akgerber

41 ms·

391.
by akgerber 11y ago
A couple counterexamples from civil engineering: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-7-line-extension-stil... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_C_%28Rome_Metro%29
392.
by akgerber 11y ago
My neighbor gave me an Apple II+ he had bought from a yardsale and never used. I was pretty stoked. This was in 1999, and the computer was already probably 18 years old.
393.
by akgerber 11y ago
Exactly :)
394.
by akgerber 11y ago
40 new, very-well-paying tech jobs within city limits has to be good for Pittsburgh's tech ecosystem. And, troublesome as Uber is, I'm glad to see these scientists directing their work to civilian concerns rather than military pur
395.
by akgerber 11y ago
People who are less willing/able to pay high Bay Area real estate prices, such as people with modest incomes and children, are fleeing. Other people, who are more willing/able to pay high real estate prices, likely due to high wag
396.
by akgerber 11y ago
The Silicon Valley lifestyle, and the long commutes it engenders, aren't remotely 'urban living'. Charlottesville, VA is likewise more of a small city than a small town, where it's perfectly practical for people to walk
397.
by akgerber 11y ago
The methodology here doesn't seem particularly useful— they say Seattle is seen as 90% urban, but apparently 40% of streets in city limits don't have proper sidewalks: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/
398.
by akgerber 11y ago
Pittsburgh was a city of coal-heated homes and coke-powered blast furnaces set in river valleys, and in the '60s and earlier was dark at noon: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/stunning-photos-of-pittsbu... Many o
399.
by akgerber 11y ago
'Up to May 2010, NUMMI [now the Tesla plant] built an average of 6000 vehicles a week' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
400.
by akgerber 11y ago
Chicago. Here is a random 10-year old condo for $255k: http://www.trulia.com/property/3201711637-222-N-Columbus-Dr-... Here is an older, further-out one for less than half that: http://www.trulia.com/pr
401.
by akgerber 11y ago
If you engineer your life to never need a car, you'll likewise always be in the position of power while buying one.
402.
by akgerber 11y ago
My parents owned a house in Milwaukee. They paid $30,000 or so for it, in 1980. They sold it for $30,000 or so, in 1988. It's still worth $30,000 or so. This scenario was repeated hundreds of thousands of times in Milwaukee alone. My p
403.
by akgerber 11y ago
It's mostly a zoning problem— for whatever reason, America treasures areas of purely single-family homes, probably because it creates an economic barrier that enforces a general demographic sameness in an area. That means that, even if
404.
by akgerber 11y ago
To put it succinctly: cars are useful, but also dangerous, and require huge amounts of land to run and store in any quantity. After discovering that trying to rebuild cities with room to run and store large amounts of cars, we've disco
405.
by akgerber 11y ago
Lime Brokerage was part of Mark Gorton's Lime Group (also as in 'LimeWire'), though it has been sold. ( http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Lime_Brokerage ) He also runs Tower Research Capital, which is an HF
406.
by akgerber 11y ago
Chaebol are a whole 'nother level of diversified. Samsung sells smartphones and theme parks and ships and insurance and ...
407.
by akgerber 12y ago
The Washington Metro is comparable to the S-Bahn. DC doesn't have a system comparable to the Berlin Metro, because it doesn't have the dense tenement neighborhoods to support such a system. The DC metro area actually has more popu
408.
by akgerber 12y ago
The real issue with automobiles and cities isn't so much the cars as the parking. Parking takes up a huge proportion of urban land and street space that could be used for exclusive bus lanes. Parking requirements makes the building blo
409.
by akgerber 12y ago
The New York metro is also very, very vast in area, and many people also live 1-2 hours by car away from their work. If you're carfree in NYC, you probably just don't have Riverhead and Stamford and Allentown in mind as part of &#
410.
by akgerber 12y ago
Community Boards are still problematic in some areas, but not all. And as bike folks are realizing how important they are, they are joining boards and lobbying them: http://www.transalt.org/calendar/6441 Recent bike pr
411.
by akgerber 12y ago
It also helps that it's awful to use a train to commute to Dumbo unless you live along the F or A.
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by akgerber 12y ago
Japan is a very different country— one is not able to own a car without a certificate demonstrating they have an off-street place to park it (resulting in lower car ownership), and, more importantly, very narrow streets that largely preclud
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by akgerber 12y ago
Living on $75k or so after-tax in NYC as a young single man isn't 'very frugal'. A nice room in a roommate situation can be had for $1000/mo, a very nice one for $2000, which totals $12k-$24k per year. Likewise a modest
414.
by akgerber 12y ago
The garment district (the 20s/30s on the West Side) is zoned industrial. Hotels are legal in industrial zones, but apartments aren't, so hotels get built.
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by akgerber 12y ago
I don't have the exact statistics as hand, but SF has actually had moderate growth in the housing stock— the real issue is that there was essentially 0 housing growth in Silicon Valley other than San Jose.
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by akgerber 12y ago
In most American cities that aren't New York or San Francisco, half the downtown has been torn down to build parking lots: http://usa.streetsblog.org/category/special-reports/parking-... And, of course, most
417.
by akgerber 12y ago
NYC traffic and cycling is in a state of transition. Only now, after years of advocacy, are we starting to get the NYPD to even think about enforcing traffic laws, and likewise it took tons of work to get even a limited number of speed enfo
418.
by akgerber 12y ago
At least in the US, AMT can apply even when capital gains taxes don't. The exact conditions are very complicated.
419.
by akgerber 12y ago
These sort of bottom-up solutions are enabled when the right conditions come from the top, too, as discussed in the 'Policy to help investment co-ops spread' section.
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by akgerber 12y ago
I would reckon this depends a lot on your neighborhood in New York, and just how you choose to live. I know several neighbors.

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