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This sounds fairly similar to "Why Many Cities Have No Money" [0]. In short, building massive infrastructure for the future is worth very little when the promis
by Etheryte 6y ago
This sounds fairly similar to "Why Many Cities Have No Money" [0]. In short, building massive infrastructure for the future is worth very little when the promised future never comes and you're stuck paying the maintenance cost.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310
- Schiendelman 6y agoThat article is from Strong Towns. Strong Towns' entire premise is that growing outward is inefficient. They would make the same argument I am about planning for the future in a place like Hudson Yards, where millions of square feet are under construction.
- dan-robertson 6y agoIt intuitively feels more likely to me that that future may come to New York than to other cities.
- Schiendelman 6y agoIt's already there. Hudson Yards is the largest development currently in progress in NYC (maybe the US), and phase 2 will build another million-ish square feet next to it. That is the closest subway station to all of it.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoDoes that future include >2” of water rise and more floods to fill tunnels?
- Schiendelman 6y agoYes, NYC is planning for at least two meters of sea level rise. Much of the subway works going on now are to handle more frequent and larger storm surges.
- m4rtink 6y agoYou can actually see how it will look like by watching The Expanse - it takes place in ~2350 and there is a huge wall all around Manhattan including in front of the still standing original UN building, as most terrestrial glaciers are long gone. But this is actually a much less pressing issue than the couple gigaton nukes the Mars Congressional Republic has targeted on Earth, the ever more emancipated belters and some very shady deals by secretive yet very dangerous corporations.
- katbyte 6y agoRIP earth
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI think you meant 2', not 2".
- xyzzyz 6y agoBut this is simply not true. Maintenance costs are rarely significant part of city budgets, they are almost always below 10-15%. I don't want to say that Strongtowns is lying, because that presumes intent, but what they claim simply has little bearing with reality.
- pchristensen 6y agoTheir premise is that governments build infrastructure during their growth phase, but don't budget for maintaining or replacing it at the end of its lifecycle, 30-50 years later when their growth phase is past.
- mulmen 6y agoSure but Seattle is a mess today because nobody built the capacity we need.