Former NYC Planning Czar Donald Elliott has died

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A 1970s aerial view of New York City (Getty)

A former New York City official who left a huge impression on its built environment died Thursday at his Brooklyn home.

Donald Elliott, who headed the City Planning Commission nearly 50 years ago, is 89, the New York Times reported.

Donald Elliott

Elliott began as an urban renewal administrator on the Upper West Side in the 1960s. He helped John Lindsay’s winning campaign in 1965 and oversaw housing programs for the mayor. Elliott was named director of the City Planning Department in 1966, serving the role for seven years.

He was responsible for creating special zoning districts to help save parts of the city, such as theaters in Midtown and South Street Seaport, from redevelopment. He also organized the wider sale of air rights through landmark properties and helped shut down the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed through Greenwich Village.

According to the Times, Elliott’s legacy also includes increased participation of communities in neighborhood planning. Elliott divided the city into community districts to facilitate local input, and also pushed to create housing for low -income tenants in new areas, rather than focus on it.

Elliott helped negotiate the sale of what became the Gateway National Recreation Area to the federal government after the city could not afford to maintain it.

After leaving the planning department, Elliott was chairman of the New York Urban Coalition and advised the New York City Trust for Cultural Resources. He also served as a land use attorney for the Bryant Rabbino firm.

Former planning commission chairman Victor Marrero told the Times that Elliott’s tenure was “remarkable for its immense scope of vision and ambition, admirable for the courage and freedom he displayed, and remarkable for in the great imprint his legacy has left on the city landscape. “

“Donald Elliott was a realist who believed in making a more livable city, and he used inventive legal tactics to try to balance New York’s gaming forces,” the former Times architecture critic told that Paul Goldberger in the publication. “New York’s whole approach to planning has changed, and he’s played a key role in almost every change.”

[NYT] -Holden Walter-Warner

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