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Comment by patrickthebold | Hacker News Reader

The article is about Manhattan. Do you have any idea if it has similar problems? In my mind, Manhattan is pretty dense.

The high prices in Manhattan are caused by the low supply of other Manhattan-like density and public transit capable cities in the US.

Manhattan is expensive because rich people want to live there. Brooklyn and Queens and Harlem have density and transit but cost less.

Transit in Brooklyn and Queens is much worse than Manhattan.

See my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32098815

I am obviously less informed on Manhattan shenanigans, but enough to know that there's plenty of obstacles to new construction in NYC and Manhattan proper.

I recall AOC lobbying for stopping an apartment complex in a formerly industrial area. And a articles on how certain areas of Manhattan don't allow towers. In fact, a quick look at the zoning map [0] has, eg, large areas zoned as "R8B contextual districts are designed to preserve the character and scale of taller rowhouse neighborhoods".

SF is the worst offender, but NYC is still pretty bad.

[0] https://zola.planning.nyc.gov

> In my mind, Manhattan is pretty dense.

It can be doing so much better. I get a tad excited reading about 1,000ft supertall's being built, only to sigh when I see it will have a whopping 80 units. I've seen even more ridiculous stuff like a 10 story building with 4 units. There's been a ton of construction in NYC over the last 5 years alone but it seems to be mostly luxury and medium/low density. There are plenty of older buildings from the 20th century that are much denser but it seems that no one wants to build these anymore. (Or they can't, I'm not sure which).

Exactly. Libertarians in here love to say it's a lack of supply and it's simple supply and demand and you look at what's being built and it's 1000ft tall buildings with a tiny number of luxury units.

In the 1990s, the US restricted the number of car imports from Japan. As a result, Toyota and Nissan had car quotas. They had luxury cars and mass-market cars. Which do you think they filled their quota with first? Obviously the higher-margin luxury cars. Clearly the problem is not a simple lack of supply, right? Toyota and Nissan just need to make more affordable cars? Or is it obvious that when you restrict supply in a market, only the highest-margin (luxury) goods get produced, until demand for them is met and manufacturers are forced to produce and sell lower-margin mass-market (more affordable) goods?

More than 40% of the building square footage in Manhattan would be literally illegal to build today.[1] Developers would absolutely love to build huge skyscrapers housing thousands. However the city has zoning rules with onerous setbacks, height and density restrictions. The focus on ultra luxury development is a byproduct of heavy handed government regulation.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

It's more dense than other cities, but there's still a few problems. There was a huge controversy when the city tried to upzone SoHo/NoHo.

Additionally, the other boroughs aren't super dense. For example, much of the land next to LIRR is pretty low density, and even SFH [0]. Some people in Manhattan would be okay living there, so that does lead to higher rents in Manhattan.

0 - https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/06/113861-new-york-time...

Looks like lots of space right here tbh:

https://i.imgur.com/tVwMCYG.jpeg

Manhattan is 25% less dense than it was in 1910. The densest census tract in Manhattan is four times denser than borough average. We could easily double the population of the island, even without getting into ultra tall skyscrapers or reclaiming more land.

I live in East Village right on the border with the LES. There's certainly development happening and new buildings coming up but when I walk around EV/LES it sometimes feels like I see more 2-3 story buildings than otherwise. There's literally no reason any of these buildings should be under 6 stories minimum. People think of Manhattan as being dense with a bunch of skyscrapers but I suspect in reality there's still a whole lot of units that could be added by simply building upwards.

I say 6 stories because you can reasonably have a 6-story walkup. Anything higher and you would need to add an elevator which could make things harder.

In my mind it is the same problem everywhere. Supply is too low and is kept low for many reasons. There is insane demand from around the world to live in Manhattan.

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