The only way to fix the crazy housing market of NYC is to make more places like NYC. As long as NYC remains a completely unique singular jewel of successful urban living while the rest of the country embraces suburban sprawl and terrible transit, NYC will remain almost comedically expensive.
David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
31–40 of 91 posts
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#32i've been a fan of david byrne for some time and so i may be a bit biased in saying that i think he is spot on.
as an artist myself, it's refreshing to hear someone who has 'made it' be honest and authentic in his representation of struggling as an artist. it's comforting as well that he isn't disillusioned about his success, his talent, the luck, the struggles. and he wants to use his success to help the current/next generation of artists and creatives get a foothold in the city? cheers to him!
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#33I have a book of jokes from the 1970's. One of the jokes is "if it weren't for the muggings, there would be no human contact in New York." I remember reading it recently and finding it so anachronistic. The idea of getting mugged in Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn seems so alien to me today (though I remember as a visitor in the early 1990's the same areas seemed quite post-apocalyptic). My point is... take off the r…
If we're talking personal anecdotes, I live in Brooklyn and know three people who have been mugged in Brooklyn or Manhattan within the last five years. I've never personally felt unsafe anywhere I go in Brooklyn at any time of the day/night, but my female friends do not share the same feelings. For them, walking alone at night in areas of Crown Heights or Bedstuy is not the best idea.
yep. first weekend of a friend moving to brooklyn, just outside williamsburg, my friend was mugged at knifepoint on the train. shitty things still happen :/
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what Toronto is trying to do by subsidizing housing in metropolitan area. People maybe inclined to argue against subsidizing more expensive housing in downtown areas, but the cost of commuting from lower income outer areas actually increases pollution, and traffic costs. It also breaks the poverty cycle by preventing geographic and possibly cultural segregation of the lower income families.
Toronto has a really interesting problem to solve. 1/6 of the entire population of Canada lives in the GTA. That's simply stunning to me, especially since having spent a great deal of time up there, it doesn't feel that dense to me. Honestly though, Toronto needs housing in the downtown areas. I haven't been there in 7-8 years but other than tourists and shopping, the streets around the business districts felt pretty…
The problem is that the GTA sports some of the worst urban planning on the continent. The simple fact is that while Downtown Toronto is wonderful, there just isn't enough Downtown Toronto to go around and you quickly get into inefficient sprawl. And then it's an ocean of Mississaugaism for 50km in every direction.
It's gotten bad enough that poor artsy Torontonians have started moving here to Hamilton. They're so desperate for dense vibrant city living they can actually afford that they come here.
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quote from the article: "I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's…
What he fails to raelize is that the drop in crime is the result of the "Disney-ization" of New York City. All that "1%" money has been funneled into policing, redevelopment, etc. Contrast: Philadelphia. In the 1970's, New York and Philadelphia were pretty similar. But New York was fortunate to be host to the financial boom of the 1980's, 1990's, and early 2000's, while Philadelphia saw its core industries continue t…
Not all that 1% money. But some of it.
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#36I think New York should welcome the uber-rich with open arms. NY's history is all about 1%ers, like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Bloomberg.
But what is deleterious to the feel of the city, in my view, is the Dubai-ization of the real-estate market. Entire buildings are empty. Apparently the global elite buy and sell New York real-estate like they do oil futures: not to use but as an investment. These folks aren't citizens, like the Billionaires I mentioned above, but transients.
The New York Times had a good article on these empty buildings earlier this year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/nyregion/paying-top-dollar...
> “I was living on the 16th floor, and I was pretty much the only one there,” said Charlie Attias, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group who rented an apartment at the Plaza for three years and has handled many transactions in the building. “We had the occasional visitor — I mean, the occasional owner — once in a while. Actually, when we saw somebody, it was a big thing,” he added. “Oh wow, somebody’s in my hallway!”
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#37I have a book of jokes from the 1970's. One of the jokes is "if it weren't for the muggings, there would be no human contact in New York." I remember reading it recently and finding it so anachronistic. The idea of getting mugged in Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn seems so alien to me today (though I remember as a visitor in the early 1990's the same areas seemed quite post-apocalyptic). My point is... take off the r…
"...The idea of getting mugged in Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn seems so alien to me today..."
???
Do you live in the City?
Because I know at least 2 people who have been mugged. In Brooklyn.
[Edit]:These muggings occurred over the course of the last year.
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#38The only way to fix the crazy housing market of NYC is to make more places like NYC. As long as NYC remains a completely unique singular jewel of successful urban living while the rest of the country embraces suburban sprawl and terrible transit, NYC will remain almost comedically expensive.
Causing a problem to spread to more areas so the original area's problem isn't as bad relatively isn't a solution.
That's madness.
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quote from the article: "I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's…
What he fails to raelize is that the drop in crime is the result of the "Disney-ization" of New York City. All that "1%" money has been funneled into policing, redevelopment, etc. Contrast: Philadelphia. In the 1970's, New York and Philadelphia were pretty similar. But New York was fortunate to be host to the financial boom of the 1980's, 1990's, and early 2000's, while Philadelphia saw its core industries continue t…
Philly is way better than it use to be, it just hasn't improved nearly as rapidly or dramatically as NYC has. The blight of urban decay is being pushed back, but that push isn't driven so much by the ultra-rich as it is by college kids and yuppies getting a tad more 'adventurous' in where they live. (I think the effect of universities and their students is most noticeably around Temple in north Philly, though I would still refuse to live there.)
The result is that you don't get articles like this one complaining about rich people (since they basically just aren't there, compared to NYC) but renewal is taking much longer as well. No rich people means that a student can afford to live anywhere in that city that they want, but they are more likely to be killed as well.
In other words, Philly is exactly what the author seems to want, but he doesn't really seem to understand what he is asking for.
Re: David Byrne: If the 1% stifles New York's creative talent, I'm out of here
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh, you can get perfectly nice 1 bedroom apartments in Mt. Vernon for $800/month, and that's a 30-minute metro north ride from midtown manhattan. I used to live in New Rochelle, which is a 35 minute ride from Midtown. The high-rises right next to the train station are pretty expensive ($1500 for a studio), but there is a ton of affordable housing within a 15 minute walk. It's a town of mostly working-class hispanic i…
Do you own a car? How difficult is it to live where you do without a car? I was mostly speaking about the areas near the train station that you mentioned yeah. Those prices are pretty high for the commute time that you end up having. A 15 minute walk is okay but any longer than that might be very difficult for some people.
The apartments right by the train stations are artificially expensive. They're designed to take advantage of the fact that white commuters don't want to risk living in a building with low income minorities. The surrounding housing is half the price, and the area is quite safe.
Nearly all of the Westchester suburbs are extremely walkable. All of the essential stuff is on the train line. The wife and I would load up the baby and take the train to Portchester, where there was a Costco, Marshalls, etc. I did have a car, which I drove maybe once a month (the upscale mall in White Plains was nowhere near public transit).
A 35 minute commute is not bad at all. Lots of rich people all over the country have hour+ commutes from the suburbs. Heck, my commute from New Rochelle was a lot more enjoyable (straight shot into GCT) than my commute from the UWS (transfer at Times Square, ugh). You can't point to 35 minute commutes as a reason to make space for low-income housing in the city proper.