NYC Lost 100K Homes in Apartment-to-House Conversions
thecity.nyc
thecity.nyc
Like if we just built enough housing to keep studios at $1k/month and 2-bedroom places at $2k/month -- everything else would have been cheaper as well (you wouldn't need to pay cooks and wait staff $80k/year for them to afford to stay) -- it would greatly expand the 'service' industry of e.g. teachers & daycare providers since they could afford to stay.
Bringing SF's population density to that of Paris's would give you ~750k more residents. Bringing Alameda County's population density up to that of Long Island would give you ~1.5M more residents. Certainly capacity for a few million more in San Jose and the East Bay. You'd potentially run into water issues but with that population and tax base, it'd be easy math to justify a huge DeSal plant. I dunno.
Maybe one day we'll have fully automated buses without any operators at all, but for the time being my understanding is that even self-driving cars still need a tender. The kind of bus volume (and corresponding idle drivers) you'd need to make up for a train's worth of commuters probably takes a heavy cut into any operator labor savings.
I'm not aware of a city on Earth that's been able to obtain the kind of simultaneous density and livability that places like NYC have without mass transit. Comparatively dense cities without mass transit (like Manila) are choked in traffic; changing that traffic to electric traffic will make the air cleaner (good!) but will not address the latter problem.
That's mostly paying for the tunnels, not the track. It shouldn't cost nearly that much, but it's not surprising that it isn't cheap either: the tunnels are being constructed under some of the densest and most expensive real estate in the world, and the resulting stations are significantly larger than others in the system.
And note: if you think that's expensive, you won't believe what it costs to repair highways in NYC[1].
[1]: https://ny1.com/nyc/brooklyn/news/2020/02/25/city-council-fl...
Self-driving cars may make our highways more efficient, but they can't change the basic fact that a road with individual-sized cars on it carries far fewer people per square foot than mass transit does.
(And note: we currently subsidize the hell out of our road network, in a way that's far less obvious to the public mind than our comparatively light subsidization of mass transit. It remains to be seen whether the average car trip is actually net cheaper.)
I imagine that we'll always have roads, but rails systems are optional, so the cost of roads is a given. Widespread use of self-driving vehicles should dramatically reduce the amount of lanes that need to be maintained though.
I'm familiar with the arguments about rail capacity vs cars, but I live by main road and train lines. The road is in use 24 hours a day, and the rails are mainly idle. My dream scenario is self-driving vehicles become ubiquitous and we replace all commuter rails systems with foot and bike paths.
This is a measurement error: you might see 300 cars in an hour and only two trains, but those 300 cars are carrying 600 people while the trains are carrying 1500 each. The road appears busy and the rail system idle, but the exact opposite is true in terms of volume of people moved.
(It could also be true that the train system isn't well utilized in your area, but the fundamental point about scale and measurement is the same.)
As others have pointed out elsewhere in the thread, the main cost of mass transit is actually labor, not the rails (or even trains) themselves. The US is somewhat behind the times in realizing this; just about everywhere I've been in Europe has healthy mass transit systems that run cheaper and more reliably due to increased automation.
Good transit is expensive. The people who already live in the area are not willing to pay enough to justify the investment. They have already figured out their lives without the transit. If you want transit, you have to build it primarily for new residents. And the costs should be covered by increased land value, usually either by taxing the land, selling it, or developing it. Trying to cover investment costs with fares just destroys the value of the investment.
Reputation matters. Stereotypes matter.
This is very oblique. What do you mean?
Edit (meant to add): I believe these factors explain this better than simply reputation or prestige.
For fully or mostly-remote workplaces, to what extent does "economies of agglomeration" affect that company, relative to a more traditional workplace?
Also, in my experience, startups don't benefit from a plain ol' big talent pool in the same way that larger companies do. Startups require a very particular kind of talent, one whose supply is very limited no matter where you go, and doesn't correlate solely with total population. Here in the midwest, that supply seems to be directly correlated with proximity to the big engineering schools, which is why I mentioned the Big 10 (MSOE is also held in very high regard regionally, but again: prestige matters). Every Chicago startup I'm aware of has some tie to Northwestern, for example.
Density for IT is the least thing we need, communication, like classic Usenet, yes, but not physical density.
For economy in general beware: economy of scale works with a good but not too much density. If you densify too much the model collapse being unable to evolve at reasonable costs. Nowadays since we dream a near future with cars substituted by flying drones the right density is less than any modern city typical density and the right scale is being spread over vast territory.
Only few, industrial, activities demand higher density and localization.
it's ridiculous that we are still not building housing and transportation at scale. the automotive industry can churn out complete series of vintages faster than the construction industry sends an email.
housing is still this "my house my castle", which is fine until everyone starts to fight for, conquer and eventually annex the neighborhood.
the same sorry ass techniques are used to build housing as half a century ago, when total population was a billion less, when not 70% of the population lived in cities, and so on.
keeping housing density very high leaves space for other things around housing, eg. hospitals, schools, or ... ugh. parks. makes a lot of mixed development suddenly becomes economically worthwhile.
Counterintuitively the way to attack the housing crisis is to increase vacancy. 10% is a robust vacancy rate that allows the market to function. New buildings are vacant by nature, so building new buildings until the vacancy rate hits 10% is the way to go. The market will clear, rents will decline, developers will make reasonable profits for providing a needed service and landlords will get kicked in the teeth, which is right and proper.
This something, the tax rate increase, or any other way to finance this whole operation like an increase in loan risk by large builders, would probably be phenomenal enough to make it completely off putting to most workers. People are not rational long term altruist thinkers: they want the best deal possible, and it's not to make SF more affordable in 30 years by over financing house construction today before they finally die of proud exhaustion like "I contributed to cheap rents for my descendants".
I prefer natural selection: you talked of Paris, the city is half stable now. It's always been the hyper center of France, we've always had higher inflow than outflow, prices have raised slowly every year since 1800 at a higher pace than wages, and now it's going down. We're developing stuff elsewhere, not only the outskirt but other part of France entirely that people would dream to move to after a stay in Paris.
The alternative you propose is to build the city I live in now: Hong Kong. Here, since we can't escape anywhere, all we can do is build build build. Our long inflow of desperate Chinese has made construction efficient, fast and cheap enough. Price are more commensurate with wages than Paris, even if they can appear absurd to the poor people in America. But, do you want to live like me in a small 2-room flat on the 44th floor of a giant tower surrounded by other towers ? That's the future you propose, eventually. Lots of homes in the single most important city, the dream !
I like the alternative: to just jump elsewhere and start over. Let the people starve due to mortgages in California and build a new hub in Ohio or whatever, they'll figure it out eventually.
Or maybe I guess I mean: low density provide more benefit to more people than hyper density, the only future proposed by OP, will ever compensate due to "low rent" (which will explode once there's not one single meter square free left), because once you chose SF as the only IT hub that ever will be and commit for 25 years of future development, then no IT worker will ever think of any other city and will move there faster than you're building anyway. Just like Paris for French people: the only place I wanted to go after Uni was there, because that's the only place with interesting/important/paid jobs: isn't THIS the issue ?
Low density development isn't sustainable because it greatly increases transportation costs, long term maintenance costs aren't sustainable
Urban sprawl Houston style is the only way to keep costs low as you suggest, and I wouldn't want to live there.
"Costs" in Houston don't look so much better than NYC when you add the significantly higher transportation expenses to their lower rents. Also, local salaries are a third less, so you have that much less money for everything.
Forget about the housing market, take a step back for a second and try to rationalize the idea of cramming millions of people into a small area to work on their computers together? I don't think so.
Computers didn't exist when Manhattan grew, there were natural reasons for people to cluster together and live on top of eachother. Now, not so much.
Politicians like to point at foreign investment, empty houses, immigration, anything except acknowledge and fix the real problem.
May cities that pursue that strategy suffer the exodus of people, wealth, and jobs that they deserve.
Which part of "martial law" is unclear :-) The whole point is to abrogate local powers.
Maybe if Culdesac Tempe turns out to be successful someone may attempt this.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/...
Buildings have been going up pretty quickly and none of them seem particularly out of character but density will increase a ton.
More info here[0], when looking at the map the numbers next to Transit and Corridor correspond to number of stories allowed without a variance.
On the whole I think it’s a pretty reasonable plan without ending up with a skyscraper in the middle of single family housing (which we also eliminated as a zoning restriction, any property in the city can now have three dwellings on it).
[0]: https://minneapolis2040.com/implementation/built-form-regula...
They definitely should suspend permitting to expedite the process, whichever way they choose to go.
https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/hawaii-building-permit-delays...
A common belief, but throughout America the zoning regulations prevent the construction of that which already exists.
I responded with a viable alternative: free instant permit to rebuild what was there before (regardless of current zoning). You are proposing something much more radical.
I'm not opposed to doing something crazy in Lahaina like a building free for all. I'm saying don't declare it a success and start promoting it elsewhere before it is even started, let alone a proven success.
Chico’s growth is strangled by a poor economy, not by zoning. The bullet train might help with that, but people won’t invest in a poor housing market since they have better things to do with their money.
This, of course, has been disastrous for the cost of housing, which has ballooned.
https://www.thestar.com/business/despite-downtown-constructi...
- all households, all ages
- 1950 = 3.37
- 2022 = 2.50
- family households, all ages
- 1950 = 3.54
- 2022 = 3.13
(This doesn't contradict your statement; only that the city's overall growth patterns can be misleading under a single number!)
The example (17 => 1) is "not optimal", but the ability to buy two adjacent strata properties and merge them solves the "2br condo vs suburban house" problem. As in, the notion of "observed preference": that given that choice, people choose the latter, and so -- here's the fallacy -- people "want" the suburban house (and therefore that's what we should be optimizing for).
Experimentation around the 'missing middle' (condo/townhouse with SFH square-footage/room diversity) seems very much a work in progress.
The opposite process also happens, though... not just a 3- and 4-story residential buildings demolished for large residential towers (plenty of that in NYC) but single-family brownstones carved up into smaller dwelling units.
The map caption "Conversions Have Erased Some Gains in NYC's Housing Stock" would make a less deceptive headline. The map shows data from a defined timespan ("between 2010 and 2021") and shows that there's not a single community district that hasn't added housing units. The headline, meanwhile, refers to a vague "70-plus years" timeframe. That's long enough that you could probably find hundreds of buildings that have bounced between single- and multi-family several times.
And in fact the underlying research characterizes any building that was ever recorded as multifamily and currently isn't as a "loss." I fear it risks romanticizing the 20th century's cramped tenements.
(And again, just to be clear, I find conversion of viable multifamily buildings into mansions generally repugnant.)
"Take for example 34 E. 68th St. in Manhattan: The 1879 row house, located in the Upper East Side Historic District, once housed 17 separate apartments, according to property records. Now, it is a 9,600-square-foot single-family mansion after changing hands for $11.5 million in 2011 and a subsequent gut renovation."
1879 and an average of 565 sqft each. I don't think what those apartments were is what we want today.
That's ~50 m^2, pretty decent for young people (can have separate living room/bedroom/bathroom/kitchen if split properly)
So, instead of housing 17-34 young people that could contribute a lot to the area it now houses a single family.
It is reasonable trade to live affordably in a city.