Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

Tag energy

Washington Post: Only Idiots Think Infrastructure Spending Is Wasteful, And Americans Are Idiots

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….

DC Approved 4,000 New Housing Units This Year, But Is It Enough?

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….

NYC Officials Take Notice of Astronomical Subway Construction Costs

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?…

The Progressive Reaction Against NYC’s First Subway

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….

The Day the Engineers Turned Against California HSR

No, but really – fly California. On Tuesday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority laid down their cards in the form of a new “business plan” for the proposed line, and its cards are not good – the system is now projected to cost $98 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars, which, taking into account inflation, is about twice the $33 billion figure given in 2008.* But despite the price hike, not many people’s opinions on the project seem to have changed – those who were for it are still for it, while those opposed are even more set against it….

On Favored Quarters, Off-Center Skyscraper Districts, and Poverty

Following up on my post yesterday skyscrapers in Europe, I’d like to explain why, in detail, central business districts are generally superior to off-center ones like La Défense outside Paris or Washington’s Virginia suburbs. It’s not that I just enjoy the spatial symmetry and organic shape of a centralized city – it’s actually more efficient! Neglect it, and you’re doing a disservice to your poorest citizens, who too often find themselves out of commuting range of many of a city’s jobs. …

New Research on the Economics of Green Buildings

There is little reliable research into the economic returns of high-performance (green) features of buildings, but Professor John Quigley plans to release his groundbreaking research on the subject this Fall. I am very excited to learn this news, and will certainly look forward to reviewing the results. Especially if implementation could improve my own development practice. Professor John Quigley Discovers Green Building Pays Greenbacks Everyone’s talking about “going green,” but in the building industry, the cost of investment has been difficult to justify – until now. Haas Professor John Quigley has undertaken the first systematic analysis of environmentally sustainable construction and its economic impact on the real estate market. In the working paper, “Doing Well by Doing Good? Green Office Buildings,” Quigley and co-authors Piet Eichholtz and Nils Kok of Maastricht University, Netherlands, determined investments in proven green building practices lead to sizable increases in a property’s market value and effective rent, the average per-square-foot rent paid. Green-certified buildings produced an 8.5 percent increase in effective rent. The additional annual rent for going green amounts to almost $309,000, based on the average size building. Likewise, the incremental value of a green structure is an estimated $5.1 million more than an ordinary building. The study did not calculate the incremental cost of investing in green building practices. When asked why he decided to research the economic value of green-certified buildings, Quigley, the I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy, replied, “To see if this was hype or real.” While Quigley’s work concludes the resulting profitability is real, he is continuing to research why green commercial buildings produce higher rents and market value by using engineering data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The research focused solely on commercial property. It first identified 694 buildings, green certified by […]

Does Urban Farming Make Sense?

Matthew Yglesias just posted a thought referring to a recent NY Magazine article about skyfarming: Should we build agricultural skyscrapers in-or-near our major cities? It’s certainly a cool idea. I think I’m going to put the notion that this is actually environmentally sound and feasible in my “too good to check” file. More plausibly, green roofs really are an environmentally sound idea, though not something with a good prospect for replacing farms. Check out the article, it’s very cool. Here’s my take: I think this would be really cool, but I can’t imagine this being economically feasible, except under extreme circumstances. 1. To locate this in a dense city would mean it would compete for land with the most expensive office and residential properties, where developers pay huge land prices to build in those locations. They build there because the most productive companies and individuals desire to locate there and can pay for it. The competition from farms, of all things, would drive prices for office and residential even higher. Perhaps, it might make sense to locate on less desirable urban land such as near highways or industry. 2. Construction costs of building vertical are enormous. Especially compared to the construction cost of traditional farms: nearly 0. 3. Labor costs: city labor is much more expensive than rural labor. Perhaps the skyfarm will be fully automated, but you’ll need engineers on site and other staff a typical farm does not require. 4. Traditionally, farms locate on land that is much less productive than agglomerative cities, which is why land is cheaper and farming can become profitable. Add in extraordinary construction costs, and it makes little economic sense. I can’t imagine farms competing with urban offices in productivity or profit per square foot. 5. The skyfarm probably isn’t so good for […]

Trending now

A self-defeating argument
Texas MUD
gentrification
Only 2 Ways to Fight Gentrification (you’re not going to like one of them)
The problem with “public” transportation