I work for a place that designs and manufactures parts for a lot of these NYC projects. There are several factors that slow them down, and every step of the process is horribly inefficient. We start the bid and design process years before groundbreaking because it takes so long to get reviews and approvals. Permitting, planning, and impact studies that should take a few months drag on for years. The land prices are so high and putting lots together so difficult that they build tall skinny buildings. Tall skinny buildings take longer to build than shorter, wider buildings. Everything is so hush hush in the preconstruction phase that we don't even know who exactly is building it or where it's at until a few months before they start demo on the existing structure. Shipping and delivery is a logistics nightmare downtown and crane time is always at a premium. Imagine how hard it is to get around NYC anyway, and then imagine how many hundreds of tons of material have to be delivered 24 hours a day by big trucks that aren't as quick and maneuverable as a car. The whole process is just years of waiting followed by half a decade of absolute madness trying to get it all crammed into a city block.
When did New York start building slowly?
31–40 of 248 posts
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#32Why? Unions. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
It's interesting that the Times identified three culprits (unions, construction companies, and consulting firms) but you only focused on one.
If you read the article you would see that the unions are the ones demanding a much larger than necessary number of employees. The unions are the political road block to change.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#33Why? Unions. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
France has unions out the wazoo, yet you don’t see nearly the level of cost increases.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#34Speed 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…
There’s another very important factor about Moses that people overlook.
They did things in-house. There’s an anecdote in the book about how they had a building on Randall’s Island with 100 draftsmen on call at any time. The minute the federal government announced more money was released they’d whip up designs for highways or bridges before anyone else and have the proposal in.
There’s a lot of stories like that. Moses and his organization actually built shit, they designed and project managed their own stuff.
We don’t do that any more. It’s not just that we hire construction companies, we hire companies to manage the construction companies and then another company to manage the managers. None of those people have an incentive structure that rewards building fast and on budget.
This problem is endemic to every government function at this point. I am convinced we could solve half the problem with public works by just like building a government department to actually deliver the government services themselves instead of what we do now. Which, of course, is how governments mostly used to function before neoliberalism and general corporate dominance took over.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a simplistic take. European and East Asian democracies build infrastructure far faster and cheaper than the U.S. Often with even more stringent safety regulations and higher standards of quality. The question we are tasked with answering is: why?
> European and East Asian You just basically named two continents and said they build faster than the US and you're accusing someone else of simplistic takes? Which European country builds infrastructure faster than the US?
Berlin made great progress on the Brandenburg Airport, a shining example of German efficiency and construction prowess /s
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#36Speed 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…
There’s another very important factor about Moses that people overlook. They did things in-house. There’s an anecdote in the book about how they had a building on Randall’s Island with 100 draftsmen on call at any time. The minute the federal government announced more money was released they’d whip up designs for highways or bridges before anyone else and have the proposal in. There’s a lot of stories like that. Mose…
More about this and how it’s different in Europe:
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/12/the-issue-of-c...
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#37Sigh. This is the fate of ALL systems. Once something gets complicated, it gets progressively more complicated to change anything.
NYC is an example of a runaway complexity. So now 1 mile of Manhattan subway costs about the same as 1000 miles of 6-lane freeway.
The correct way to fix it is: don't. Stop encouraging density, instead make sure that other cities can thrive by providing incentives for companies to build in sparse areas.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s pretty obvious from first principles that added cost to the builder necessitates higher housing costs to justify building something. Alternative is lower margins, but they aren’t that big in typical development projects anyway (in normal times)
I encourage everyone to go attempt to build a house for themselves. It takes away the armchair quarterbacking once you add up the Home Depot receipts.
I did this actually, and the pluses were:
- Dollar cost was 1/4 to 1/3 what a builder estimated. (Labor savings)
- I saw continuous progress with no surprise delays.
- It was easier and cheaper to do custom solutions or adjustments as unforseen issues came up.
- Was fun and I learned a lot.
Minuses:
- Material costs were higher than if contractors bought due to retail purchasing.
- It took over a year, versus 5-6 month estimate from builders.
- Was a lot of personal time and learning.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#39Everyone who wants to find fault with modern constructions trots out the Second Avenue Subway as an example. This subway is an obvious route for convenience and as such was first proposed more than a hundred years ago. At that time analysis of the geology and hydrology along the route as well as the very large amount of infrastructure including other subways already in place resulted in the conclusion that a subway a…
This reminds me of political discourse. We solve all the easy problems (murder is wrong, we all agree), and then we're left with the tough questions like abortion and civil rights. It's not that we can't agree, it's that we solved everything that is solvable (without great difficulty).
Maybe we've now built everything that's easy to build, and all that's left is the hard stuff.
Re: When did New York start building slowly?
#40Sigh. This is the fate of ALL systems. Once something gets complicated, it gets progressively more complicated to change anything. NYC is an example of a runaway complexity. So now 1 mile of Manhattan subway costs about the same as 1000 miles of 6-lane freeway. The correct way to fix it is: don't. Stop encouraging density, instead make sure that other cities can thrive by providing incentives for companies to build i…
Are you advocating for sprawl?