identifying potential new sites, educating the public, and considering programs that would provide financing, insurance and surety bonds, and minimum purchase agreements for future power.
Advance Geothermal
The State should advance geothermal development in the state through public development of geothermal systems, building on success of SUNY projects and considering municipal advanced purchasing agreements with resell ability through utilities and funding site exploration.
Create a Resilience Authority
The State should create and empower a public authority to address New York's resilience needs led by a Chief Resilience Officer and guided by a collaborative statewide resilience plan that prioritizes protecting socially vulnerable communities.
Faster and Fairer Climate Risk Relocations
The State and City should significantly streamline buyout programs to get people out of harm's way fairly, with fast, just compensation and relocation assistance.
Fairer Tree Coverage
The City should pursue 30% tree coverage by 2035, including equitably by targeting 25-35% in each community district.
A Future We Deserve
We end this agenda by setting ten ambitious goals for the next ten years.
They measure whether our proposals and the work we do over the coming years improve how New Yorkers live—whether housing becomes more affordable, commutes get shorter, climate risks diminish, and the government delivers what it promises.
Most policy operates on short cycles, shaped by election timelines and budget windows. We take a longer view.
Achieve 80%+ uptake rates for public benefits and services.
Achieve net population growth in New York.
End street homelessness.
Serve 100% of New Yorkers on public transit.
Eliminate traffic deaths.
Double average bus speeds citywide.
Achieve six-minute service system-wide and 95%+ on-time performance.
Achieve CLCPA Targets.
Lower energy costs for New Yorkers.
Reduce New Yorkers at risk from climate impacts; make climate-related fatalities rare.
Read the full Abundance Agenda and more about our forward-looking goals here.
