8 ms·

I want a city, not a museum

39 points by jseliger 3y ago

neonate 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231231015114/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/opinion/new-york-housing-costs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231231015114/https://www.nytim... https://archive.ph/ycYQl https://archive.ph/ycYQl
woodruffw 3y ago
Another component of NYC’s housing problems: many of the city’s smaller buildings have undergone resident shrinkage, in part due to smaller, wealthier family units. In other words: a brownstone that would have housed 3 or 4 extended families in 1923 is now housing a single family.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  Also happening in Toronto: > Over a 45 year period, 1971-2016, 56 of Toronto’s 140 Official Neighbourhoods had smaller populations in 2016 than they did in 1971 (e.g. The Annex). More than 70% of Neighbourhoods in what was formerly Old Toronto, fall into this category of de-densification. 80% of the City of Toronto’s population growth have come from 20 Neighbourhoods. * https://www.erikdrysdale.com/DA_kramer/ https://www.erikdrysdale.com/DA_kramer/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - downrightmike 3y ago
    Their growth only comes from absorbing the outlying areas. They aren't making a functional city by doing that.
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    Isn't this just the changing composition of families? If divorce becomes more popular and marriage becomes less popular there are more single adult households which results in a smaller population density
    - nikanj 3y ago
      It's many different things. Smaller families, units combined into larger units, units serving as pied-à-terre / airbnb instead of having permanent residents, etc
- downrightmike 3y ago
  The whole NYC island was cut into grid lots without taking into things like utilities, just lots, by a realtor. It takes so much more money and effort it service and maintain all of that. They have no ability to grow the city like Tokyo does. They don't have the engineering ability, or funds. Tokyo has 38m people to NYC's 12m. This is all due to NYC not wanting to think about the future, only preserve the poorly designed past.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    > The whole NYC island was cut into grid lots without taking into things like utilities, just lots, by a realtor First of all, NYC is not an island. It's 5 different boroughs, four of which are spread across 3 islands with one connected to the mainland. Manhattan is just one borough; it's not the biggest by size or population by a long shot (that would be Queens). Second: I don't know why you think this. Manhattan's grid plan was produced in 1811 by a handful of leading citizen types[1]. It's worth noting that utilities in the sense we mean today weren't really a thing they could plan for in 1811. But, as far as I know, the city's grid really hasn't been an impediment to the city's utility system, besides trash collection. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Population density around "grid lots" isn't a thing holding NYC back from Tokyo's total population; the land area of Tokyo proper is nearly 3x that of NYC proper for about 1.5x the people. The surrounding area is denser in Tokyo, but the city proper is already denser in NYC (which makes sense if you've seen the building heights in Manhattan).
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    Brooklyn (Williamsburg)? Jersey City? Hoboken? These have all gone from blue-collar to completely-unaffordable within the lifetime of GenX and elder Millennials. NYC does expand. Now -- funny thing: With the PATH, you can get into the financial district faster from Newark than you can from Brooklyn. So the obvious next thing to do is to gentrify Newark. That's been slow though -- money still remembers the 1967 riots.
thriftwy 3y ago
They should give a blanket license to a developer like PIK and LSR and plead for mercy watching rows after rows of 25 storey apartment buildings being delivered to market. They will even fly in their own workforce.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  Funny. Google tells me those are both Russian developers. Hopefully they are capable of urbanism, unlike, say, the Toll Brothers. But if you really want buildings to go up, don't you actually want Chinese developers? Granted, they will require some supervision to ensure that the buildings stay up! But America has had trouble with its own companies like Bechtel (which used faulty concrete to save money in the Big Dig), so it's nothing new.
TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
In Europe such discussions are daily occurrence. I.e. in Prague is a 100 years old riveted railroad bridge. After extensive usage for a century rivets holes are fatigue ripped apart and bridge was slowly becoming useless. There were two solutions 1. Reconstruction and refurbishment of the bridge, where look and capacity would remain same. However it would require another reconstruction in few decades in perpetuity because structure is essentially broken and reconstructions would be jut keeping the bridge on living support for a little bit longer. Historical conservatives were very much in favor of that one 2. Ripping old bridge apart (except pylons) and building a new one for same amount of money as solution 1) and without a need of perpetual reconstruction, just regular maintenance. Luckily this solution has won. https://english.radio.cz/rail-bridge-connecting-vyton-and-smichov-receive-huge-overhaul-8768036 https://english.radio.cz/rail-bridge-connecting-vyton-and-sm...
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I think an important distinction here is that most of NYC's old housing stock is not decrepit, and is in fact some of the most expensive housing in the city (in the "normal person" bracket, not the "wants to live in a penthouse overlooking Central Park" bracket). Two of the neighborhoods mentioned (the UWS and Brooklyn Heights) are some of the wealthiest in the city.
zuminator 3y ago
The population of the city has dropped by around half a million since the pandemic and the rise of remote work. There are plenty of empty apartments, many of which are being warehoused by landlords because they don't want to rent out at stabilized rates. And erecting more luxury housing, which is mostly what gets built these days, isn't going to make city more affordable for the middle class. Perhaps vastly expanding public housing would, but the city housing authority is already almost $80 billion behind in deferred maintenance for its current housing stock. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/nyregion/nyc-housing-authority-nycha.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/nyregion/nyc-housing-auth...) The author has one thing right though. Transforming NYC into a place where nobody would want to live is a good way to make it more affordable.
- aetherson 3y ago
  Housing is fungible. If you produce luxury housing, then that reduces pressure on existing upper-mid housing, and reducing pressure on upper-mid housing in turn reduces pressure on lower-mid housing, etc.
  - pests 3y ago
    source?
    - Analemma_ 3y ago
      https://escholarship.org/content/qt5d00z61m/qt5d00z61m.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt5d00z61m/qt5d00z61m.pdf is a PDF rounding up multiple observational studies confirming that new market-rate housing decreases rents in the nearby area. One of those (Mast 2019) specifically tracked individual persons to confirm that the mechanism of action is the wealthiest tenants moving into the new building and freeing up units in the slightly-older buildings, where slightly-less wealthy tenants then move in from even older buildings, etc., lowering rents all down the chain.
      - pests 3y ago
        Isn't this just trickle down housing? If the goal is to lower rents down the chain, why not just build more units at every price point? That way everyone, not just the wealthiest, will get new units and not be subjected to old stock in potentially older / worse neighborhoods.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
This is a nonsense issue. Instead of focusing on historical buildings, why don't you focus on: 1. The multitude of empty commercial buildings that could house people but can't because building codes require apartments to have windows. Sorry, but affordable housing doesn't mean you get a window. Does this mean we eliminate all building codes? No it means we relax them so unused space gets used. 2. Apartments intentionally kept empty by real estate investors or pied-a-terres. Item 1 is the biggest offender and is a huge problem for NYC.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  The biggest reason there is not enough affordable housing for middle class, never mind poor, families in New York City is because developers don't want to build that kind of housing. They'd rather build luxury apartment buildings for the ultra wealthy, because that's where the highest margins are. The regulations don't allow building them without offsetting it with new affordable housing projects, but the developers are skirting the regulations by any means necessary, and the regulations aren't enforced with enough teeth to make them comply. Funny how that happens when legislators depend on campaign contributors from the very same people/companies they're supposed to regulate.
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    What incentives could be driving developers to building luxury apartment buildings for the ultra wealthy? Surely 100 of those are built in a year and the market is saturated no? The first I would guess would be fixed costs, which is to say regulation and compliance.If you have to jump through the same amount of hoops making affordable housing as you do super premium housing, one turns a profit and another costs you money to do you will make the choice that leads to solvency over bankruptcy Another incentive could be age degrades property over time, so low income housing could just be old housing. As a Middle Class person I would rather use housing that was Upper Class 50 years ago as opposed to a brand new Housing Project that opened yesterday
Nevermark 3y ago
What isn't mentioned here, is that any real housing solution has to take into account continuous growth. 1) If you expand housing, demand will go up. People fill jobs, and add demand for local businesses, enable growth in exporting businesses' headcounts, creating more opportunities for others. 2) If families can afford to live somewhere dynamic, then many of their children will want to stay, increasing the population. My point is simply that noting that 500,000 new homes could be created is important. But even better would be a guide to how growth can continue, density can continue to go up, in an orderly, practical and aesthetically acceptable way. Otherwise you end up with the same problem a few years later. (Or more likely, you never actually solve the problem even temporarily. Because the housing growth doesn't keep up with demand growth.) The reasons for this is density itself is valuable. So dense places either get very expensive, or keep getting denser.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  Isn't this just a case of growing the city? There's plenty of land to build on. Asian cities like Tokyo or Shenzhen don't seem to suffer this problem strangely, they just grow and grow and grow as necessary. 100x in 20 years if needed. I live in Lisbon where we have the same problem as lots of cities - cramming everyone into one square mile. Instead of waiting for some magical solution I wish we got to work building some more city to live in.
  - palemoonale 3y ago
    > they just grow and grow and grow as necessary. 100x in 20 years if needed Unless you want to have a livable city, and want nature nearby, yes sure, just grow, and grow, and grow. Btw, Shangaians f.e. want a word with you. Perhaps Lisbon, as many other cities, should impose a limit on newcomers / population and area growth. It would help conditions and feel a lot.
    - 0xfaded 3y ago
      Since part of the reason people move to cities is for access to economic opportunity, perhaps it would be better to remove existing residents who do not meet the expected productivity bar and make way for the newcomers. In seriousness though, I do not believe we should shelter existing residents (read homeowners) from the economics they impose on newcomers. Removing tax breaks (Prop 13) would go a long way.
crote 3y ago
It's quite ironic that they focus so much on medium-density pre-WWII buildings - that's probably some of the most efficient housing around! It was constructed before cars became common, so it's mixed-use zoning designed around walkability and public transport. Those rows of 5-story brownstones are pretty much the density sweet spot. If you want to change things, start by rezoning the post-WWII single-story / two-story detached housing suburban hellscape. That's where you can make a real difference.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Well said. I was struggling to identify why this article felt short-sighted to me, and this is it: NYC has massive neighborhoods that could be rezoned into blocks of rowhouses, but are simply ignored because the subway doesn't reach them. If we're serious about building a dense New York that people want to live in for the next 500 years, then we should probably be looking at building another half dozen subway lines into Southern Brooklyn and Eastern Queens.
roenxi 3y ago
Assuming that chart at the bottom of the article is in nominal dollars; New York rents have dropped in real terms. This is some evidence for the author's case that I think got missed - any issues in New York are probably purely political. > Forty percent of the buildings in Manhattan could not be built today. Frankly, even the NIMBYs should be concerned by stuff like this. Political bodies have this strongly held belief that by banning what is known to be possible, something better will spring up instead. I'd bet places that work harder to leave people alone turn out to be more desirable places to live. Western powers seem to have a real problem where building things is often illegal in practice. That bodes poorly for the future. People should be allowed to build stuff.
neilv 3y ago
Maybe similar to NYC in this way, one of the downsides of the Cambridge, MA, area is that apartment renters pay huge rents to live in often rotting old buildings. When one's building has lots of problems, moving to a better place isn't as easy as it used to be. The current market rents keep going up (and seem more coordinated in price increases than they used to), so most of the alternatives at a doable price bump are also old buildings, sure to share some of the same problems to discover. (Plus there's high one-time moving costs, when upfront here is conventionally the legal maximum of 3x monthly rent, plus the expensive professional movers that are a good idea in a city of narrow old staircases and difficult parking. The high one-time cost for each move makes playing Old Apartment Building Roulette risky, since you might be stuck with new showstoppers next time.) Old apartment building problems here include rats indoors, roaches, bed bugs, mold, leaks, noise pollution, peeling lead paint, lead in pipes, asbestos, various toxic resides from many decades, water outages, heat outages, poorly controlled antique central heat, failing structures, fire hazards, burglaries, fumes from neighbors' drug use and sometimes production, etc. (I've lived in buildings here that had almost all of these, at once.) The city does keep building a lot of dense nice, new apartments, but with income restrictions targeted at families near the poverty line. People above that level tend to either be wealthy, to live outside of the close-in cities, or to pay small fortunes but still have roommates. Or, frequently, they move to the SF Bay Area, NYC, or Austin, so that they get better lifestyle for their money. Almost everyone with whom I went to grad school fled the Boston area shortly after graduation, for one of those more attractive cities. The big universities have real estate investment sidelines, and maybe at least that facet is happy that most educated alumni leave the area, rather than putting down roots and showing up to zoning hearings. People will still come to the universities, to study and work, because of the brand prestige, rather than the lifestyle.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I stayed here rather than relocate to the Bay Area because I couldn't afford the same (good) lifestyle in the SF area that I can here in Cambridge. I think your list of "old building" problems is a list of city problems and "poorly maintained building" problems more than old building specific. I'm here in an old (1926) brick house in Cambridge and we have noise and might have asbestos inside the old boiler. (And surely have toxic residues from various items, but so do brand new buildings, possibly in greater amounts.) Noise is a people and density problem more than an age of building problem. The rest of that list of problems can be addressed by proper maintenance/upkeep/pest control (and asbestos can as well, but intact asbestos is best left undisturbed if not required to be disturbed). Lots of rental properties are probably not maintained the way an owner-occupant would maintain their property; that's hardly shocking.
karaterobot 3y ago
This article reads like someone with a single focus. If you're just optimizing for available housing units, you're going to end up creating a lot of other problems as a result. Unfortunately, we have to balance a lot of competing requirements and constraints if we want to do things the right way.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Nimbyism kills cultures because eventually the nimbys die and no one new is there.
EA-3167 3y ago
I never quite understood how a group of people who are so in favor of remote work, can't understand why growing cities may not be the best idea for the future.
nikanj 3y ago
Precedent zoning could solve a lot of housing woes. Essentially if there's already a building like the one you're proposing, your build gets approved. Obviously we'll never move to this model, because it would depress property values.
drewcoo 3y ago
Considering what it costs to live in Manhattan, the island might be better off as a museum. Maybe a living history museum like Colonial Williamsburg. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/living-history https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/living-history
politelemon 3y ago
>The result is a shortage of housing. That is the reason the rent is too damn high, the reason so many people who grow up here cannot stay, the reason the city is struggling to accommodate an influx of immigrants that once would have seemed like a drop in the melting pot. No it isn't. That's just looking for something easily spotted to pin the blame on, to appear smart during dinner table discussions. The author seems to have a laser focus on this one specific point without having done any research into housing issues, which is a broad spectrum of subjects. Attacking these "museum pieces" won't solve the problems being mentioned. Increasing population in an area also comes with its own set of issues but no mention has been made of those. This is a pretty poor quality submission even for HN and NYT.

39 points by jseliger 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231231015114/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/opinion/new-york-housing-costs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231231015114/https://www.nytim... https://archive.ph/ycYQl https://archive.ph/ycYQl

woodruffw 3y ago

Another component of NYC’s housing problems: many of the city’s smaller buildings have undergone resident shrinkage, in part due to smaller, wealthier family units. In other words: a brownstone that would have housed 3 or 4 extended families in 1923 is now housing a single family.

throw0101b 3y ago
Also happening in Toronto: > Over a 45 year period, 1971-2016, 56 of Toronto’s 140 Official Neighbourhoods had smaller populations in 2016 than they did in 1971 (e.g. The Annex). More than 70% of Neighbourhoods in what was formerly Old Toronto, fall into this category of de-densification. 80% of the City of Toronto’s population growth have come from 20 Neighbourhoods. * https://www.erikdrysdale.com/DA_kramer/ https://www.erikdrysdale.com/DA_kramer/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- downrightmike 3y ago
  Their growth only comes from absorbing the outlying areas. They aren't making a functional city by doing that.
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  Isn't this just the changing composition of families? If divorce becomes more popular and marriage becomes less popular there are more single adult households which results in a smaller population density
  - nikanj 3y ago
    It's many different things. Smaller families, units combined into larger units, units serving as pied-à-terre / airbnb instead of having permanent residents, etc
downrightmike 3y ago
The whole NYC island was cut into grid lots without taking into things like utilities, just lots, by a realtor. It takes so much more money and effort it service and maintain all of that. They have no ability to grow the city like Tokyo does. They don't have the engineering ability, or funds. Tokyo has 38m people to NYC's 12m. This is all due to NYC not wanting to think about the future, only preserve the poorly designed past.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > The whole NYC island was cut into grid lots without taking into things like utilities, just lots, by a realtor First of all, NYC is not an island. It's 5 different boroughs, four of which are spread across 3 islands with one connected to the mainland. Manhattan is just one borough; it's not the biggest by size or population by a long shot (that would be Queens). Second: I don't know why you think this. Manhattan's grid plan was produced in 1811 by a handful of leading citizen types[1]. It's worth noting that utilities in the sense we mean today weren't really a thing they could plan for in 1811. But, as far as I know, the city's grid really hasn't been an impediment to the city's utility system, besides trash collection. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811
- majormajor 3y ago
  Population density around "grid lots" isn't a thing holding NYC back from Tokyo's total population; the land area of Tokyo proper is nearly 3x that of NYC proper for about 1.5x the people. The surrounding area is denser in Tokyo, but the city proper is already denser in NYC (which makes sense if you've seen the building heights in Manhattan).
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  Brooklyn (Williamsburg)? Jersey City? Hoboken? These have all gone from blue-collar to completely-unaffordable within the lifetime of GenX and elder Millennials. NYC does expand. Now -- funny thing: With the PATH, you can get into the financial district faster from Newark than you can from Brooklyn. So the obvious next thing to do is to gentrify Newark. That's been slow though -- money still remembers the 1967 riots.

thriftwy 3y ago

They should give a blanket license to a developer like PIK and LSR and plead for mercy watching rows after rows of 25 storey apartment buildings being delivered to market. They will even fly in their own workforce.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Funny. Google tells me those are both Russian developers. Hopefully they are capable of urbanism, unlike, say, the Toll Brothers. But if you really want buildings to go up, don't you actually want Chinese developers? Granted, they will require some supervision to ensure that the buildings stay up! But America has had trouble with its own companies like Bechtel (which used faulty concrete to save money in the Big Dig), so it's nothing new.

TheLoafOfBread 3y ago

In Europe such discussions are daily occurrence. I.e. in Prague is a 100 years old riveted railroad bridge. After extensive usage for a century rivets holes are fatigue ripped apart and bridge was slowly becoming useless. There were two solutions 1. Reconstruction and refurbishment of the bridge, where look and capacity would remain same. However it would require another reconstruction in few decades in perpetuity because structure is essentially broken and reconstructions would be jut keeping the bridge on living support for a little bit longer. Historical conservatives were very much in favor of that one 2. Ripping old bridge apart (except pylons) and building a new one for same amount of money as solution 1) and without a need of perpetual reconstruction, just regular maintenance. Luckily this solution has won. https://english.radio.cz/rail-bridge-connecting-vyton-and-smichov-receive-huge-overhaul-8768036 https://english.radio.cz/rail-bridge-connecting-vyton-and-sm...

woodruffw 3y ago
I think an important distinction here is that most of NYC's old housing stock is not decrepit, and is in fact some of the most expensive housing in the city (in the "normal person" bracket, not the "wants to live in a penthouse overlooking Central Park" bracket). Two of the neighborhoods mentioned (the UWS and Brooklyn Heights) are some of the wealthiest in the city.

zuminator 3y ago

The population of the city has dropped by around half a million since the pandemic and the rise of remote work. There are plenty of empty apartments, many of which are being warehoused by landlords because they don't want to rent out at stabilized rates. And erecting more luxury housing, which is mostly what gets built these days, isn't going to make city more affordable for the middle class. Perhaps vastly expanding public housing would, but the city housing authority is already almost $80 billion behind in deferred maintenance for its current housing stock. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/nyregion/nyc-housing-authority-nycha.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/nyregion/nyc-housing-auth...) The author has one thing right though. Transforming NYC into a place where nobody would want to live is a good way to make it more affordable.

aetherson 3y ago
Housing is fungible. If you produce luxury housing, then that reduces pressure on existing upper-mid housing, and reducing pressure on upper-mid housing in turn reduces pressure on lower-mid housing, etc.
- pests 3y ago
  source?
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    https://escholarship.org/content/qt5d00z61m/qt5d00z61m.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt5d00z61m/qt5d00z61m.pdf is a PDF rounding up multiple observational studies confirming that new market-rate housing decreases rents in the nearby area. One of those (Mast 2019) specifically tracked individual persons to confirm that the mechanism of action is the wealthiest tenants moving into the new building and freeing up units in the slightly-older buildings, where slightly-less wealthy tenants then move in from even older buildings, etc., lowering rents all down the chain.
    - pests 3y ago
      Isn't this just trickle down housing? If the goal is to lower rents down the chain, why not just build more units at every price point? That way everyone, not just the wealthiest, will get new units and not be subjected to old stock in potentially older / worse neighborhoods.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

This is a nonsense issue. Instead of focusing on historical buildings, why don't you focus on: 1. The multitude of empty commercial buildings that could house people but can't because building codes require apartments to have windows. Sorry, but affordable housing doesn't mean you get a window. Does this mean we eliminate all building codes? No it means we relax them so unused space gets used. 2. Apartments intentionally kept empty by real estate investors or pied-a-terres. Item 1 is the biggest offender and is a huge problem for NYC.

gorbachev 3y ago
The biggest reason there is not enough affordable housing for middle class, never mind poor, families in New York City is because developers don't want to build that kind of housing. They'd rather build luxury apartment buildings for the ultra wealthy, because that's where the highest margins are. The regulations don't allow building them without offsetting it with new affordable housing projects, but the developers are skirting the regulations by any means necessary, and the regulations aren't enforced with enough teeth to make them comply. Funny how that happens when legislators depend on campaign contributors from the very same people/companies they're supposed to regulate.
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  What incentives could be driving developers to building luxury apartment buildings for the ultra wealthy? Surely 100 of those are built in a year and the market is saturated no? The first I would guess would be fixed costs, which is to say regulation and compliance.If you have to jump through the same amount of hoops making affordable housing as you do super premium housing, one turns a profit and another costs you money to do you will make the choice that leads to solvency over bankruptcy Another incentive could be age degrades property over time, so low income housing could just be old housing. As a Middle Class person I would rather use housing that was Upper Class 50 years ago as opposed to a brand new Housing Project that opened yesterday

Nevermark 3y ago

What isn't mentioned here, is that any real housing solution has to take into account continuous growth. 1) If you expand housing, demand will go up. People fill jobs, and add demand for local businesses, enable growth in exporting businesses' headcounts, creating more opportunities for others. 2) If families can afford to live somewhere dynamic, then many of their children will want to stay, increasing the population. My point is simply that noting that 500,000 new homes could be created is important. But even better would be a guide to how growth can continue, density can continue to go up, in an orderly, practical and aesthetically acceptable way. Otherwise you end up with the same problem a few years later. (Or more likely, you never actually solve the problem even temporarily. Because the housing growth doesn't keep up with demand growth.) The reasons for this is density itself is valuable. So dense places either get very expensive, or keep getting denser.

zemvpferreira 3y ago
Isn't this just a case of growing the city? There's plenty of land to build on. Asian cities like Tokyo or Shenzhen don't seem to suffer this problem strangely, they just grow and grow and grow as necessary. 100x in 20 years if needed. I live in Lisbon where we have the same problem as lots of cities - cramming everyone into one square mile. Instead of waiting for some magical solution I wish we got to work building some more city to live in.
- palemoonale 3y ago
  > they just grow and grow and grow as necessary. 100x in 20 years if needed Unless you want to have a livable city, and want nature nearby, yes sure, just grow, and grow, and grow. Btw, Shangaians f.e. want a word with you. Perhaps Lisbon, as many other cities, should impose a limit on newcomers / population and area growth. It would help conditions and feel a lot.
  - 0xfaded 3y ago
    Since part of the reason people move to cities is for access to economic opportunity, perhaps it would be better to remove existing residents who do not meet the expected productivity bar and make way for the newcomers. In seriousness though, I do not believe we should shelter existing residents (read homeowners) from the economics they impose on newcomers. Removing tax breaks (Prop 13) would go a long way.

crote 3y ago

It's quite ironic that they focus so much on medium-density pre-WWII buildings - that's probably some of the most efficient housing around! It was constructed before cars became common, so it's mixed-use zoning designed around walkability and public transport. Those rows of 5-story brownstones are pretty much the density sweet spot. If you want to change things, start by rezoning the post-WWII single-story / two-story detached housing suburban hellscape. That's where you can make a real difference.

woodruffw 3y ago
Well said. I was struggling to identify why this article felt short-sighted to me, and this is it: NYC has massive neighborhoods that could be rezoned into blocks of rowhouses, but are simply ignored because the subway doesn't reach them. If we're serious about building a dense New York that people want to live in for the next 500 years, then we should probably be looking at building another half dozen subway lines into Southern Brooklyn and Eastern Queens.

roenxi 3y ago

Assuming that chart at the bottom of the article is in nominal dollars; New York rents have dropped in real terms. This is some evidence for the author's case that I think got missed - any issues in New York are probably purely political. > Forty percent of the buildings in Manhattan could not be built today. Frankly, even the NIMBYs should be concerned by stuff like this. Political bodies have this strongly held belief that by banning what is known to be possible, something better will spring up instead. I'd bet places that work harder to leave people alone turn out to be more desirable places to live. Western powers seem to have a real problem where building things is often illegal in practice. That bodes poorly for the future. People should be allowed to build stuff.

neilv 3y ago

Maybe similar to NYC in this way, one of the downsides of the Cambridge, MA, area is that apartment renters pay huge rents to live in often rotting old buildings. When one's building has lots of problems, moving to a better place isn't as easy as it used to be. The current market rents keep going up (and seem more coordinated in price increases than they used to), so most of the alternatives at a doable price bump are also old buildings, sure to share some of the same problems to discover. (Plus there's high one-time moving costs, when upfront here is conventionally the legal maximum of 3x monthly rent, plus the expensive professional movers that are a good idea in a city of narrow old staircases and difficult parking. The high one-time cost for each move makes playing Old Apartment Building Roulette risky, since you might be stuck with new showstoppers next time.) Old apartment building problems here include rats indoors, roaches, bed bugs, mold, leaks, noise pollution, peeling lead paint, lead in pipes, asbestos, various toxic resides from many decades, water outages, heat outages, poorly controlled antique central heat, failing structures, fire hazards, burglaries, fumes from neighbors' drug use and sometimes production, etc. (I've lived in buildings here that had almost all of these, at once.) The city does keep building a lot of dense nice, new apartments, but with income restrictions targeted at families near the poverty line. People above that level tend to either be wealthy, to live outside of the close-in cities, or to pay small fortunes but still have roommates. Or, frequently, they move to the SF Bay Area, NYC, or Austin, so that they get better lifestyle for their money. Almost everyone with whom I went to grad school fled the Boston area shortly after graduation, for one of those more attractive cities. The big universities have real estate investment sidelines, and maybe at least that facet is happy that most educated alumni leave the area, rather than putting down roots and showing up to zoning hearings. People will still come to the universities, to study and work, because of the brand prestige, rather than the lifestyle.

sokoloff 3y ago
I stayed here rather than relocate to the Bay Area because I couldn't afford the same (good) lifestyle in the SF area that I can here in Cambridge. I think your list of "old building" problems is a list of city problems and "poorly maintained building" problems more than old building specific. I'm here in an old (1926) brick house in Cambridge and we have noise and might have asbestos inside the old boiler. (And surely have toxic residues from various items, but so do brand new buildings, possibly in greater amounts.) Noise is a people and density problem more than an age of building problem. The rest of that list of problems can be addressed by proper maintenance/upkeep/pest control (and asbestos can as well, but intact asbestos is best left undisturbed if not required to be disturbed). Lots of rental properties are probably not maintained the way an owner-occupant would maintain their property; that's hardly shocking.

karaterobot 3y ago

This article reads like someone with a single focus. If you're just optimizing for available housing units, you're going to end up creating a lot of other problems as a result. Unfortunately, we have to balance a lot of competing requirements and constraints if we want to do things the right way.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Nimbyism kills cultures because eventually the nimbys die and no one new is there.

EA-3167 3y ago

I never quite understood how a group of people who are so in favor of remote work, can't understand why growing cities may not be the best idea for the future.

nikanj 3y ago

Precedent zoning could solve a lot of housing woes. Essentially if there's already a building like the one you're proposing, your build gets approved. Obviously we'll never move to this model, because it would depress property values.

drewcoo 3y ago

Considering what it costs to live in Manhattan, the island might be better off as a museum. Maybe a living history museum like Colonial Williamsburg. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/living-history https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/living-history

politelemon 3y ago

>The result is a shortage of housing. That is the reason the rent is too damn high, the reason so many people who grow up here cannot stay, the reason the city is struggling to accommodate an influx of immigrants that once would have seemed like a drop in the melting pot. No it isn't. That's just looking for something easily spotted to pin the blame on, to appear smart during dinner table discussions. The author seems to have a laser focus on this one specific point without having done any research into housing issues, which is a broad spectrum of subjects. Attacking these "museum pieces" won't solve the problems being mentioned. Increasing population in an area also comes with its own set of issues but no mention has been made of those. This is a pretty poor quality submission even for HN and NYT.