A few days ago, Mayor Bloomberg made a startling announcement: The 7 train extension to New Jersey is still on. The idea was first floated last year as a replacement for the canceled trans-Hudson commuter rail ARC project, but it was a hard sell then, and at $10 billion, it’s still a hard sell. The [...]
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October 28th, 2011 | Tags: real estate | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Forbes 400 Richest Americans, Logistics & Transportation, Places & Spaces, The World's Billionaires | Comments are closed |  printable viewI’m reviewing Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi by Steve Inskeep as part of a TLC Book Tour. Other bloggers are also reviewing the book throughout October, and you can find links to their reviews here. I received a complimentary copy of the book, and I’d like to send it to a reader [...] In a post about the tendency for emergent urbanists to promote the idea of cities having a single equilibrium, Alon Levy recently wrote that collective choice is the best manner for determining urban form. Many urbanists accept that some of the top-down regulations that limit density or use are detrimental to cities, but they [...] October 25th, 2011 | Category: Economics, Human Ingenuity, Jane Jacobs, planning, Uncategorized | 7 comments | printable viewMinistry of NIMBYs is more like it! Talk about man-bites-dog: London’s Ministry of Sound, perhaps the world’s most famous nightclub, has gone on an all-out offensive against new residential skyscrapers near its home at Elephant & Castle, in Southwark. Their latest target is a 41-story tower in an area which, along with the [...] October 24th, 2011 | Tags: london, regulation | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Places & Spaces | Comments are closed | printable viewThere’s a lot that bothers me about preservation policy, but one of the weirdest has to be rules that make it difficult to fill in gaps in building height. I’m not a big fan of the idea that historic neighborhoods have to stay the same “scale” forever, but it boggles my mind that people can [...] October 20th, 2011 | Tags: real estate, regulation | Category: Arts & Entertainment, byline=Stephen Smith, Law, Places & Spaces, Policy, Style & Design | Comments are closed | printable viewCharlie Gardner at Old Urbanist, one of my favorite urbanist blogs, has a great post that echoes what I said a few days ago about the latest wave of American public housing projects. Here he first quotes a Nashville public housing official: “Part of the problem with public housing in the U.S…. Continue reading [...] October 19th, 2011 | Tags: regulation | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Economics, Fact & Comment, Places & Spaces, Policy, Style & Design | Comments are closed | printable viewI often hear from people who are defending Washington, D.C.’s height limit argue that the restriction gives the city a “European” feel. I disagree with this for a number of reasons – the city has much fewer historic downtown buildings, and the ones it does have are much younger than in the Old World….
October 18th, 2011 | Tags: london, Paris, real estate, regulation, skyscrapers, washington dc | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Investing, Lifestyle, Op/Ed, Places & Spaces, Policy, Style & Design | Comments are closed | printable view |
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On Favored Quarters, Off-Center Skyscraper Districts, and Poverty
Following up on my post yesterday skyscrapers in Europe, I’d like to explain why, in detail, central business districts are generally superior to off-center ones like La Défense outside Paris or Washington’s Virginia suburbs. It’s not that I just enjoy the spatial symmetry and organic shape of a centralized city – it’s actually more efficient! [...]