Responding to a little New York-bashing
Joel Kotkin just wrote a blog post on New Geography explaining why today's Obama voters will eventually turn into Republicans - a subject not particularly relevant to urbanism. But a few paragraphs of...
View ArticleTwo Middle-Class(?) Neighborhoods
A few days ago, I partially responded to Joel Kotkin's defense of Sun Belt sprawl and attack on more "urban" cities like New York and Washington, arguing that the latter group of cities seem to be more...
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The Legacy of Levittown
After finishing Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights by David Kushner, I have spent the past week educating myself in the Levitt Brothers and their enormous contribution...
View ArticleThe Times' Attack on Gentrification: Sloppy, Sloppy, Sloppy
In a recent article entitled "Gentrifying Into the Shelters", the New York Times blamed homelessness on middle-class New Yorkers who dare to move into the city's poorer neighborhoods. read more
View ArticleDeBlasio's Unimpressive Housing Plan: No Substitute For The Free Market
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...
View ArticleOne reason why NYC is so expensive
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...
View ArticleNew York's problem (or more broadly, the problem of medium density)
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,...
View ArticleThe "Building Boom" Myth
One common argument against new infill development is "my city has already experienced a building boom, and rents keep going up." But in New York City, one of the nation's most expensive cities, this...
View ArticleToo Early To Declare Victory on Affordability
I just read numerous discussions about how high-cost cities really are cheaper than you might think, based on a study by New York's Citizens' Budget Commission purporting to show that when housing and...
View ArticleThe Geography of NYC's Children: More Evidence of Urban Popularity
Conventional wisdom is that making urban cores stronger and more pedestrian-friendly is irrelevant to the interests of American parents, who supposedly want to live in suburbs or faux-suburbs at the...
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