151–160 of 413 posts
IMO, they should consider banning cars in downtown areas (and adding large parking garages just outside them) while they're at it.
[flagged]
Ghent, Belgium would be a great model to follow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donuted buildings will forever remind me of the Ponte Tower building. (1) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/th...
In Hong Kong, pre-handover, I stayed in a windowless hotel room.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property tax represents 72% of Boston's municipal revenue[0], and this initiative provides a property tax reduction of up to 75% for up to 29 years, so unfortunately this initiative will not help with T funding. [0] https://data.boston.gov/dataset/revenue-budget
If it allows more people to move into the city and start working, that’s more income taxes that can go towards funding the T. Much of the T’s is at the state level anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d be interested to see people get really creative with it. Throw a gym in on one floor. Cinema room on another. Storage units in a few more. Probably difficult to structurally support a pool on a floor not already designed for one but sure, let’s throw one in there too. A kids playroom is maybe a little depressing with no natural light but it could work. Hell: keep the middle commercial space and put a grocery stor…
Sound like what inevitably happens to my Sims games, just start filling in those gaps Dance floor #3? Make it happen!
I'm confused. Why is this program necessary? If building owners are sitting on vacant space because the demand for office space has dropped, while the demand for housing continues to rise, aren't they already incentivized to convert to residential space just based on the market conditions? Not sure why the city has to subsidize the property owners.
Most office buildings are not architecturally feasible to convert to residential. In fact, because of zoning laws, many/most can't even be converted. Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep? No. That's why most office buildings dont work You have to redo all the mechanical, plumbing, electric, and then entirely refinish the building. Its literally cheaper to build new than deal with the nightmare…
Yes, if that's the alternative to being enslaved for life. How can people still not understand that there is a massive part of the population who need to be able to purchase their living space to not have to rent for life or take on life-long debt that they can't afford. How can people not understand this? Yes, it's better for a young worker to be able to purchase a shit apartment that is a converted office building and start building his or her future, than pay rent for years and years and have nothing to show for it.
This is a true "let them eat cake" situation. Imagine if we didn't allow people to eat because we didn't think the food was good enough. That's what's happening with housing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I call this the Chicago layout -many apartments are long and narrow. I have assumed it was to ensure access to two fire escapes. To hazard a guess, I have seen some that might only be 15’ wide, supporting a 10x10 room with a hallway to access it.
Chicago lots are long and narrow. Typical Chicago residential lot is 25x100 or so. Street in front, alley in the back, garage if you have one is a separate building fronting the alley. Many houses are built as "two flats" or "three flats" i.e. two or three houses stacked on top of each other.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chicago,+IL/@41.7332309,-8...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many cities (I'd say it's the majority in the world), with mixed use zoning which work wonderfully. Lower floors are offices or businesses and upper floors are apartments. Why is this so difficult?
I swear, it's impossible to please people. People are complaining that mixed use zoning on Taraval street in SF is wasting space because the street-level floors are wasted and they should be converted into apartments (many business have shuttered and ground floors remain empty in some mixed use buildings).
There was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity. One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them. This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either und…
This looks like the episode of OddLots you're talking about: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-07/what-it-a... They talk about converting 180 Water St by adding an internal atrium; it's also one of the conversions illustrated in the recent NYT article about the difficulties of office-to-residential conversions: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...