Why it takes NYC nearly 10 years to install 500 feet of pipes

As for the steam system: it's an integral part of Manhattan's residential and commercial heating system. My understanding is that it pays for itself in charges to apartment buildings and businesses (including hospitals as mentioned), so there's no current question around its financial sustainability.

I don't think we disagree materially about the city's general lack of coordination (or demonstrated incompetence) with respect to construction. But the example in the article is a pretty bad example, all things considered.

(I'll note, however, that the comparison between NYC and European metro areas is typically faulty, for reasons that you probably already know: the Subway runs 24/7, is pathetically underfunded relative to its size, and hasn't benefited - perversely - from a reconstruction period following a global war. European metros tend to have all of these things going for them, in addition to better and less incompetent governance.)

There are already settlements in every place it makes sense to live. Any new city would have to be developed on the strength of some newly-discovered resource; what would that be, and why would you not simply expand whichever town already happens to exist nearby, instead of going to all the expense of starting from scratch?

City contracting office failed to specify the requirements correctly. In particular the curing schedule/temperature.

If this was a homeowner getting a driveway paved, it would be one thing. But a city needs to employ people who know how to write contracts. If they do not, and bad contracts are legally fulfilled, then yes I'd argue that it's entirely the city's fault.

And the contractor's unethical exploitation, of course. But that's contracts.

To your edit: I agree, and it sucks! But this is not a novel problem, and people in this business know how to get their desired results. I would argue that this kind of error does not happen accidentally.

Some of this infrastructure in NYC is old enough that there likely isn’t anyone alive who remembers what went there.

Not to mention the fact that NYC is orders of magnitude bigger than a hospital complex. Good luck finding anyone who worked on that exact section decades ago, even if they were still alive.

> Institutional knowledge is an unquantifiable asset, but it's far, far, far from zero. You lose it at your peril.

There is no possible way a city could store their institutional knowledge spanning more than a century within employees.

Institutional knowledge is how they got into this problem, not a solution.

people move all the time hen the market isn't messed up so as long as someone wants to live there you are fine. Condos change, the logisics are complex but workable if it is allowed.

Yes, that's WAS the case. Was, because it's not anymore. In usage terms, just observe a thing: you have the office and the condo (stereotypically) and well, you use the condo for less than 12h/day, and so the office, the rest of the time you keep moving around. Is that a better usage than WFH not necessary from remote? Let's say a dentist can have his/her own cabinet at the ground floor while living at the first one in a small village. Isn't that building (witch is still small and easy to evolve) much more used than the same person who live in an apartment and commute to another one in a tower?

If you really see "strong towns" explanations they tend to show "towns" who actually are old villages of small buildings, and yes they was working very well. But modern cities are not like that.

Now imaging a small or medium or large condo built in the '60s, I do not know how they was built in the US but in southern EU at that time insulation was an unknown concept, fuel was VERY cheap, summers not much hot. Things change, people have changed the windows for 1-2 glaze to 3-glase low emissive ones, some have insulated the roof and so on, but the overall benefit was VERY limited and the cost high. Single family homes was not built differently of course, but insulating them, adding rooftop p.v., a water-water heat pump for the winter and minisplit for summer is far simpler and cheaper, also rebuild the home is doable.

We can build durable homes, not the USA/JP cheap one, as we can build not durable big buildings, like most modern due to speculations, but we can't evolve the big one much and tech change fast as climate change fast so even a long lasting building is not a good thing, it can't evolve and we need to.

> Cost is almost never the limiting factor for building though. So I'm not sure it makes sense to look at it through that lens.

Really computing costs it's extremely time consuming and complex. But just try to imaging a different world in the current state of tech and climate. You can't get the numbers with such mental model, but you can get an idea.

In making sense terms: with spread homes, let's be clear not too spread, there is a small and medium player economy, giants can be only certain industries, in a dense city there is room for the service economy by the giants. You will not use Just Eat nor Uber in a spread area, you'll not buy ready made foods delivered by Amazon robots and so on. Of course you will benefit from an autonomous lawn mower robot, a home floor cleaner robot, the industrial part remain, but the service part disappear.

I've bought my car, I recharge it from my p.v. and the grid, so transportation costs are mine. Instead I do not makes some big companies profit moving me with subscription based collective transportation means, who are economically a nonsense.

Collective, improperly named public, transport was born to move workers to/from the factory and for this purpose it's very efficient, it normally run at nearly-full capacity. But a broad one is uneatable, and that's why all of them are expensive and heavy subsidized. We, the people need to move from any place to any other anytime, surely there are certain "common patterns", like the one generated by the office to/from downtown, but serving such patterns and forcing the society to follow them, forcing cities and offices for instance, means having built a big machine to move just few hours a day efficiently, while the rest of the 24h it not move or it waste energy being nearly empty. Private cars are still needed because we still need to move, bringing stuff with us and so on. It's an IMMENSE waste of resources. Instead WFH for all eligible jobs we need to move FAR LESS, and those who WFH spread enable others who can't to live spread as well and locally move at a short distance for local services and others jobs. Those who lose are Black Rock, Uber, Century 21 and so on. Not the average Joe or the society at a whole.

> utilities

They do not. Being spread means having p.v. in a large slice of the inhabited earth where p.v. make sense, this means being interested in shifting loads, typically in hours that the grid is strained, shifting them on local microgrid in self-consumption. Right now I have aircon on for the whole home (it's a new one, so all electric and very insulated) and car recharging (1.6kW absorbed) plus the basic home loads for a total of 4.3kW while from the grid I absorb 0-10W. If you tell me that large energy reseller suffer loss because of that, because they suck less money from us, yes, that's true, and that's why in many countries they try to impose laws against self-consumption or metering production to tax it. But in SOCIAL terms living spread we ease the life of the grid.

> overall environmental impact

I think you agree that a new home consume much less than an old one. Now try to imaging how we can rebuild cities to makes them all electric respecting modern low energy needs vs how we can rebuild single family homes. Imaging the environmental TCO considering that single family homes can be made in wood with small light foundations instead of consuming large quantity of steel, cement and so on. Do you imaging in not so hot climate heating in the winter from geothermal heat pumps for a city? It would generate no less earthquakes than the oil fracking... For spread homes? It have negligible impact especially if we have local energy production so we can waste it reversing the cycle in summer even if we do not need to cool the home. Do you imaging the environmental impact of a large mass of concrete, glass and asphalt of a modern city in mere terms of thermal mass exposed to the Sun light instead of the thermal mass of spread homes made in wood with p.v. on the roof NOT integrated in it (meaning there is free air underneath and they shadow the underneath roof? Do you imaging the large alteration of water cycle a big city makes tapping any source for a vast area and rejecting an immense amount of water instead tapping and rejecting locally? Did you know the fakir's carpet of nails, why it doesn't sting? It's the same principle in toxicology or the one of the concentration: dilute enough cyanide and you can drink it without being harmed. Concentrate enough and you are dead. Similarly hit the earth with sparse big nails and the earth will suffer, hit with an immense amount of nails all spread and you'll made little damage.

Really try to reason alone instead of assuming the PR you know are right. You'll came to similar conclusion.