Surprise surprise, students at New York‘s existing universities are choosing to go into computer science even without a bling-y contest over land, favors, and cash worth hundreds of millions of dollars! Reporteth the WSJ: When city officials launched a competition last year to build an … [Read more...]
As I Was Saying About Tech In Dumbo…
The sky's the limit for Dumbo! Last night I wrote a blog post about tech development in New York City, arguing that before the city pours money into a science campus for Cornell on Roosevelt Island, its planners should make more room for entrepreneurs in existing tech hubs like Union Square and … [Read more...]
Video: Was ist eigentlich Gentrifizierung?
What exactly is gentrification? … [Read more...]
The Lord Gave To NYC Tech Start-Ups And Universities, And The Lord Hath Taken Away
Stanford's (losing) vision for Roosevelt Island, with requisite acres of green Big news out of New York City: Stanford pulled out of Bloomberg’s applied sciences university “competition” after Cornell got an enormous donation, leaving the upstate university the front runner to … [Read more...]
The Central Park Caper And Transit NIMBYism
It has often been suggested that one of the reasons that American subway construction is so expensive is that our laws are too friendly to NIMBYs. That is to say, contractors will be paid to engineer expensive, long-term solutions to avoid short-term disruptions to neighbors during construction. The … [Read more...]
Betting the Farm on Oregon Iron Works
"Made in USA"...and don't you forget it! United Streetcar, led by its former lobbyist, Chandra Brown, is ostensibly a manufacturer, though its greatest asset seems to be its ability to win government contractors.... … [Read more...]
Real Estate and Revolution in Moscow
From an interesting NYT analysis of Russia’s new protesting class – young, urban, and doing pretty well: It is a paradox, but one that has been documented by social scientists: the residents of Moscow and other large cities tend to express greater frustration with Prime Minister Putin as his … [Read more...]
Surprise: Transit In The US Gets Just As Many Subsidies As Transit In Europe!
The service the Silicon Valley is paying for but not getting Often when I talk about how high American capital transit costs are compared to those in Europe and East Asia, transit backers get quite defensive, and take it as an attack on transit. This couldn’t be further from my intention. My … [Read more...]