
A world-famous urbanist says New York is becoming a “gated suburb” - endswapper
http://qz.com/808749/a-world-famous-urbanist-says-new-york-is-becoming-a-gated-suburb/
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JBReefer
I work as a software developer in Silicon Alley. I don't know anyone that owns
an apartment in Manhattan that paid for it with money they earned. A few paid
for apartments with family money, but the rest of us rent. My family has lived
in the city for a long, long time, and I understand this isn't a wholly new
phenomenon, but it's gotten much worse in the last 3 years.

How is this sustainable in the long term?

To make things worse, where I live in Astoria the local community board is so
obsessed with parking (we have 2 fucking subway lines, more than the Upper
East Side) that all large new buildings have underground parking, making them
dramatically more expensive. This is to "keep things affordable."

It feels so kafkaesque. I've thought about moving to Kansas City, where
they've been building like crazy and the new streetcar is very useful.

~~~
Futurebot
It's a disaster. No single factor affects people's decisions as much as the
rent in this city; lives here revolve around it, especially if you're only
making so-so money. I think about how different life here would be if
everyone's rent was only, let's say, 10% of their income (jobs, hobbies,
social lives, etc.)

The rental increase treadmill keeps turning faster and faster, and the need to
keep moving neighborhoods every few years is not a picnic.

I was born in Brooklyn and have lived in NYC my whole life, and the rental
situation just gets worse every year. Unless and until we start dealing with
the issue seriously, it's just going to keep eating more and more of people's
incomes. I wrote a post on this a while ago summarizing the issue:

[https://medium.com/@spencer_th0mas/fixing-the-nyc-rent-
crisi...](https://medium.com/@spencer_th0mas/fixing-the-nyc-rent-crisis-or-
the-rent-is-still-too-damn-high-edb13ca853cc#.mzgoimq52)

My rental history looks like this:

1995: 300/month sublet (Kensington)

1997: 625/month 1BR walkup (Brighton Beach)

1999: 675/month

2000: 1450/month 1BR walkup (Upper East Side)

2001: Above raised to 1650, moved

2002: 1125/month studio (Yorksvillle)

2009: 1175/month studio (Yorksville) - landlord wanted the apartment for a
relative, had to move

2010: 1750 1BR walkup (Lower East Side)

2011: 1800

2012: 1850

2013: 1900

2014: 1950

2015: 2000

2016: 2180

All the old apartments I lived in are now at least 400-500+ more. It's out of
control. I'm probably heading back to south BK when my lease is up; at least
studios under 1400 still exist there.

------
arcanus
> This problem is ingrained not just in New York, but a stack of “superstar”
> Western cities like London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Florida argued

I can attest that it is certainly happening in Austin, TX.

I suspect this is strongly correlated with the drop in crime in cities as
well. The very concept of “gated suburb” cities is pretty cyberpunk, imo.

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johan_larson
> If you look at what people are living in on the Upper East Side, in these
> new towers, [it’s] 3,500 square feet for a family of two, a parking spot in
> the garage or next to your unit

What the heck is he talking about? At least here in Toronto, high-rise units
tend to be small, often very small compared to suburban houses. And it's hard
to find condos with three or four bedrooms. They tend to have two at most.

3500 square feet? That's the penthouse, man. It's for the guy in the silk
ascot and velvet robe who invites his friends (who are of an age with his
daughter or granddaughter) over for a pool party.

~~~
snrplfth
Getting development permission in New York City is extremely difficult and
expensive, much more so than in Toronto. Also the level of demand is much
higher. This tends to drive developers to serve the upper end of the market
moreso than the middle. As a result, new Manhattan residential towers really
do have a remarkable amount of big luxury units. (Richard Florida would
probably know, he owns a house in Rosedale. He travels in these circles.)

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strict9
Always wanted to live in NY, but knew owning a place would be impossible (also
a developer). Chicago is probably as close as NY as I'll get, and that's fine.
Can easily afford a large SFH or two-flat (with tenant paying most of my
mortgage) with a yard. This is with a short walk to train station (less than
30 minute commute), to work in a big city with a wealth of culture and
entertainment options.

I can't find that particular combination anywhere else in the US.

~~~
Mekkanox
Washington, DC? I think though that in the surrounding metro area, a SFH costs
more on average than in Chicago.

~~~
strict9
DC would also be an excellent choice, but anecdotes seem to imply housing is
very expensive--I'll have to look more in depth.

------
snrplfth
Maybe they should allow the construction of more housing. Seems like if you
have supply problems, you should permit supply to grow.

~~~
mancerayder
It's NYC, not Houston. :-) Some considerations:

* The city's already very densely populated, increasing the density comes at the price of having to ensure the infrastructure can handle it. The most obvious is the creaking subway system, which has gotten hella overcrowded in the last few years, but you also have other infra that needs to go along with it (the type where you tear up the street and fix layers of piping, cabling, and all the rest)

* The 'not Houston' comment is partly snarky, partly to make the point that what makes New York City what it is, or Paris or London what they are, is their character and that's partially zoning and building code. I suppose you could raze all the brownstones in Brooklyn Heights and build mega apartments, but do we really want to do that?

* Politically, changing zoning is hard. Density is pushed back on by the local neighborhood. Next you have affordable housing advocates that push back against zoning, in fact in places like Bushwick, even if you include 25-30% affordable housing in a new development, you still have picketing, protests and loudspeakers. In Williamsburg, under Bloomberg there was massive rezoning that lead to the neighborhood essentially turning into an extension of Manhattan. Partly this involved rezoning light manufacturing, and allowing building by the riverfront. That said, affordable housing advocates and people in that camp decry Williamsburg as a great tragedy because the rents went up for the poorer people that were there before.

* Finally, after all I said they ARE building more housing. But they can't build housing faster than the people are moving here and also the people are making babies. People have a tendency to multiply, and the economy here has been pretty stable. 8M residents in 2000 compared to 8.5M today. The demand fills faster than the supply can keep up.

~~~
snrplfth
Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn are very densely populated, but there's a
lot more to the city than that. Huge swaths of the New York metropolitan area
are two-storey houses, and what I suggest is upgrading these to five or six
storey brownstone-style housing. Yes, infrastructure does need to be built,
but by putting more people in less space, you increase the ability of the city
to pay for infrastructure. After all, cities that are losing population (de-
densifying) generally do not find it any easier to pay for their existing
infrastructure. And if people want New York to stay just the way it is
physically, then they're going to have to stop complaining about the prices.
Increased supply or increased prices, that's the trade-off.

Yes, changing zoning is difficult, and the way Bloomberg went about it only
made it worse. Because the up-zoning (permitting more development) was limited
to a very few neighbourhoods, it meant that the new development was
concentrated there, with noticeable effects. If he'd up-zoned a wider area,
that development could have been more spread-out and less disruptive. As it
is, though, he actually down-zoned large areas of the city, often those low-
rise neighbourhoods which could have handled more density. Just as in San
Francisco, increased housing supply will in large part need to happen in the
inner and outer suburbs.

New York is building housing, but not that much:
[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nyc-
hou...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nyc-
housing.png?w=600&h=371) . Just because there's a few big noticeable towers
going up does not mean that there's a large amount of housing being built.
Also, just because supply isn't keeping up, doesn't mean it does nothing at
all. By building more housing, the increase in price is _less than it
otherwise would be._

