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When did New York start building slowly?

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Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#171

Post by moduspol »

Arainach wrote: post #6

Speed is affected by process, and process evolves in reaction to abuse. In the beginning, it's quick to do everything, but as people take advantage - routing contracts to friends, taking safety shortcuts - rules get put into place and those rules affect the time to complete. For New York specifically there's another factor that it's strange the article omitted: Robert Moses. Prior to the mid-1960s, it was fairly simp…

> It's easy to criticize process, but many of the rules were written in blood with the best of intentions.

Respectfully, we already know this part. It's at the top of every single thread like this.

The more important questions are:

* Are all of these rules still necessary?

* Are any of these rules more obstructive than beneficial?

* Could any of these rules be refactored for a better benefit to obstruction ratio?

The problem will not be solved as long as every time it's discussed, it becomes a "should we have any rules or no rules at all" discussion. We know the vast majority were put in place because something prompted them. What's less discussed is how to fix it, or at least stop making it worse.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#172

Post by drchickensalad »

29athrowaway wrote: post #68
pzone wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s the best city in the United States

In terms of what? traffic? air quality? schools? crime rates? housing? Exactly how is it a good place to live? Probably when Frank Sinatra was alive but certainly not now. What can you get in New York that you cannot get somewhere else?

There is the widest variety of deep cultural experiences, events, and food next door to you than anywhere else in the world. You never have a reason to drive, but are still in the US; no traffic jam, instead reading hacker news on a relaxing subway ride or walk into work. Retail businesses are no bullshit fast and efficient. Every type of job opportunity surrounds you. It's the safest comparable city in the US.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#173

Post by AnimalMuppet »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #131
nicbou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

The key is having an accountable "dictator". There are two interpretations to democracy: you can emphasize "representation", and parliamentary system, or you can emphasize "accountability" and singular leaders. The idea being, if you rolled the dictatorship dice badly, you minimize damage and reroll it. The U.S. was clearly designed with the second interpretation in mind. The revolution was a result of taxation by th…

The US design was a bit more than that. It was designed, first, so that the entire system had strictly limited power. Second, it was designed so that within the system, there was nobody who had power that someone else could not block. It was very much not a "dictator" design.

For example, the President could appoint the cabinet and judges, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could negotiate treaties, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could veto a bill, but Congress can override it. And so on, and so on. That's not a dictator.

The president has been moving closer and closer to a dictator, though, because Congress has become more and more useless. They have become so tied up in political trench warfare that they can't actually govern. They often can't even pass a budget, which is their most basic job. So the president rules more and more by executive order, which is very much not the way the system was supposed to work.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#174

Post by culturestate »

smelendez wrote: post #91
Arrath wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh definitely checking this out. Thanks for the recommendation!

Also known for his extraordinarily well researched, multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson. He’s sort of the Don Knuth of US political biography.

> He’s sort of the Don Knuth of US political biography.

Who's Chernow in this scenario? Maybe Ron Rivest?

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#175

Post by HNDen21 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #68
pzone wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s the best city in the United States

In terms of what? traffic? air quality? schools? crime rates? housing? Exactly how is it a good place to live? Probably when Frank Sinatra was alive but certainly not now. What can you get in New York that you cannot get somewhere else?

I used to live in NYC, here are a few that come to mind...

Art/museums... top notch collections

Restaurants... you can find any type of food here

Sports.. I used to go to the US Open tennis every year... then there is football, baseball, MLS soccer.. all of these are within 1 hour

Sit down at a restaurant table on a sidewalk and just people watch

Broadway shows

Concerts

Beaches are close by

Hunter mountain for skiing is not too far

3 airports that have flight going everywhere

Those are just a few........

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#176

Post by bumby »

ryan93 wrote: post #32
bumby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the Times identified three culprits (unions, construction companies, and consulting firms) but you only focused on one.

If you read the article you would see that the unions are the ones demanding a much larger than necessary number of employees. The unions are the political road block to change.

You mean the same article that said this:

>Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say. ... Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend an unusual amount on design and management, statistics indicate.

or this:

>"Worker wages and labor conditions are determined through negotiations between the unions and the companies, none of whom have any incentive to control costs."

All they say is that the reason starts with the number of people employed. If you continued reading past that point, they talk about other non-union incentives that drive up costs, like:

>Critics pointed out that construction companies actually have an incentive to maximize costs — they earn a percentage of the project’s costs as profit, so the higher the cost, the bigger their profit.

They also talk about the "soft costs" of NYC construction, like:

>The project plan called for the hiring of 500 consultants from a dozen different companies

And of course bureaucracy:

>Officials have added to the soft costs by struggling to coordinate between vendors, taking a long time to approve plans, insisting on extravagant station designs and changing their minds midway through projects.

So while we can probably agree that unions are part of the problem, it's disingenuous to act like they are the whole problem.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#178

Post by Uvix »

eru wrote: post #142
katbyte wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When each level of company extracts it’s profit, and is doing what it can to maximize profit, it’s not surprising what the end result is. Cities used to/should have public works departments. Not hire a contractor who hires a paver who rents the machinery to fix a pothole. The city should just own it all and hire someone as it will forever need to fix potholes.

They could also privatise the streets instead.

That’s pretty common in suburbs - cities own the main roads, HOAs own the side streets and are responsible for repairs, plowing, trash pickup, etc.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#179

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

drchickensalad wrote: post #167
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan (Tokyo, at least), is crazy fast. I remember staying at the Shinagawa Prince, three years in a row, and it overlooks that big-ass office park, on the other side of the station. One year, I look out, and there’s a huge empty lot. The next year, there’s a steel frame, for several buildings. The next year, the lights are on, and the buildings are obviously occupied. Also, their standards are very high. They weathe…

Tokyo standards for residential are legendarily low. People demolish and rebuild when they buy a home because nothing is built to last even a moderate amount of time.

I have heard that. I didn't spend much time in homes. I was in offices and factories, and they were robust as hell. My company's original factory was built after WWI, and may have just been knocked down, a few years ago (it may still be standing -they sold it).

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#180

Post by Retric »

acdha wrote: post #160
Retric wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copenhagen is in Denmark how does that say anything about Italy? Anyway, European countries have plenty of boondoggles. Germany’s Berlin Brandenburg Airport was a 30 year project requiring multiple legal battles etc. construction took 11 years where the initial €2.83 billion budget over ran to €6.5 billion due to massive design flaws, construction issues, poor management, multiple lawsuits etc. Asia has similar issue…

I’m pretty sure he’s aware of which country Copenhagen is in but was simply pointing out as an example a much harder large, complex project in a dense urban environment built in far less time. The key thing to understand is that while other countries have some boondoggles, the United States does almost nothing else despite spending massive amounts of money. The Purple Line mentioned was ostensibly going to be cheaper…

US does plenty of large construction projects without major issue.

One World Trade Center a public/private partnership started construction April 27, 2006 and opened on November 3, 2014 at the cost of 3.9 billion. Which is easily in line with similar projects around the world, even though it was much slower than such projects back in the 1920’s.

It’s a more complicated building than those 1920’s designs booth from modern standards + features like AC, but also because it was designed to survive an attack.

PS: The Copenhagen Metro has been a 28+ year project that’s gone well but it’s hardly that amazing on its own. Planning began in 1992, the first construction started in 1996, first line opened in 2002 and the project is still continuing with only 12.7 miles in operation. By comparison the DC metro system is currently 129 miles long of which about 50 miles are underground with construction starting in December 9, 1969 and the first 4.6 mile segment opening in March 27, 1976.

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