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Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

economist.com

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Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#21

Post by melling »

rhino369 wrote: post #3
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…

It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.

No, they are forced to move to these areas because they want to have a bearable commute. Your solution is to jam everyone into a more confined area.

Another solution is to make commuting from a "long distance" (e.g. 60-120 miles) more bearable. In NYC, for instance, subways could be built to NJ.

Faster trains (low-speed maglevs) could be built like what's being done in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR).

Mountain View to San Francisco is 40 miles. Is there some reason that isn't a 40 minute commute?

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#22

Post by pmontra »

"land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%."

I live in Milan so I think I'm qualified to write about this. The office space one wants is close to home or to metro or train stations, unless one lives outside the city. In that case the best office space is close to the highways on the same side of the city you're from. I used to work at 10 minutes by feet from office, then exactly at the other side of the city. It took one hour to get to office, by car or public transport. I preferred public transport because of the free time for reading. I work mostly from home now with customers within 30 minutes (walking of cycling), which is even better.

I can understand that zoning rules limit the number of offices and houses that can be build close to the best areas but as a city dweller do I really want to see buildings built everywhere, in every single space between existing buildings or replacing smaller ones? Call me selfish because I don't care about raising the country GDP but I don't think so. Maybe it's because I'm European but my ideal of a city is not a large archaeology. It's more like this http://goitaly.about.com/od/moreitaliancities/tp/small-itali... and Milan is a reasonable compromise between access to fast Internet, customers and quality of life. People born in those other cities won't agree but they still come here to work :-)

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#23

Post by gdilla »

lisper wrote: post #4
rhino369 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.

You can in Manhattan. The tallest residential structure in the U.S. is going up within a few blocks of Central Park. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

But it's already unaffordable for the average NYer before it's even ready. If wealthy foreigners can park their money in manhattan, they will, without living there. That doesn't help scarcity for actual residents.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#24

Post by majormajor »

sbov wrote: post #6
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…

I can only find stats on carbon footprints. Somewhat surprisingly, California does very well on this statistic, despite its suburbs: it's just behind New York. So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density. I couldn't find anything on energy footprint though.

(Coastal) California suburbs and small towns tend to be much denser than suburbs in most of the rest of the country. Most of LA city proper is considered suburban, but it also averages out to something like 8K people/sq mile. Even somewhere more suburban like Anaheim clocks in at 6.6K. Compare that with Dallas (3.6).

I would've expected those density gains to be somewhat more offset by the worse fuel efficiency of sitting in LA traffic, though... but on the other hand, much of the LA area has far lower heating/cooling costs than almost anywhere else in the country.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#25

Post by rayiner »

sbov wrote: post #6
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…

I can only find stats on carbon footprints. Somewhat surprisingly, California does very well on this statistic, despite its suburbs: it's just behind New York. So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density. I couldn't find anything on energy footprint though.

Are you sure you're looking at New York versus California, not New York State versus California? Look up the Berkeley cool climate carbon footprint map. Most of SV is 50-90 metric tons per household per year. Manhattan is 25-40. My parents zip code, in suburban DC is 92. My zip code, in downtown Baltimore is 34. My old zip code in downtown Chicago is 37.

And unlike California, those cities require winter heat and simmer cooling. Manhattanites spend about 1/6 carbon budget on transportation as someone in say San Jose.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#26

Post by happyscrappy »

ctdonath wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…

Seriously cutting one's energy footprint is not free, it comes with serious cost increases elsewhere. The average American can't afford to live in NYC without curtailing much of what constitutes average living conditions.

Not only that. Suburban has more emissions per person but the city has far more emissions per square foot, meaning air quality is far worse and consequent health problems.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#27

Post by swombat »

pmontra wrote: post #22

"land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%." I live in Milan so I think I'm qualified to write about this. The office space one wants is close to home or to metro or train stations, unless one lives outside the city. In that case the best office space is close to the highways on the same side of the city you'…

> my ideal of a city is not a large archaeology

You mean arcology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#28

Post by graeme »

Something that annoys me about these articles is that they're basically saying "the world's densest cities should make themselves denser"

Maybe we should just copy what those cities did. Imagine what america's GDP would be like if it had ten cities like the current NYC.

I live in one of the densest neighborhoods in north America, the plateau in Montreal. It achieves this density with low rise buildings, and it's a very pleasant area.

People say we should build taller buildings here. But I say we should build more plateaus elsewhere.

The problem is that our current regulatory environment makes it very difficult to build new versions of the world's most popular neighborhoods. So instead the call is to modify existing, successful neighborhoods.

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#29

Post by logicallee »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #10
rwmj wrote: post #7

Knowledge-intensive industries such as technology and finance thrive on the clustering of workers who share ideas and expertise. So allow people to cluster in high quality virtual environments.

Is there anyone preventing you from doing that?

there are no high-quality virtual environments (except for killing each other)?

you literally cannot even throw an idea up on a whiteboard and have it be there two weeks later: there is no such thing online. (virtual second-life collaborative spaces.)

online collaborative meetings are a joke compared to real life - as a piece of evidence, if they weren't you wouldn't have teams having to scramble to move to silicon valley, you would just have virtual incubators: in terms of its "manufacturing" output anything an online startup needs can be done over the wire. (phone and server costs are basically it.)

Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost

#30

Post by dragonwriter »

smutticus wrote: post #19
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…

Yes. Per-capital carbon production is lowest in dense urban environments. Suburbia and low density rural areas are the real carbon pigs on a per-capita basis. We need to change the wrong headed notion that dense urbanity is somehow bad for the environment. On the contrary, it's how we need to build in order to save the earth.

> We need to change the wrong headed notion that dense urbanity is somehow bad for the environment.

Dense urbanity is bad for the local environment and, particularly, for human health in it. That's the cost of the lower per-capita impact on the global environment that it provides. We need to learn from what works (and what doesn't) in both dense and sparse environments to build lower-global-impact environments that remain high quality environments for human health and quality of life.

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