A few things.First of all, the New York Times in 1992 on the postmodern skyline blight that is the Sony Building (then still the AT&T Building): This proposal marks the latest instance in which landlords have tried to recreate ill-conceived or little-used arcades and plazas, which generated … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2012
The Zoning History of New York’s White Brick Apartments
The rehabilitation of the postwar glazed white brick apartment building continues apace, with the condoization of 530 Park Ave., a 1941 (okay, almost postwar) 19-story white brick building. I happen to like New York's postwar white brick buildings, and am even warming up to the red brick variants – … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 16 – 18
This post follows on the earlier discussion of Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking. Chapter 16 -- Turning Small Change in Big ChangesHere Donald Shoup gets to the idea of using Business Improvement Districts to manage street parking as Brandon Smith mentioned in the last post's … [Read more...]
What I learned today about SNCF and California HSR
If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know that I spent this afternoon on the phone with folks in California, looking into the recent SNCF-CHSRA bombshell. To summarize: SNCF, the highly experienced French national high-speed rail operator, apparently had a plan for California's HSR … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 10-14
This post follows on the earlier discussion of the The High Cost of Free Parking.I realized that I left a couple of important points out of the last post. First, Shoup applies the Hippocratic Oath of "first, do no harm," to parking requirements. What a great way to think about city planning. If … [Read more...]
En bloc condo redevelopment in Japan and Israel
So this weekend we learned that condos are bizarre and pretty much guaranteed to cause problems in the longrun, when maintenance bills skyrocket, the buildings are out of date, and the land beneath them appreciates, but you can't redevelop the property because all the owners will never agree.You … [Read more...]
Why do condos even exist?
It sounds like a dumb question – they exist because people like the security of owning a home combined with the services and lower costs that apartments offer, duh! But upon further reflection, condominium-style tenure can be a bit problematic.The main problem, as I see it, is that a building … [Read more...]