Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Liberalizing Cities
From The Ground Up
"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….
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 government has helped make them wealthier. One explanation is the high level of public corruption here, which threatens new personal wealth….
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 point isn’t that transit in America is expensive and should not be built – it’s that transit in America is expensive and this is why we get such poor service….
It’s no surprise that a lot of politicians and policymakers believe that America’s biggest infrastructure problem is insufficient taxpayer funding. But never have I seen it expressed so condescendingly as in a Washington Post article published yesterday in the PostLocal section, not labeled as an opinion piece, titled: “Experts struggle to express direness of infrastructure problem to a wary public.” There’s no doubt that America’s infrastructure, and especially its transit, is indeed in dire straits….
Twitter tells me that earlier tonight, “not-ruling-it-out” possible future mayoral contender (and local smart growth demigod) Tommy Wells held his inaugural book club meeting; the book discussed was Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City. DC’s chief planner Harriet Tregoning was also there, and while she’s been relatively good to the cause of density in DC, the kinds of people who would show up to a Tommy Wells Triumph of the City book club probably want a bit more out of her, so I presume (again, I wasn’t there) that she ended up being one of the least radical people there. One person tweeted regarding the book club: “Building permit data says DC on track for 4,000 new housing units this year,” which I presume was a statement made by someone defending DC’s supply expansion efforts….
New York City’s subway lines – the engines that keep the city’s real estate market moving – are notoriously expensive to build. Tunneling projects in New York routinely clock in at five to ten times the cost of their Asian and European counterparts, putting the city’s measly 20-30% aboveground union construction premiums to shame. New York has finally restarted work on the century-in-the-making Second Avenue Subway, but MTA capital construction president Michael Horodniceanu says that anything beyond the initial Upper East Side segment “will be for our children or grandchildren.” And Bloomberg’s 7 train to Secaucus, or those fabled Utica and Nostrand extensions?…
nycsubway.org has an amazing trove of transit history, and I just got done reading “The Impact of the IRT on New York City” by Clifton Hood, on the effects of New York‘s first subway rapid transit line, first opened in 1904. There’s so much in it to recommend, but one of the interesting themes is the Progressive reaction to the real estate development that the line (he mostly deals with the IRT Broadway Line) sparked. Progressives were originally big supporters of the subway, on the grounds that it would encourage suburbanization and decentralization, putting people in their own homes, which they believed imbued better moral character than rented accommodations in tenements and large “apartment houses….
Several bloggers have already provided reviews of The Gated City by Ryan Avent, including Aaron Renn at The Urbanophile, Rob Pitingol at Greater Greater Washington, and Lloyd Alter at Tree Hugger. I’ve finally had a chance to read it and would thoroughly recommend it. I often support increased density on the grounds that this is what the market wants. To me, that’s still reason enough to support the repeal of many land use regulations, but Avent offers a vision of density that is perhaps more compelling to more people. Because the division of labor is limited by the size of the market, cities offer many amenities that are not supported in less dense places. The diversity of food, art, shopping, sports, and movies is all much greater in cities than in small towns because larger markets allow for more specialization. Of course taste is subjective; many people prefer the quiet of the suburbs to the chaos of the city. However we can see that currently, many people want to move to cities but are unable to by looking at vacancy and rental rates. Avent also points out that cities provide a sort of employment “insurance.” He uses the example of a Vietnamese chef losing his job. If the restaurant where he worked is in a large metropolitan area, he will be able to find another job in a Vietnamese restaurant. On the other hand, if he lives in a small town, he will likely have to seek employment in a more generic restaurant where he won’t be able to charge a premium for his specialized skills. This is true for jobs in many industries. If I were to lose my job in economics research, I’d much rather be searching for a new job here in DC than in a state with one think tank, for […]
I'On Village, South Carolina About three years ago Adam wrote about the the story of I’On Village, a New Urbanist development build about a decade ago five miles outside of Charleston, and the difficulties that Vince Graham faced trying to build it. For one, the project had to be scaled down in some pretty significant ways: [The developers] worked to decipher what kind of plan would be supported by those council members who voted against the application….
Do New Yorkers need to cram into cubbyholes to bring prices down? At a recent conference organized by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council (covered by the New York Times, Crain’s, and City Limits), we heard a familiar refrain about New York City’s building stock: regulations have not kept up with the times, and there is a shortage of affordable units available for single adults, in particular. The result is widespread illegal conversions and dwellings – anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000, depending on who you ask – which, while mostly tolerated, are obviously not ideal, especially with regards to fire safety….
