Scaffolding Is Everywhere
Examining the policies, history, and unintended consequences of NYC’s scaffolding laws
It’s been a couple weeks since my last post discussing how NYC uses its streets, “Where did all the sidewalk cafes go?”, so I think it’s about time to discuss another aspect of our urban environment. Instead of looking at the disappearance of a beloved urban structure, let’s talk about the proliferation of a less desirable structure: scaffolding.
Those ubiquitous structures, also called sidewalk sheds, cover over 300 miles of NYC streets and are nearly all the same color of Hunter Green, as mandated by NYC’s building code. Walking down any city block, you are likely to run into one within minutes, shed and poles jutting into the sidewalk and narrowing the walkway. If you walk the same streets repeatedly, you may notice that certain sheds remain up for months or even years at a time, obscuring the underlying facade even while little to no building work appears to be happening.
In this article, I will cover how we got to our current state of scaffolding being everywhere and what is being done in the City Council to address this issue. I will also speculate on the potential effects of new legislation and suggest some other actions the city can take to remove this blight from our urban landscape.
Why does NYC have so much scaffolding up?
The history of the sidewalk sheds begins in 1979, when a Barnard College freshman was struck and killed by falling masonry from an overhead building on W 115th St. The City responded with the passage of Local Law 10 of 1980, which would come to establish the Department of Buildings’ (DOB) Facade Inspection & Safety Program.
Following a series of amendments, revisions, and expansions of this program over following decades, the DOB now requires all buildings greater than six floors to receive periodic inspections of their exteriors then be designated as safe, unsafe, or “safe with a repair and maintenance program”. Buildings deemed unsafe for pedestrians must immediately erect sidewalk safety structures until the exterior is fixed. To remain in compliance with increasingly strict building codes, these structures tend to be the recognizable Hunter Green scaffolding and sidewalk sheds seen today (though more recently exceptions have been introduced, more on that below).
Given that most of NYC’s building stock is old and getting older, it is no surprise that many buildings need maintenance and repair for their facades. If any defects are found in a facade at the five year inspection mark, scaffolding goes up until such defects are resolved. And the list of possible defects on an aging building is quite long, including “loose bricks, cracks, deteriorating mortar, crumbling parapets, unstable balconies and more.” Combining the age of NYC’s buildings with the sheer density of buildings on any given block, the result is that scaffolding is constantly going up.
And once it goes up, the scaffolding often stays up for an extended duration. Elongated permit approval and review processes for construction means it could take weeks or even months before necessary repairs are made. Building owners who wish to get scaffolding down ASAP may be forced to wait on city agencies, despite their willingness and readiness to act.
A separate but related problem is the high cost of construction in the city, meaning that even simple facade repairs can become cost prohibitive for building owners. Rather than pay the enormous upfront costs of such a project, some owners opt to just leave the scaffolding up long-term, deciding that “renting the sidewalk sheds indefinitely and paying small fines is cheaper than a massive construction project”.
Thus through a combination of an aging housing stock, high costs of construction, and stringent regulations involving frequent inspections, NYC finds itself in an equilibrium of scaffolding dominating the streetscapes. This scaffolding stays up far longer than should be necessary, limiting sidewalk access and draping many of the city’s iconic and beautiful facades.
What is now being done to address the scaffolding blight?
In July 2023, Mayor Eric Adams and DOB Commissioner Jimmy Oddo announced “Get Sheds Down”, a new initiative focused on reducing the number of sidewalk sheds and minimizing scaffolding obtrusiveness where they do stand. This was to be accomplished with several new rules, including allowing for safety netting in place of construction sheds, imposing greater financial penalties for leaving sheds up, and speeding up permitting processes.
Not until April 17, 2025 was a series of bills from the City Council signed by Mayor Adams to pass these regulations around sidewalk sheds. In addition to the financial penalties for leaving scaffolding up and permission for alternative styles of scaffolding, this new legislation also reduces the duration of sidewalk shed permits and expands the DOB inspection cycle from 5 years to 6-12 years. There are also some quality of life improvements for sheds that do stay up, such as increasing minimum height to allow in more sunlight, allowing sheds to match the color of the building instead of all being Hunter Green, and require lighting for the covered sidewalks.
At the time of the Get Sheds Down announcement in July 2023, there were “approximately 9,000 active, permitted construction sheds with an average age of nearly 500 days and spanning more than 2 million linear feet”. As of May 20, 2025, there are 8,559 active, permitted construction sheds with an average age of 509 days and spanning 2,024,021 linear feet. Despite the Mayor’s and DOB’s apparent focus on this issue and reworking of the rules, they have not so far been effective in reducing the number of sidewalk sheds nor their time spent up. How big of a change this new legislation will cause is yet to be seen.
Where do we go from here?
The proliferation of scaffolding is a symptom of several of NYC’s most pressing crises. Our aging housing stock requires ever-more maintenance and repair. The unending rise in the cost of construction incentivizes building owners to leave scaffolding up instead of doing needed repairs. Preservation rules plus construction costs ensures our housing stock ages further and restricts newer buildings from replacing crumbling ones. And an overloaded regulatory regime that continues to add restrictions - each with good intent - enforces this entire system.
The legislation enacted to reduce scaffolding is a good start. Allowing for more flexibility in the sheds’ designs and instructing the DOB to reduce permitting approval time can help in the short-term. Sidewalk sheds will always be necessary to some extent, given the sheer number and age of NYC’s buildings and a rightful desire to protect pedestrians. But I worry that we are throwing regulation after regulation, playing whack-a-mole with sidewalk sheds instead of addressing the root causes. Penalizing building owners for a situation that the city put them into in the first place may only force them to seek out new workarounds.
More needs to be done to actually incentivize building owners to perform the actions that will bring scaffolding down sooner or prevent it needing to go up in the first place. Allowing failing buildings to be replaced by new ones. Making construction and maintenance easier and cheaper, everywhere in the city. Regulating sheds to the extent that pedestrians can feel safe, but recognizing the opportunity cost of overly stringent requirements and keeping in mind the rarity of such occurences being considered in the first place. Addressing these crises will not only reduce the amount of scaffolding throughout the city but make New York a more livable, more affordable, and more beautiful city.
Thanks!
"Sidewalk sheds will always be necessary" Well, I wonder why Tokyo, London, and Paris don't really seem to have sheds much. At all?
Trash bins would be a great topic to cover next!
I love this post! I’ve often wanted to dig into the topic of scaffolding further, but never got around to it.
I too share the doubt about the cost/benefit ratio of these scaffolding laws. I wonder whether there’s any data on how many falling objects have been caught by the scaffolding over the decades.