One common argument against new housing is that the laws of supply and demand simply don’t apply to dense cities like New York, San Francisco ands Hong Kong, because new housing or upzoning might raise land prices.* After all (some people argue) Hong Kong is really dense and really … [Read more...]
What’s a stickplex?
A stickplex is a dense residential structure or group of structures built with inexpensive materials and techniques, most commonly wood. Stickplexes use 2,500 square feet of land per unit or less. Stickplexes have per-square-foot construction costs roughly in line with detached houses due to … [Read more...]
The Amazing Housing Politics of Spider-Man
How can Spider-Man possibly afford to live in New York? And how can we make the city more affordable for dear Aunt May? In the first episode of my brand new YouTube series on pop-culture urbanism, we dig into the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy to uncover the housing problems (and solutions) of … [Read more...]
Even NIMBYs should be YIMBYs
Jeremiah Moss, a New York blogger, just wrote a long article complaining about the bad habits of his new neighbors in the East Village. I suspect many, if not most readers, of his article would think: maybe we need to zone out new housing to keep out the yuppies!But it seems to me that this … [Read more...]
For once I agree with the NIMBYs: please don’t turn my neighborhood into Dubai- because Dubai isn’t dense enough!
One common argument against new housing is that it will turn "[neighborhood at issue] into Dubai." Evidently, some people think Dubai is a hellscape of super-dense skyscapers.In fact, Many Dubai neighborhoods aren't very dense at all.There is one Dubai neighborhood that is more dense than … [Read more...]
More evidence that sunlight is no crisis
In my email box today, I received a message from an anti-housing group, touting a study from the localize.city website* on sunlight on New York neighborhoods. The purpose of the study is to show which neighborhoods have the least sunlight.The study found that 27 of the city's allegedly … [Read more...]
The Paper of Record Gets Yorkville Wrong
Even the most supposedly reputable mainstream media is often less than careful in its coverage of housing issues. For example, a few weeks ago the New York Times ran an article on the Upper East Side's Yorkville neighborhood, implying that high-rises are "erasing their community's … [Read more...]
Learning from Astor Street
One common argument against mixing housing types and densities is that if housing type A (for example, townhouses or single-family homes) is mixed with housing type B (for example, condos), the neighborhood will somehow be "ruined" for residents of the less dense housing types.Last week, my new … [Read more...]