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When did New York start building slowly?

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Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#231

Post by Retric »

Symbiote wrote: post #228
Retric wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you getting those numbers? The original line M1 is 13.9 km. The total length of all lines adds up to 20.4 km counting the shared 7.7km section used by M1, and M2 once. “The metro consists of four lines, M1, M2, M3 and M4. M1 and M2 share a common 7.69-kilometre (4.78 mi) section from Vanløse to Christianshavn,[3] where they split along two lines: M1 follows the Ørestad Line to Vestamager, while M2 follows the…

I read the first line of the second paragraph ("The original 20.4-kilometre (12.7 mi) system opened in October 2002") and the "System length: 38.2km (23.7mi)" bit from the infobox. The paragraph you quoted mixes up the situation from before M3/M4 opened with the situation after. I also see where you have taken 13.9km for M1, but on M1's own article page it says 14.3km. Danish Wikipedia gives different figures again.…

Got it, that paragraph is talking about just the M1 and M2 lines even though it starts by mentioning all 4.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#232

Post by eru »

edgyquant wrote: post #215
eru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, [...] It's a bit more complicated. Colonials paid lower taxes than people back in England, too. See also https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html > His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fig…

This seems like a pretty irrelevant derail of the GPs point, no? Regardless the revolution was about their rights as Englishmen being infringed upon, not the amount of taxes paid.

Ostensibly the criminal revolt against the rightful authority of the crown was about rights and stuff.

I don't think we should necessarily take traitors at their word.

(Especially when they talk a big talk about freedom and mankind, but keep slaves.)

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#233

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr »

cyberax wrote: post #218
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tightening of the rules to what, precisely ? "Nope, sorry, your company's locating here would push downtown density past the limit, you should find a greenfield site on the edge of town and build something new there" ???

Yup. Exactly that. A hard limit on the amount of office space per square mile. You simply can not build any more offices. The market forces then will take care of distributing the office space accordingly. If you absolutely NEED to have an office in The Downtown, then you will just have to pay $$$$$$$$$. Otherwise you'll have to rent an office in a nearby suburbian village center. Kind of like we did cap-and-trade fo…

Why would a city do that? To make you personally feel better?

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#234

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr »

cyberax wrote: post #225
JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choice of metrics is so nonsensical it can only be bad faith. For the other readers, I'll submit some more relevant questions. NYC subway is more expensive per meter? No shit. What's the ROI? How many passengers per day? What do you think are the economic payoffs for those investments ? What survey showed 80% of respondents preferring suburbs? A suburb versus what ? What kind of respondents do you think they got…

> NYC subway is more expensive per meter? No shit. What's the ROI? How many passengers per day? What do you think are the economic payoffs for those investments? I don't think infrastructure in NYC is cost-effective. For that matter, infrastructure in Seattle (where I live now) is not cost effective. Its ROI is in fact negative, as it forces further unsustainable agglomeration of wealth in a small area, while starvin…

For anyone reading my response to this incredibly bad faith commenter, note:

- that his own linked survey shows 46% preferring suburbs, not 80%

- that "it forces further unsustainable agglomeration of wealth in a small area" would suggest a very high ROI, actually (and "forces" is an interesting word choice vs "attracts")

- this Lafayette case study shows exactly how denser areas pay for themselves in tax revenue, and how the surrounding ones don't [0]

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#235

Post by MountainHoliday »

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #183
wongarsu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, in situations where a bad roll of the monarchy dice isn't a big deal because people can just leave, dictatorship tends to become the preferred form of government. See for example open source projects with their BDFL; if you have a bad BDFL the project gets forked with new leadership. Another example are small to medium sized businesses, where customers and employees can just go elsewhere if the CEO tur…

I saw this effect directly in Eve Online. In the early days there was a lot of experimenting with how exactly to organize these large groups of players. Some groups tried democracy of some flavor or another, others dictatorship. Dictatorship easily won out in the end. Most "dictators" in Eve actually end up being pretty good at their job, because it is a cutthroat market, and the most precious currency is players wil…

These systems only work with freedom of movement. You get global rules and law that'll remove any correcting mechanism

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#236

Post by MountainHoliday »

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…

Large government is just another form of monopoly control corruption

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#237

Post by 29athrowaway »

HNDen21 wrote: post #175
29athrowaway wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Modern art museums are disappointing, most of it lacks enough merit to be in an exposition.

Concerts are an excellent way to lose your hearing.

Restaurants are enjoyable but they will drain you economically.

Spectator sports are a great way to get fat while watching someone else doing sports.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#238

Post by telotortium »

JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #233
cyberax wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Exactly that. A hard limit on the amount of office space per square mile. You simply can not build any more offices. The market forces then will take care of distributing the office space accordingly. If you absolutely NEED to have an office in The Downtown, then you will just have to pay $$$$$$$$$. Otherwise you'll have to rent an office in a nearby suburbian village center. Kind of like we did cap-and-trade fo…

Why would a city do that? To make you personally feel better?

Maybe to ensure that the country is evenly developed, which would make housing more affordable across the entire country. The US is not even that bad - unlike many other countries, it doesn't have a true primate city[1] on a national level. I'm thinking of places like England, where the privileged areas of London (and the Home Counties), Oxford, and Cambridge are the only place to earn a decent salary, but have extortionate housing costs, while the rest of the country has much lower housing costs but such lower wages that people are pushed to migrate into the privileged areas, pushing housing costs there even higher. Densifying the cities would help to some extent, but construction tends to cost a lot more in these cities, and not entirely due to zoning, planning permissions, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#239

Post by EntrePrescott »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #211
EntrePrescott wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Moscow metro is not just for vanity - the nomenklatura don't take the metro, the people in squalor do... That's like saying the vanity construction projects of Roman emperors weren't for vanity because they were used more by the plebs than by the nomenklatura. Which group uses it most has absolutely nothing to do with what makes a vanity project. Quite to the contrary, the criterion for a vanity project is that…

Doesn't that reinforce the parents' point that even a country with 1/10th the GDP and 10x more corruption, still manages to complete their subway projects 10x quicker at 1/10th the cost? I don't think the explanation is that Russians are 10000x smarter than Americans, so it must be some environmental/organizational difference.

> Doesn't that reinforce the parents' point that (…)

I don't see how it would. The reasons why a country with 1/10th the GDP and 10x more corruption still manages to complete their subway projects 10x quicker at 1/10th the cost is totally orthogonal to whether it's a vanity project or not, or with which group will use it most.

> it must be some environmental/organizational difference.

indeed, it very much is. And for that matter: a construction project ordered by an autocratic dictator in a corrupt second-world country has inherently a much higher probability of being finished in time and within budget than a nominally comparable project in a democratic first world country. It may later turn out to be of totally shitty quality or cause lots of other problems (e.g. safety, environmental, etc) because quality and other standards were sacrificed to the priority of meeting the will of the dictator/party, but when a totalitarian ruler gives an order, people feel they better comply quickly.

A totalitarian state that doesn't give a shit about your rights, the environment etc, can more easily just evacuate or disown everyone who lived in the planned line or area, whereas in a first-world democratic country the construction will be hindered by lawsuits (both for their legitimate right and for nimbyism, particular interests etc). Same for the environment: In Germany, these days, there's almost no large-scale construction project that isn't severely slowed down by activists because (true or false) the project is suspected to harm the habitat of some rare protected species. It drags through the courts, Experts have to evaluate the situation, solutions may have to be found (sometimes very costly), etc.

In a totalitarian country, all of that doesn't exist. The environment is just totally meaningless compared to the will of the dictator or party. Finally, it's not just the rights, legal, environmental and social standards that are much more complicated (and in consequence, costly and slowing things down) in developed democratic countries, but pretty much all standards, including for everything related to the building project. So yeah, a totalitarian state is total shite, but its leadership has waaay fewer obstacles to getting their construction project done in time and within budget.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#240

Post by skissane »

acdha wrote: post #210
Retric wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

We’re talking about infrastructure projects, which tend to be harder because they have more shared points of contention – e.g. the one rayiner mentioned was repeatedly held up by questions like whether homeowners who’d illegally fenced public land into their backyards had some right to keep it, which had to be fought up to the highest court in the state. The NIMBYs also tried things like claiming that it was uniquely…

I wonder to what extent this is due to unique features of the US political system, which most other Western countries lack. One is that local governments are much more numerous and powerful in the US, while in most other Western countries they are fewer and less powerful, with many issues dealt locally in the US instead being centralised in state/provincial or even national agencies. Another is that having a presidential rather than parliamentary system (at both the state and federal level) tends to make the executive weaker, and the legislature and executive tend to have a more disjointed/competitive rather than cooperative relationship. Yet another is a very hard two party system combined with very weak party discipline within both parties, which the existence of primaries arguably contributes to. Is it plausible that some of these distinctives could make the US a much more difficult political environment in which to successfully pull off major infrastructure projects?
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