Stephen Smith, a primary Market Urbanism author from 2008 to 2012 and founder of the Center for Building in North America, dropped a magisterial report on elevator costs along with a NY Times guest essay.Read the full report or the executive summary. … [Read more...]
About Stephen Smith
A message to journalists and academics from George Haikalis
I spoke to George Haikalis (trust me, he's a lot smarter than his HTML looks), a regional planner and former NYCTA official, about the high cost of New York City transit. He had a message to the press and academia: Part of the problem is that we don't really have a very strong independent technical … [Read more...]
David Gunn on Amtrak’s $151bn NEC plan and how he rebuilt the Harrisburg line
First order of business: I wrote two articles for Bloomberg View (the opinion counterpart to Bloomberg News) on the high cost of US transit – one on private-sector gouging, and one on public-sector gouging.Secondly, I've been talking to former Amtrak president David Gunn a lot recently – at … [Read more...]
The Zoning History of Barcelona’s Eixample
Server glitch wiped the last few articles, so here's a repose of the Barcelona one. Also, comments should be working now, should you deign to leave one...Somehow I managed to visit Barcelona a few years ago and not learn about the history of the city’s Eixample (x pronounced sh in Catalan), or … [Read more...]
NYU 2031: Rise of the Mole People
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...]
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...]
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...]
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...]