ARCHITECTURE

of affordable units in market-rate developments. In some
high-priced cities, including Boston or San Francisco,
inclusionary zoning is mandatory for buildings above a
certain number of units. 26 In others, like New York City,
it is incentivized through higher densities, subsidized
through tax abatements, or both. 27 The practical problem
with these strategies is that generating new income- and
price-restricted housing is directly tied to the real-estate
cycle: if the development of market-rate apartments
stalls, development of below-market rate units will stop.
The more principled problem is that the goals of private
for-profit development—return on investment—are not
reconcilable with the goals of affordable housing development—creating
housing accessible to low-, moderate- and
middle-income households. By definition, the latter cannot
pay what would generate acceptable profits, at least
not in high-priced cities, leading to what some have called
a “Faustian pact” between the public and private sectors. 28
In New York City, historically an exception both
in terms of the excesses of its property market, and due to
successive administrations’ commitment to regulate housing,
this balancing act has proven difficult. A recent debate
exemplifies the contorted political negotiations around
the issue of how to combat inequality in and through
housing: whether new affordable housing developments
subsidized by New York City should require contractors
to pay prevailing wages. A key official argued against this
requirement, which would have combatted income inequality
through wages, calculating that it would result in
a reduction of 17,000 affordable units being built. 29
The city’s policies of furthering mixed-income
housing through density bonuses and inclusionary zoning
have evolved over the years. City agencies renegotiate
depending on site, subsidies, and variances granted,
sometimes permitting the affordable units to be realized
entirely off site, other times allowing for them to be
concentrated in one part of a building, and in yet other
instances demanding they be spread indistinguishably
throughout the development. 30 For instance, in “The Toren,”
a highrise in downtown Brooklyn completed in 2012,
designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill for BFC Developers,
all of the affordable apartments were confined to
the five-story base of the building, while the tower was
reserved for market-rate units. 31
In the summer of 2014, a scandal erupted around
a more egregious architectural variation of this mixed-income
policy at One Riverside Park, a luxury condominium
tower on the Upper West Side developed by Extell
Developers and designed by Goldstein, Hill & West. 32 In
exchange for a 25-year property tax abatement as well as
a density bonus, the project was required to include 20
percent affordable apartments. It did so not within the
building, but in an adjacent one, named Fifty Riverside
Boulevard. The 291 residences of One Riverside Park have
sunset views across the Hudson River, and the units include
up to 7-bedroom duplex apartments with swimming
pools located on private terraces. The 55 income-restricted
apartments count no more than two bedrooms, are accessed
from around the corner, and have more basic amenities,
including bicycle storage. The creation of a “poor
door” was first reported by a neighborhood blog in late
2013, and the newly coined term helped spur the story’s
international coverage. 33 Though from the street the two
buildings are distinguishable, with the midrise affordable
section clad in more stone and the high-rise luxury section
in more glass, together they create a whole. And yet
the difference between the amenities on the one side and
those on the other are so extreme that public discomfort
was immediate.
It was that very real and graspable architectural
image of two separate entrances—not just personnel and
service staff in the back, residents and guests in the front,
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