The Merits of High Density Development in Brooklyn, NY
If people don't like sprawl, do they like high density? A recent New York magazine piece by Chris Smith does a great job tracing out the anxiety that incumbent Brooklyn residents are experiencing as a new large Atlantic Yards is planned. These incumbents are worried about their "Quality of life" being hurt by rising congestion and they should also wonder whether the value of their housing units will decline as supply increases.
Here are a few quotes from the article http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/18862/index.html
“This is a great day for thousands of people who desperately need affordable housing,” he announces, standing outside the ESDC offices on Third Avenue. Atlantic Yards’ 2,250 subsidized apartments are among its strongest selling points, a seemingly apple-pie benefit trotted out in every press conference and direct-mail flyer. Stuckey, doggedly on-message, manages to use the phrase “affordable housing” five times in two minutes. Not once does he mention the 4,610 market-rate (unaffordable?) apartments and condos to be built.
The release of the environmental-impact statement, however, forced me to confront just what Atlantic Yards is going to mean—not just for my neighbors in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, and Downtown Brooklyn but also for the city as a whole. In 1,400 numbing pages of charts and bureaucratic jargon are the details of a traffic, noise, and cultural nightmare on the horizon: Colossal shadows sweeping across 50 square blocks. Some 60 intersections choked with traffic. More kids than the local schools can possibly handle.
Still, forming a clear-cut opinion isn’t easy. Ratner is building subsidized housing in a city where there’s a cruel 3 percent vacancy rate. He’s forecasting $1.5 billion in new tax revenues for the city and 3,800 new permanent jobs. Most of the site for the proposed project, the Long Island Rail Road yards, is quite literally a hole in the ground, flanked by a number of decaying buildings. So am I with the visionaries? The naysayers? The big thinkers? The little guy? The sports fans? The community gardeners? Whose side am I on?"
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/18862/index1.html
This looks like a classic case of public choice and heterogeneity. People will disagree over whether this project is good or bad. Mancur Olson would say that a small cohesive pressure group that loses the most from doing the project (i.e white upper middle class hipsters who already live in the community) have the greatest incentive to lobby against it. It will be interesting if the "silent majority" can launch a counter-attack. This Rattner looks quite well politically connected .
Here are a few quotes from the article http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/18862/index.html
“This is a great day for thousands of people who desperately need affordable housing,” he announces, standing outside the ESDC offices on Third Avenue. Atlantic Yards’ 2,250 subsidized apartments are among its strongest selling points, a seemingly apple-pie benefit trotted out in every press conference and direct-mail flyer. Stuckey, doggedly on-message, manages to use the phrase “affordable housing” five times in two minutes. Not once does he mention the 4,610 market-rate (unaffordable?) apartments and condos to be built.
The release of the environmental-impact statement, however, forced me to confront just what Atlantic Yards is going to mean—not just for my neighbors in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, and Downtown Brooklyn but also for the city as a whole. In 1,400 numbing pages of charts and bureaucratic jargon are the details of a traffic, noise, and cultural nightmare on the horizon: Colossal shadows sweeping across 50 square blocks. Some 60 intersections choked with traffic. More kids than the local schools can possibly handle.
Still, forming a clear-cut opinion isn’t easy. Ratner is building subsidized housing in a city where there’s a cruel 3 percent vacancy rate. He’s forecasting $1.5 billion in new tax revenues for the city and 3,800 new permanent jobs. Most of the site for the proposed project, the Long Island Rail Road yards, is quite literally a hole in the ground, flanked by a number of decaying buildings. So am I with the visionaries? The naysayers? The big thinkers? The little guy? The sports fans? The community gardeners? Whose side am I on?"
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/18862/index1.html
This looks like a classic case of public choice and heterogeneity. People will disagree over whether this project is good or bad. Mancur Olson would say that a small cohesive pressure group that loses the most from doing the project (i.e white upper middle class hipsters who already live in the community) have the greatest incentive to lobby against it. It will be interesting if the "silent majority" can launch a counter-attack. This Rattner looks quite well politically connected .
posted by Matthew Kahn at 9:27 AM
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