MLewyn's blog

After reading yet another blog post talking about how New York is losing migrants to other cities, I had an extremely insightful date.  My date was with a woman who lived in Flatbush, at the outer, more car-oriented edge of Brooklyn.  She drives everywhere.  When I told her about my youth in Atlanta, she seemed downright envious: where I saw slavery to cars, she saw "quality of life" (English translation: cheap land). 

Randall O'Toole recently published a paper attacking rail transit, focusing in particular on four transit lines (Los Angeles' Regional Connector train, San Francisco's Third Street train, Seattle's University line, and Honolulu's new rail system).  These transit lines are essentially hybrids between light and heavy rail; that is, they use smaller light-rail-type cars but are separated from streets.  By and large, his discussion is pretty technical and I don't live in the cities he writes about, so I a

My favorite CNU 22 panel was one on street design.  The panelists (including Victor Dover and John Massengale, authors of a new book on street design) discussed a variety of walkable streets.  For me, the most memorable point was Massengale's discussion of a gigantic arterial in Barcelona; he pointed out that this seemingly very wide street accommodated pedestrians by 1) placing its slowest lanes (with on-street parking that slows down traffic) on the outside, so that at least part of the street did not have dangerously fast traffic and (2) using medians and street trees to make t

I've read numerous blog posts and articles asserting that gentrification or rich foreign investors increase housing costs by increasing demand.  But people who raise this argument aren't always sensitive to the role of supply in the law of supply and demand: for example, one  New York Times article states that increasing demand has raised rents, yet cites one housing advocate's statement that “Increasing the supply is not going to increase the number

A recent study by a Portland-are consultant and professor analyzed the rise of high-poverty neighborhoods, finding that only 105 census tracts with poverty rates over 30 percent in 1970 had poverty rates below 15 percent in 2010.  By contrast, 1231 tracts with 1970 poverty rates below 15 percent have poverty rates over 30 percent today.  (However, the study does not address the location of either group of tracts- that is, to what extent the gentrifying tracts are urban, and to what ex

One of my favorite political slogans (more because of its catchiness than because of its wisdom)* is "If You Don't Want An Abortion, Don't Have One." 

It occurs to me that this slogan would be quite appropriately adapted to an urbanist context.  In response to NIMBY attacks on compact development, one might create bumperstickers with slogans like:

"If You Don't Want An Apartment, Don't Live In One."

"If You Don't Want A Small House, Don't Buy One."

I recently discovered a fun tool: the Census Bureau's Census Explorer, which is full of maps about all kinds of things.  In particular, I spent some time exploring commute length.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of renter-occupied housing units in New York increased by only 1.8 percent, while the number of households increased by 2.9 percent.  I would imagine that if you add that to the increased demand arising from the post-recession difficulty of financing a home, you should have expected zooming rents, which is of course exactly what New York has.

New York's new mayor, Bill DeBlasio, has just proposed to spend $8 billion in taxpayers' money to create 80,000 new housing units.  80,000 is certainly better than nothing.

On the other hand, New York has 3 million occupied housing units today, so even if the DeBlasio plan works, the city's housing supply will increase by a grand total of 2.7 percent over the next decade- barely enough to keep up with population.

One common (if vague) argument against upzoning and infill development is that infrastructure in place X (wherever the proposed development is) will somehow be overwhelmed by more important.  When I see this argument I want to ask:

1.  What infastructure are you talking about?

2.  How is it currently inadequate in place X?

3.  If you don't want more people to live and work in place X where do you want them to live and work instead?