Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by jgalt212 » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

> And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great.

While the future may feel great to you, most New Yorkers would agree that Battery Park City does not feel like New York. That may be good or bad depending on your perspective.

And just in case, you think I'm here to knock you, I'll leave you with this Abraham Lincoln quote:

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.

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

#92

Post by jschwartzi » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

jes wrote: post #73

krschultz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the value of land is substantially based on the environment around it, one that is largely driven by societal factors. 1 acre of land in Manhattan is extremely expensive. 1 acre of land 20 miles north of Manhattan is not expensive. The difference is everything surrounding the land. If the people in a community have decided to spend a lot of their money to reduce crime, improve transit, improve schools, and impro…

Thank you for your comment, and for obviously being concerned with issues of fairness. If a person makes an investment, and that investment goes up in value, even substantially, and even with no additional effort on the part of the investor, does that justify others taking some or all of the resulting value? If I bought stock in Apple years ago, because I thought it was a smart thing to do, and I simply held the stoc…

Stock is different. Your stock certificates in Apple don't increase or reduce the value of other stock certificates you own just by their proximity and configuration.

To put it another way, if you own common stock, and later develop some of it into preferred stock, does the value of your remaining common stock also go up? If you have shares of Microsoft also, and those certificates are next to the Apple stock in your safe, does your Microsoft stock benefit from its proximity to Apple stock certificates rather than, say, Hewlett Packard? Suppose someone else places some of their Facebook stock in a safe next to your own. Do they benefit from their proximity to existing Apple stock? Do safes full of penny stock drag the value of your Apple stock down?

The fact that something is real property means that it has a direct impact on other peoples' property around it, especially in how it is developed(or not). I would say that there is an argument to be made for deincentivizing sitting on land as a "real estate investment" without using it to benefit the neighborhood it sits in.

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

#93

Post by worklogin » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

deet wrote: post #79

dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

High density doesn't always equate to pleasantness though. It still has to be done right to be livable. I spent last year living near Columbus Circle (the southwest corner of Central Park in Midtown Manhattan) which is probably equally dense as Battery Park, and didn't care for it much primarily due to its mixed use. The population density is quite high there, but it is mixed in with office buildings that suck the ch…

Interesting. Mixed use is often touted as a way to reduce dependence on cars and promote local economy.

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

#94

Post by Frozenlock » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

andkon wrote: post #87

Frozenlock wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point was that the vacant lot was somehow "free" to the owner. It's not, he is sacrificing any value he might get by selling it. If someone sees a better potential use of the land (able to get more value out of it), he can propose to buy it at a higher price. A land-value taxes is just a multiplier of the opportunity cost, but without any real economic foundation (no one is proposing to buy the land at a high…

Maybe that's a good idea: multiplying the opportunity cost ends up punishing the people who hold valuable land and don't develop it. The more valuable the land, the greater the punishment. That seems exactly what you'd want to do to encourage that West Oakland lot to get developed.

But why do you even want to punish? There's already a cost associated with doing nothing with the land! Why do you consider it's not enough?

Imagine a world where if you take a day off (or just slack off). You not only don't get paid, but also receive a negative salary because 'punishment'. The punishment would also be proportional to the salary of comparable individual (not you, other people). The more they work, the more you must pay for not working in addition of not getting paid.

All this in the name of maximizing your contribution to society... How would you feel about that? Wouldn't you say that 'not getting paid' is plenty already?

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

#95

Post by rayiner » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC

Jacqued wrote: post #57

dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

You don't even need to live in the future to have a very high density. Paris proper has a density of 50000/sqmi yet has simply and literally banned high rise buildings. There are 2 districts with a number of these (although low by manhattan standards, culminating at 100m) but they are relics of the 70s and none has been built since then. What is probably the greatest advantage of very dense cities is that you can hav…

It should be noted that Manhattan is a lot denser than it is on paper. It's daytime population is more than double its residential population. Midtown Manhattan on a weekday probably has several hundred thousand people per square mile, rather than the 70,000 per square mile nominal density of the island.

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

#96

Post by graeme » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

worklogin wrote: post #93

deet wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High density doesn't always equate to pleasantness though. It still has to be done right to be livable. I spent last year living near Columbus Circle (the southwest corner of Central Park in Midtown Manhattan) which is probably equally dense as Battery Park, and didn't care for it much primarily due to its mixed use. The population density is quite high there, but it is mixed in with office buildings that suck the ch…

Interesting. Mixed use is often touted as a way to reduce dependence on cars and promote local economy.

Depends how you do it. I live in a mixed use neighborhood, with lots of shops and stores and it's great.

Likewise, downtown montreal is pretty interesting. As a pedestrian, there are plenty of things for you to do at street level, while people live and work above.

Versus downtown toronto, where there's little for pedestrians to do in much of downtown. You don't see nearly as many people walking around.

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

#97

Post by ori_b » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #48

dankohn1 wrote: post #41

I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son's 500 kid elementary school serves 9 buildings. And I'm here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the…

What's odd is that Manhattan's population density has on a long timescale been declining rather than growing, despite quite a bit of construction. In the 1900 census the population was 1.85 million (density ~80,000/sq mi), and it reached its peak of 2.33 million (~100,000/sq mi) in the 1910 census. Since then it's on the way down, with some bumps here and there: 1.96 million (~85,000/sq mi) in 1950, and all the way d…

I suspect that the actual density in terms of average people present per square km is increasing (as opposed to the number of people living there on paper). Especially during working hours.

Tons of people commute in. Competing with the businesses that use the space for commuters is expensive

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

#98

Post by jes » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #88

jes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your comment, and for obviously being concerned with issues of fairness. If a person makes an investment, and that investment goes up in value, even substantially, and even with no additional effort on the part of the investor, does that justify others taking some or all of the resulting value? If I bought stock in Apple years ago, because I thought it was a smart thing to do, and I simply held the stoc…

You're basically arguing against property taxes or capital gain taxes entirely. Our existing property taxes are measured against the improved (built-up) value of the land. An alternative would be property taxes against the unimproved value of the land. The latter are often called "land taxes". I personally think land taxes are better than as-built property taxes because they encourage investment. If you assume that l…

Yes, I am arguing against taxes. I'm against taking things by force from other people, which is what taxation appears to be, as I understand it.

You are correct, of course, that land owners are taxed.

I don't expect to live to see the day when most people realize that initiating force against others is counterproductive. But I do think it's helpful to look into the essentials of things.

Thank you for a good discussion. It has helped me to clarify my own thinking.

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

#99

Post by cbhl » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #31

melling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,_BC…

The train part itself is 46 minutes if you take a bullet (red columns): http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekdaytimetable.html That would only be your full commute, though, if you were doing deep SoMa to downtown Mountain View.

Some 5 to 10% of Caltrains are delayed though, and if that delay happens to be a fatality, expect that train to be really late. (2011)

http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Boa...

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

#100

Post by Frozenlock » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #86

Frozenlock wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point was that the vacant lot was somehow "free" to the owner. It's not, he is sacrificing any value he might get by selling it. If someone sees a better potential use of the land (able to get more value out of it), he can propose to buy it at a higher price. A land-value taxes is just a multiplier of the opportunity cost, but without any real economic foundation (no one is proposing to buy the land at a high…

It's correcting the common market failure of humans undervaluing opportunity costs. The economic foundation is behavioral economics, or maybe a more advanced model of rational actor economics which takes into account the often high cost of measuring opportunity costs.

All value is determined by humans; you can't say that humans undervalue something. That simply doesn't make sense.

What you can say, however, is that humans prefer the statu quo. (Or as you would say, the cost of measuring opportunity costs.)

Any transaction need to provide at least some additional benefit to be considered worthwhile.

For example, I won't sell you my car for only 5% over the market value because it's not worth it for me.

You coming every day and breaking a mirror, a whipper, or steeling a wheel would not correct any economic calculation 'error'.