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Comment by drugme | Hacker News Reader

Let's just say there may be other factors to consider besides net project cost. Like, say:

- The economic strangulation of entire neighborhoods

- Disrupted access to health care and educational opportunities

- Disrupted access to one's place of employment (for a great many people)

- All of these disproportionately affecting, you know... lower income folks (and not so coincidentally, communities of color).

- The spillover affect of all of the above on the regional economy as a whole (and hence -- on tax revenues available to the same governments who need to fund this construction in the first place).

Stuff like that.

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But that's exactly the problem -- local governments are powerless. They can't fix the BQE due to opposition from Brooklyn Heights community groups. Can't build skyscrapers south of Atlantic Terminal because they'd be too close to the community gardens. Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.

>Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

Are we now considering "lower Manhattan" to be south of 30th?

That's actually a bigger definition that I usually use. I typically cal 14th or Houston the cutoff.

I'm a Houston and below kind of guy. Once the streets lose their numbers, its lower Manhattan (and I get lost).

I find that argument compelling, but I still vote 14th. That's where the west side starts to curve in and the streets stop being rectangles.

It's true that there are numbers between Houston and 14th but they no longer necessarily make any sense. Consider the corner of W 4th St and W 13th St for example--that shouldn't exist.

That's just quirky West Village stuff. I'd actually love to find a book on the history of why they abandoned the 90 degree corner and went off the grid pattern just for that small section.

When you go east of 6th things are still screwy south of 8th because of NYU and Washington Square Park. Then along Bowery / 4th Ave (!) things are screwed up again. It ends up being between 1/3 and 1/2 of Houston to 14th street that isn't a nice neat grid.

At the end of the day it's arbitrary but I'd say the core grid part of the city is from 14th to 96th. Even within that it isn't perfect, for example Broadway goes whatever it feels like going, but mostly you aren't going to get lost there.

I'm not saying it's a great situation.

Just not a "crazy" one.

Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

You know perfectly well this isn't true. Not even half of the lots in that area meet that description.

The main reason you "can't" just rip up and re-develop Lower Manhattan is... it's already one of the most sensibly built places on the planet - and so "redeveloping" anything beyond selected corners of it would basically be pretty stupid.

Oh and plus the fact that it's already owned and the land is like really expensive and stuff.

local governments are powerless.

Also nowhere near true, but whatever.

> it's already on of the most sensibly built places on the planet - and so "redeveloping" anything beyond selected corners of it would basically be pretty stupid.

What? Almost everything between Midtown and Downtown is a 4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal? It's why they're redeveloping old office buildings in the Financial District to be apartments -- it's one of the few spots in lower Manhattan that allow high density housing.

> You know perfectly well this isn't true. Not even half of the lots in that area meet that description.

I was being slightly hyperbolic but the effect is the same. The strict height/density restrictions are intended to preserve the "historic" neighborhoods.

Almost everything between Midtown and Downtown is a 4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal?

4-5 stories (at 2-4 apartments per) is quite good density, actually.

Not when it's artificially restricting supply. It's good density for a mid-size city, terrible for a city as large (and growing) as New York.

It's quite natural, actually.

And it's what you'd call a tradeoff, not a one-way restriction.

I actually have no idea what is informing your thinking here, on both counts, its like you are just making stuff up as you go along.

>Not when it's artificially restricting supply

Wrong. You are neglecting the very non-artificial fact that bedrock depth has always been the main limiting factor for that part of Manhattan between Midtown and FiDi, or more so that its only because of the uniquely solid and deep bedrock under FiDi and Midtown that skyscrapers exist here at all. If they could have built skyscrapers there, they would have. As building technology permits, gradually, they are. Regardless, the housing that does exist is simply not as you describe. When was the last time you spent any time in New York?

>It's good density for a mid-size city, terrible for a city as large (and growing) as New York.

The area we are talking about, between FiDi and Midtown, holds over 250k housing units for close to half a million people. 75% of those units feature 20 or more units. That's a range of about 100-150 people per acre. Manhattan overall contains 70k residents per square mile, across all boroughs its 27k per sq. mile, the highest density in America. That's not including office space, or the daily working and visiting population which is easily double that. Even Brooklyn has over 3x the density of Chicago and almost as many people. Its not Tokyo, but it sure as heck isn't Indianapolis, not even close...

Btw, we aren't ants. Quality of life is a thing and building density not to mention aesthetics and history are huge factors to the desirability and livability of the city. Go to Hong Kong if you want to live in a cage with 20 other people to a room in some modern-industrial neo-commie-block. You are basically picking on the only parts of the city with any actual character or beauty that anybody with a clue would want to live or visit and saying they should be destroyed because you ignorantly think that the most densely populated city in the country needs more housing density? Talk about artificial factors.

Not in Manhattan. They could be 10x the size and still get filled.

The point is that when you're looking to redevelop, you go after low-hanging fruit -- like, for example, low-rise / brownfield industrial districts where the industry and people left decades ago and would otherwise never be coming back in great numbers. Like say the waterfronts in Brooklyn / Queens (which are of course exactly the areas the city is focusing on).

You don't just seize and destroy neighborhoods that have been thriving and integrated for 150+ years, like the East Village for example. Which seems to be what you're proposing.

(BTW I say "seize" because what you're proposing would never happen alone on any significant scale without eminent domain).

> (BTW I say "seize" because what you're proposing would never happen alone on any significant scale without eminent domain).

How so? Landlords would jump to sell their rent-controlled buildings to developers who are champing at the bit. City programs are the only thing preventing development from happening.

Landlords would jump to sell their rent-controlled buildings to developers who are champing at the bit.

This is wishful thinking, on a number of fronts.

For example one does not simply "sell" (meaning, in the context of proposed redevelopment: purge all the tenants from) a rent-controlled building in NYC. Or even an existing coop or condo building, for example.

I fall pretty close to the maximal end of the YIMBY spectrum but there are real tradeoffs between the 4-5 story walkups and giant towers.

Central Paris has a residential density higher than NYC despite composed almost entirely of 4-5 story mixed use walkups. There are lots of reasons that this is a pretty ideal, human scale existence.

Those 4-5 story walkups in the East Village have a population density of 113,000 per square mile. If a half of NYC had the same density, our population could be 16 million people which is 2x the total population in NYC.

If the greater NY metro area (13,000 sq mi) had the density of 4-5 story walkups in the East Village we could house 1.5 BILLION people or many times the entire population of the United States. Of course all of this assumes linear scaling which is entirely inaccurate but the point is that 4-5 story walkup density is entirely sufficient to meet housing needs.

The challenge is getting other neighborhoods to 4-5 story walkup equivalent density.

This comment rings true to me. Old cities in Europe are not very developed vertically but they all have those old 5 stories building with internal courtyards etc that are NICE to live in because they foster community and knowing your neighbors. I with SF and the bay area had more of those.

I agree. Wall-to-wall European style large blocks with 5-6 stories and inner yards are by far my favourite type of urban area. It's pleasant to the eye, and results in dense enough population to allow viable first-floor businesses and public transport with tracks (tram/metro).

>4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal?

As you go beyond 5 stories the construction methods required to support the building change. (this obviously is an engineering consideration, you can get a little higher with good engineering). Thus this is ideal because you cannot get denser without increasing the costs to residents. For the poor a small apartment in a 5 story building is as cheap as you can get (this is just equal share fixed costs and ignores supply/demand, taxes, and all the other considerations that go into rent prices). We can build taller of course but the per unit rents must be higher to support the increased construction costs.

The EV / LES designations always seemed particularly perverse to me. These neighborhoods were built at the highest density possible at the time in order to provide cheap housing for immigrants. Visually blocks vary between dull and outright hideous.

The best to honor the history of those neighborhoods would be to build and build and build until units became affordable again.

Especially since it all used to be just the LES. The EV as such was (largely) a creation of the real estate industry.

Local government is very powerful, especially in NYC. One of the features of democracy is that voters have influence over what their government does.

When you think back to the days when US governments had the ability to do everything, consider the downside. You get "great men" like Robert Moses who bulldoze everything and destroy communities, or build highways to make it difficult for "undesirable" minorities to travel.

Plenty is getting done in NYC.

Plenty is getting done in NYC.

Indeed, the changes in the last 15 years (due almost entirely to government intervention -- mostly at the city level) have been quite profound. The idea that local government is "powerless" is simply disconnected from reality.

These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.

As someone who follows closely the real estate press news and has some sense of zoning controversies (and for what it's worth own a building), I think your comment is full of hyperbole and false commentary.

There's massive development at the new "Essex Crossing" in the LES. There's massive development at Atlantic Terminal at the edge of downtown Brooklyn / Cobble Hill. Along Broadway in Brooklyn, in between the Bushwick and Bed Stuy border, tons of development. "Broadway Triangle", at the bottom of Williamsburg, tons of development. 1000 units coming online on Flushing Ave at the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg. Everything I just said is not "low density housing". It's medium and high density.

Astor Pl and along Bowery has existing construction, and even more planned! Hudson Yards..

I could go on and on but your comment is hugely misinformed. The controversies in NYC around "NIMBYism" are NOT the same as California, with ideas around single-family homes and such.

Suggested media sources in the future:

therealdeal.com

newyorkyimby.com

ny.curbed.com

Finally, density comes at a price. When those people leave their high density housing, where do you think they go? When they take a shit and flush the toilet, where do you think that goes?

The density has made much of Brooklyn a nightmare commute as it is -- it takes a year to build a 12 story or whatever building, but it takes decades to upgrade our shoddy infrastructure.

> There's massive development at the new "Essex Crossing" in the LES. There's massive development at Atlantic Terminal at the edge of downtown Brooklyn / Cobble Hill. Along Broadway in Brooklyn, in between the Bushwick and Bed Stuy border, tons of development. "Broadway Triangle", at the bottom of Williamsburg, tons of development. 1000 units coming online on Flushing Ave at the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg.

You know what the common theme here is? They're all poor or working class neighborhoods without the political organization to fight back against redevelopment. You know the only reason that they would bend over for the L is because of the trendy Williamsburg $$$.

You know what the common theme here is?

The only common theme I see here is that you never seem to acknowledge the gaping flaws people have identified in the arguments you're making. Instead you just keep changing the subject.

If there's something in particular you'd like me to respond to, I will. Otherwise this isn't a constructive comment.

Essex Crossing and Atlantic Terminal are poor?

There's no political will? There's political will for affordable housing, which is related to housing density. Hence the zoning changes are attached to below-market rates for 20-30% of the newly-built units. Next there's plenty of political organization with varying opinions - some want more, some want less of this development. It's all trending towards more.

Most of the stuff being redeveloped is re-zoning to residential to something that wasn't. Pfizer for Broadway Triangle, Rheingold in the case of that project, Essex Crossing was empty lots, Pacific Park unused / commercial stuff...

I'm done replying piecemeal to someone's emotive factual errors. I sent you some links in my previous comment to explore. I don't do "Reddit" style emotive discussions.

> Essex Crossing and Atlantic Terminal are poor?

Yes? Essex Crossing is right near the LES NYCHA and was not at all a nice area until very recently. Furthermore, saying "Atlantic Terminal" is misleading -- they're not developing Fort Greene and Park Slope but that messiness up towards Fulton.

> I don't do "Reddit" style emotive discussions.

That's fine, although this is a forum for discussion. I'm not sure what you want here.

The way forward is to fix the problems, mostly corruption and might-as-well-be-corruption, that lead to NYC being the single worst place on the planet for public works projects. Not to throw up our hands and stop building.

NYC being the single worst place on the planet for public works projects.

I'm not sure what the way forward is, and I wouldn't begin to know how to fix the corruption problem. But I do know that blatant hyperbole like the above can't possibly begin to help.

No rail project anywhere has spent even close to what the MTA is spending per km on either the second avenue subway or east side access.

I suppose you could say somewhere like Syria is worse because they can't even try, but it seems a pretty defensible statement.

No rail project anywhere has spent even close to what the MTA is spending per km

Eyeballing figures for certain other modern projects in comparable cities readily indicates this simply isn't true.

Well, Van Ness as an example - couple businesses are already shutting down because you simply can't see them behind the fences. Others are doing ridiculous sales and anything they can to get noticed. I only saw 3 months ago official city signs labeling the businesses hiding behind green-tarp-covered fence.

I almost feel like it would have been better to shut down Van Ness north of city hall entirely, and leave the sidewalks wide open and unfenced. Or only allowed bus traffic.

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