Personal essays
1. "Where Are You Now?": a piece on growing up Asian-American on the Lower East Side, published in Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas

2. "The Scent of Sawdust": an autobiographical account ranging from Yu's early life in Hong Kong, including time spent in the homeless shelters, to current work for housing development, published in Be the Dream.
[NOTE: This entire anthology is written by members of an NYC program called Prep for Prep, of which Yu was a participant, who reflect on their transformations from inner-city minority public-school youth to present-day public servants. Profits are donated back into the program.]

Policy stance: Housing at the World Trade Center site
"The maximum allowable floor-area ratio (FAR) for residential development under the New York State Multiple Dwelling Law is 12. (Increasing this FAR would take state legislation.) Therefore, theoretically in a robust economy there would be more incentive to redevelop the entire site as office buildings. If the whole site were rebuilt as offices, the buildings could be 50% bigger than if they were residential, if one uses FAR as a measure, for example. Therefore the Port Authority may need incentives to encourage mixed-use development, and it may need to designate specific lots for this use.

One methodology for encouraging a mix might be to require developers who do commercial development to partner with developers who do residential. Using private streets to compute the maximum size of a given lot could mitigate the restriction that FAR puts on residential development. There are a number of former office buildings in Lower Manhattan which have become residences. Several far exceed the allowable FAR; suggesting that FAR is not an insuperable hurdle. Using development rights transfers is one tool that has been used in the past in Manhattan to build bigger buildings. Unmonitored and unplanned development rights transfers have resulted more than once in disproportionately large or tall buildings next to much smaller ones. Height is a better barometer for regulating residential size on the World Trade Center site, particularly if this development occurs in the immediate proximity of the memorial. It would be unfortunate if excessively tall buildings blocked sunlight on this ground.

More detailed planning on this issue is also necessary because some small blocks within the World Trade Center site are bounded by narrow streets, and do not lend themselves easily to housing. Residences need light and air, which on these streets amounts to very little. Therefore, it is also appropriate to make some judgments on where housing might best be located.

The original right-of-way of Greenwich Street was 65-feet wide, which is five feet wider than a typical east-west Manhattan Street. Many east-west streets have good-sized apartment buildings. The right-of-way for West Street is more than 250 feet wide through the Battery Park City corridor. Both Greenwich and West would seem then to be candidates for residential development (Fig.36). But an intelligent decision on where residential development might appropriately fit also requires detailed planning on a block-by-block basis.

Several observers have suggested that the arguments for mixed-use are compelling; however, these uses would be better located elsewhere in Lower Manhattan. There are soft sites near the World Trade Center site, which could be made available for residential development, and the market has already seen the advantages of renovating older office buildings as housing. We think housing should be encouraged nearby, but we also think the enormity of the World Trade Center site, the softness of the office market, and the need for taking steps now to create a more livable twenty-four-hour community commend the site for some residential development. The question is not whether housing makes sense, but whether housing can be built, which increases the total value of the site and the return on investment."

The above discussion was excerpted from a policy paper titled "Next Steps, Hard Choices: A Proposal for Lower Manhattan," of which Yu was a co-author. Read the full report here.