What Is FAR?

  • Made By CUP With:
  • Community Partners
  • Tags:
  • Land Use

Making learning about FAR fun to help communities participate in land use decisions

The team modeled the online app on activities using plastic blocks in CUP's What Is Zoning? Toolkit.

There are lots of complicated ideas that come up in conversations about zoning and how it should work. One that a lot of people struggle with is Floor Area Ratio (FAR), which is the main way that the zoning laws limit the size and overall shape of buildings.

Based on activities developed with community partners for our What Is Zoning? Toolkit, CUP made an online interactive tool to help community members get a grip on that slippery concept of Floor Area Ratio. What Is FAR? lets you arrange virtual blocks as it takes you step-by-step through the process of how Floor Area Ratio controls the size of your building. It also shows how the city applies FAR’s other building-size-controlling cousins: lot coverage, setbacks, and height limits.

After you understand how the rules of zoning work, you can use the Neighborhood Tool to see how these rules can shape a whole neighborhood, and how your neighborhood might change if the city changes the zoning rules.

The project team discusses how the block activities will work online.
The site gives step by step visual instructions.

Check Out the Project

Images from the What is Far? Website

Download the Guidebook

Click here to download



Special Thanks

Ingrid Haftel, Christy Herbes, Oscar Nuñez, Frampton Tolbert, Jenn Anne Williams, Sandy Xu

Funding Support

This project was made possible through the generous support of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.