Following Up on My Last Post and Responding to a Critic
by Sandy Ikeda
Tue, 4 Mar 2008 at 12:21 AM
After yesterday's posting on how some local mega-projects are scaling back, Peter Kiefer of The Sun had an article today on the same subject (with much more extensive reportage), "Unease erodes ambition on real estate." In addition to the projects I mentioned, Mr. Kiefer covers the Fulton Street Transit Center (which I blogged earlier), delays in the redevelopment of Penn/Moynihan Station, and Brookfield Properties dropping out of the race for construction of Hudson Yards on the Far West Side (see my very first entry of this blog back in December) — a pity, since theirs was my favorite among the five proposals.
Quoting the article:
A professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, Mitchell Moss, said the current situation is the result of a glut of projects that have been pushed through without enough reflection by elected officials.
Shocking!
Also, one correction and one clarification on that post. The correct name of the blog I cited is "Atlantic Yards Report," not "Atlantic Report." And I should have made it clearer that the Crain's New York Business article I also cited actually drew very heavily from that blog.
***
A blogger, Ryan Avent, rants about my original discussion on population density in LA versus New York. Suffice to say, he should read the follow-up posting on density, in which Wendell Cox explains that his data come directly from the Census Bureau.
But Mr. Avent goes on to question my economics creds and my familiarity with the concept of "externality" as it relates to NYC transit:
There are plenty of relevant ones here to choose from — carbon emissions, congestion, the spillover effects of density in NYC that help make the city an economic juggernaut — all of which indicate that the state should, in fact, be subsidizing transit.
To me these sound very much like reasons — "negative externalities," since he insists on using economics lingo — for the state NOT to be subsidizing transit. Anyway, is he saying that absent the subsidies NYC would not be "an economic juggernaut," or that being an economic juggernaut, ipso facto, justifies subsidies? The first is far-fetched, the second a non sequitur.
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