tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post7655009293698183294..comments2024-03-27T04:02:47.206-04:00Comments on Old Urbanist: Debating Height in Washington HeightsCharlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-86750986671971125712014-04-19T03:38:52.077-04:002014-04-19T03:38:52.077-04:00Thanks for sharing this site, it is very informati...Thanks for sharing this site, it is very informative for the business accounting. Keep on continuing with this. I also provides this service visit the site.<a href="http://rentalaccountants.co.nz/" rel="nofollow"> Rental Property Accounts</a> Rental Accountants aims to make your rental property accounting process easy, timely and above all affordable.<br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08307301450488766339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-26547365934535898012012-11-20T01:16:58.752-05:002012-11-20T01:16:58.752-05:00Property records show the British Virgin Islands-r...Property records show the British Virgin Islands-registered company Golden Map Ltd bought at least two apartments. <a href="http://www.londonrelocationservices.com/" rel="nofollow">london apartments for rent</a><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18387542742982181884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-14210245763732219092011-10-22T14:24:26.485-04:002011-10-22T14:24:26.485-04:00Andrew: thanks for the great comment! I agree with...Andrew: thanks for the great comment! I agree with most everything you've said. Having grown up in the Northeast I can attest that these issues are not confined to larger cities. Far from it: some of the wealthy and seemingly low-corruption towns of Fairfield County display the same tendencies to sometimes alarming degrees. <br /><br />A common occurrence is the zoning of an area for an unrealistic, excessively narrow or low-value use (e.g. "marine industrial") then to make developers beg and plead for variances and special use permits, which are almost entirely discretionary. This is a trap into which many an unwary but well-meaning developer has plunged, never to be heard from again.<br /><br />Alon: Given the population density of the area (one of the densest neighborhoods in the United States, it seems), and the frailty of the transportation options, I agree that other areas are probably better candidates for upzoning, at least initially. Even better, I'd suggest, would be to rezone the neighborhood to allow for office use on a wider scale, letting businesses come to the residents rather than forcing the residents to travel far south to jobs. The current zoning map is literally a "crazy quilt" of obsessive cross-hatching for the ten different commercial uses:<br /><br />http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/zone/map3a.pdfCharlie Gardnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-23328420303560214352011-10-20T23:47:22.483-04:002011-10-20T23:47:22.483-04:00The main effect of current zoning policy is, as yo...The main effect of current zoning policy is, as you and Andrew say, to empower bureaucrats and enable a game of power brokers. It's a little bit like discussing tax loopholes: yes, we all would like most of them closed (with some persistently popular exceptions, like the mortgage tax credit), but they all exist because someone put them there.<br /><br />If I were trying to densify Washington Heights, I would propose to start by uniformly upzoning the entire neighborhood by a little. Currently, the non-project buildings in Washington Heights and Inwood are usually about 6 stories; upping them to 8, and maybe 10 on Broadway and Amsterdam, is not going to result in a sea change to the neighborhood.<br /><br />The reason developers want special rules to build high-rises is that there's economy of scales to lobbying. The effort required to get politicians to approve a variance for four 200-unit buildings is much less than that required for a variance for twenty 40-unit buildings.<br /><br />That said, Washington Heights really does have a problem with transportation. The 1 is slow and the A is overcrowded; Washington Heights, and Inwood even more so, has an unusually large concentration of people with long commutes and low incomes. In light of what's happening further south, I'd propose that such upzoning be done south to north, i.e. starting from Harlem and Morningside Heights. (In terms of transportation capacity, the main long-term infrastructure problem facing the city, the best place to upzone is the South Bronx, which is eventually going to start gentrifying as the poverty donut is pushed farther out, and which has much less subway ridership today than it did fifty years ago; of course the 4/5/6 are overcrowded, but Second Avenue Subway is going to relieve them.)Alonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17267294744186811858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-18740487699728108602011-10-20T21:06:03.085-04:002011-10-20T21:06:03.085-04:00I'm new to this blog, so forgive me if I forwa...I'm new to this blog, so forgive me if I forward ideas that have been discussed before, but my best guess as to the real reasoning behind New York zoning runs as follows:<br /><br />They create laws and regulations that reflect the views currently in vogue among planners about what makes a good city (views that are nearly always wrong) but they always write them such that politicians and bureaucrats can grant exceptions because it is the right to grant exceptions that make people in government both powerful in their ability to control the lives of others and rich in their able to collect bribes. Hard and fast laws strip all real power away from the people in government who theoretically administer those laws, and people who govern the Northeast do not want that. <br /><br />There's a reason why nearly all the corruption arrests in the country come in areas where officials can grant exemptions to written legislation, not under very specific circumstances but in fuzzy instances where the official perceives that an exemption is "in the public interest." The entire political culture of New York is built around the wealth and power that "discretion" brings.<br /><br />In other words, to wonder about the ideology of public good that drives most decisions here is to miss the point. You're also missing the point if you think that any consideration for maximizing investment or otherwise benefiting the populace has anything to do with decisions about shaping the system. (The Wire has a very good illustration of how politics in the Northeast actually works.)<br /><br />Hard and fast rules, even if far more restrictive to the current rules, would indeed bring more development because they would bring certainty and create a level playing field for countless developers rather than the handful with the money to play ball in the current system.<br /><br />But it's never going to happen. New York's zoning laws have changed many times over the decades, but they've always put the power of officials so far above attracting good development but Manhattan has done nothing but lose population, through each new zoning regime, since that first law in 1916, which ranks among the city's worst mistakes ever.Andrew Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18128501258586374340noreply@blogger.com