People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

It would be sad to lose the picturesque brownstone blocks in Brooklyn, but we should realize that there are costs associated with keeping them - and those costs are paid for by higher rents on everyone, not just people who live on those blocks.

there's basically SO MUCH room for SO MUCH development even if you don't want to knock down old buildings. and sometimes the old buildings provide effectively higher density than some newer developments.

xpost again

philadelphia has a lot of brownstones and rowhouses, all heartsad brooklynites can come down there to visit when they get tired of their new affordable dense housing (this being after we raze all of brooklyn)

offset the costs by megadevelopment in underdeveloped areas?

basically I just don't think that, say, williamsburg or prospect heights or whatever is some sort of calamity of low density living that it is what we're talking about in NYC when we talk about the possibility of upping density

chinatown otm the idea that building up nyc depends on tearing down brownstones is concern trolling. there are plenty of non-historic lowish density areas in nyc, plenty of parking lots, plenty of completely empty space even.

I'm not gonna let go of my old buildings

Well, it's not just the brownstones but the people who live in the brownstones and don't want to live next door to a high-rise apartment tower.

build like crazy in gowanus. no restrictions. line the waterfront of the east river with ridiculous high rises.

fill in the empty spots in brownstone neighborhoods with high rises.

also rents are cheap(er) still the further out you get. not that i'm encouraging a huge swarm of people to descend like locusts on outer queens or the mid-bronx or what-have-you, but i just have a feeling that the main sort of complaint is that it is hard to get a nice condo in walking distance of like yr. favorite brunch spot or w/e.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGwsA1V2r4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnyside_Yard

3 minute train ride to manhattan from here. can be built over.

so much underused land in the whole bedford/nostrand strip of bed stuy (by the home depot) fill it with big apartments!

also rents are cheap(er) still the further out you get. not that i'm encouraging a huge swarm of people to descend like locusts on outer queens or the mid-bronx or what-have-you, but i just have a feeling that the main sort of complaint is that it is hard to get a nice condo in walking distance of like yr. favorite brunch spot or w/e.

the solution to gentrification is gentrification?

prospect heights is a "brownstone" neighborhood that has tons of space--blocks and blocks--that should be developed. i mean if i walk btw washington and flatbush basically anywhere north of st marks its all empty lots, parking garages, warehouses, auto shops

look at all the room around the armory! and atlantic avenue, there's a street that can lose a few lanes right?

yo and eastern parkway while were at it

ps 20th century nyc 'urban renewal' was pro-car, gov't planned construction, mostly resulted in the tearing down of very high-density neighborhoods.

xps

the solution to gentrification is gentrification?

No, but the solution to lots of people complaining about rent is to sort of point out that there are other places to live besides like four neighborhoods in brooklyn. Basically my problem, I think, is this sense that people want to have gentrification but not pay for it. But basically if you want to live in a special awesome neighborhood with organic biscuits made from locally sourced buttermilk and magic fairie tears or whatever then expect to pay, since god knows you're driving up prices for everyone else already. Like you can't (deliberately or otherwise) price the poors out of the neighborhood and complain when the rent has gone up!

I kind of like eastern parkway actually. we could just make it a real 'park' way instead maybe? the real villain is empire boulevard. man if you wanna see some wasted space...

No, but the solution to lots of people complaining about rent is to sort of point out that there are other places to live besides like four neighborhoods in brooklyn. Basically my problem, I think, is this sense that people want to have gentrification but not pay for it. But basically if you want to live in a special awesome neighborhood with organic biscuits made from locally sourced buttermilk and magic fairie tears or whatever then expect to pay, since god knows you're driving up prices for everyone else already. Like you can't (deliberately or otherwise) price the poors out of the neighborhood and complain when the rent has gone up!

people live in those four neighborhoods in brooklyn because every single neighborhood in manhattan is nowtoo expensive. if you want to live in a special awesome neighborhood with organic biscuits you can do that in queens too, which is part of the reason my rent went up a week ago. people are more than willing to move to far out parts of brooklyn, it's already happening, it's going to continue happening. 'people should stop complaining and move' isn't a solution, it's why rent will continue to get expensive until we allow nyc construction match the demand.

*to match the demand

Like you can't (deliberately or otherwise) price the poors out of the neighborhood and complain when the rent has gone up!

This seems to have the argument totally backwards. Deregulation would lower rents not raise them. Zoning restrictions and affordable housing are two different things. You can have expensive apartments in low-rise buildings and cheap apartments in high-rise buildings.

"people want to have gentrification but not pay for it" sort of?
"gentrification" in this case will mean the ability to live in the city and reap the benefits, and "not pay for it" would mean not pay *as much* for it. in theory removing a lot of development restrictions could help make this possible. high rent in nyc is pretty on-point because there aren't many places to live, but that doesn't have to be the case.
the argument is that there is a benefit to the greater good of having more people live in the city, and that this can be done, and it can be done more affordably. the fairy tear biscuits are a side-benefit.

and as o. nate points out, the idea is to lower rent across the board by deregulating. so in theory poor people wouldn't need to be priced of something that exists in abundance.

"people want to have gentrification but not pay for it" is a contradiction in terms. gentrification the result of people moving somewhere cheap.

eh brownstones are not so low density that it's a disaster. it's more of a disaster that there are still poorly developed pockets, lots, streets, parking lots, ex-factories, around them, and that when you want to replace, say, a parking lot off 4th Ave. in Brooklyn with a new high rise, you're limited in how high it can be. same as upthread, I don't think we have to lose our beloved brownstones to still increase overall density.

xpost

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Monday, 12 March 2012 20:07 (31 minutes ago) Permalink

Pretty sure this literally isn't true anymore in re 4th Ave., which was upzoned. I mean I don't know I guess there's still some limit it's just higher now?

http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/06/22/rezoning-to-encourage-street-life-on-brooklyns-fourth-avenue/

it's never going to be nice as a 6 lane st tho

well there's still a lot of unimpressive development along there. another zone with a home depot accompanied by empty lots if I'm remembering right

Deregulation would lower rents not raise them.

If by deregulation, you mean losing rent-control, the opposite seems to have happened in Boston, where rents got expensive quickly after rent controll was ditched and lots of people got priced out. If by deregulation, you mean changing zoning to encourage higher density development, maybe?

the second one

well, rent control is less important when the market can actually build high density housing and in any case it's not the best way to help poor people afford rent

strictly speaking, that is reregulation and not deregulation isn't it? deregulation implies "remove all restrictions and let ppl use the land as they see fit" which may or may not align with building housing

http://www.baycitizen.org/columns/scott-james/how-rent-control-subsidizes-super-rich/

it is removing regulation that prevents building above a certain height, certain density, etc.

I don't even know if there's hard evidence that NYC or SF zoning is the primary reason (or even a major reason) for the high prices of housing. I do know that MY's thesis sounds basically like a libertarian-lite "unleash the power of the market" watered down manhattan/cato institute screed.

also "gentrification the result of people moving somewhere cheap" is a weird thing to say. people moved somewhere cheap to begin with, and it stayed cheap! then other people moved "somewhere cheap" and it didn't. so there's obviously a bit more going on.

oh yeah, found this which I thought was a sort of interesting read: http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/some-critical-thoughts-on-the-rent-is-too-damn-high/

I don't even know if there's hard evidence that NYC or SF zoning is the primary reason (or even a major reason) for the high prices of housing.

I have to go. but yes. there is.

http://en.citizendium.org/images/thumb/d/de/Supply_Demand.jpg/300px-Supply_Demand.jpg

haha thank you for that. a line is the most bestest kind of hard evidence!

and there are a few lines in that picture even!

where do u think prices come from

god?

that was facile even for you, iatee

sterl: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/files/Manhattan.pdf haven't read this entire thing yet but this seems to be the theory being advanced

is it really that facile? shouldnt the burden be on sterling to prove why the basic rules of supply and demand dont apply in this instance?

the same 5 seconds it took to find a generic supply/demand graph led to a Harvard paper about this exact specific conversation

my bad. clearly INVISIBL HAND is hard evidence.

(but seriously I meant to ask: on what basis can you conclude that zoning restrictions seriously restrict supply?)

I coulda found a supply/demand graph w/ the harvard logo on it if it would convince you more dan

zoning restrictions by definition restrict supply!

you don't need a long harvard paper to understand this stuff

dan: that's a manhattan institute paper -- i think i googled up another already. i don't trust those guys very much, although to be fair they wear their agenda on their sleeves. also that particular paper is just about manhattan, while I think we're really discussing brooklyn & the bronx & such.

iatee: how many zoning restrictions? how much do they restrict supply? is there a model that i stand a chance of believing that can estimate what would happen to new housing construction w/o such restrictions? also what restrictions are we talking about here? how many are just nimby stuff and how many are arguably for some more real purpose?