ABSTRACT
In changing the zoning ordinance those professionals involved in designing cities were working in a new way. They were policy designers working at the precinct level rather than urban designers working on specific conceptual designs or master plans. They were working as ‘merchants of allowable building space’ trading public interest needs for allowable floor space in the private rather than the public realm. They were not, however, dealing with the whole range of problems of the declining hearts of cities that John Lindsay and city planners had to face when he became Mayor of New York in 1966.
