New and Old #150
Friday roundup and commentary
New York Is Too Expensive to Even Visit, The Atlantic, Jerusalem Demsas, November 2, 2023
Tourists stick out and may not observe local norms, which can inspire petty grumblings and genuine anger from locals. But they’re a sign that the city is doing something right. Show me a city without tourists, and I’ll show you a city in decline.
In New York, this delicate balance is tipping against tourists as hostility to outsiders becomes a matter of policy. Local Law 18, a measure adopted last January to crack down on short-term rentals, took effect in September. It requires landlords to register their short-term rental properties with the city and prohibits platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo from processing transactions for unregistered rentals. The parameters are pretty strict, moreover: The law bans short-term dwelling units unless the permanent resident of the space is present during the rental, and it requires that the host “maintain a common household with a rentee.” In layman’s terms, that means “no locks.” Predictably, the number of short-term listings fell by more than 80 percent from August to October 1.
One of the big meta-questions for urbanists and people who are skeptical of urbanists alike is, Why do so many cities and localities adopt regulations that manifestly depress their economies? If we’re right, why do so few politicians and cities get it?
I don’t know. This is one of those things. And as always from Jerusalem, an excellent piece.
Free Wheeling: Shopping Carts and Culture, JSTOR Daily, Katrina Gulliver, December 24, 2023
Really fascinating stuff, especially the insight that a store is essentially a city in miniature:
The reasons aren’t fully clear, but it could be because those are the areas that customers wish to spend more time examining products for freshness. The researchers also found that “parking” the cart was more associated with spontaneous purchases. We park our cart like we park our other vehicles, to return to later. We treat the supermarket like the streets.
Meanwhile, the wheeled cart itself, by taking the weight of our groceries, encourages us to buy more and assumes a particular model of shopping (arriving by car, shopping on a weekly or less frequent basis). This has shaped not only consumer behavior but that of manufacturers, leading them to producing larger packages that aren’t suitable or easy for someone to carry by hand. It’s a model of shopping that also assumes storage space in the home as well as refrigeration, allowing us to shop much less frequently than earlier generations.
“Nowhere Else To Grow But East”... Grow Up!, Strong Towns Norman, Adam Ross, January 13, 2024
“In America, we are more used to towering skyscrapers, or single story suburbs with little in between.” Yep. This piece makes the point, by way of this particular city, that denser development—growing up—contains sprawl, meaning that rural folks get to keep a distinctly rural landscape.
You see this phenomenon where, because housing is treated with such suspicion in America, rural folks conceptually see themselves as being on the same side as NIMBYs in the cities and suburbs, instead of being housing advocates for densification in those more centrally located places.
The density and uses will be achieved through dozens of high-rise towers — reaching up to 49 storeys for the three “Sentinel” towers, where the subway station will be situated — along with numerous mid- and low-rise buildings.
The overwhelming concerns amongst opponents, including local resident group Jericho Coalition and many of today’s public speakers, focuses on the project’s high density, number of tall buildings, the anticipated quick pace of change in the neighbourhood’s character, traffic congestion, and impact to local services and/or the perceived lack of public benefits.
This story got a lot of play on social media, mostly because of the “white progressives oppose Indigenous-owned property development” angle—some opponents even tried to use social justice angles. So that’s funny. While going straight from nothing to high-rises might be dramatic—the opposite of what the person in the above story advocates for, “gentle density”—Vancouver isn’t a little small town, and I see this not as dramatic jump in density but more like catching up by going through all the lost increments at once.
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The city of Richmond, VA just went through a long process of voting over short term rentals (STRs) this past fall. We set a rule that the owner had to occupy the dwelling at least half the year - meaning they could only rent it out 180 days of the year.
I felt like this was a good compromise bc it allows STRs by individuals, while not allowing companies to come in and buy up a lot of housing specifically for STRs, which just makes our housing crisis worse. All of the realtors and corporate rental folks were against the 180 day rule.
Richmond learned from other cities like New Orleans, that don’t have any restrictions, how much of a mess it can make of the neighborhood: loss of community, loss of housing, etc.
I can see what NYC is trying to do, but I think they’ve taken it a bit too far by requiring the owner to be there during the rental. I know when we’ve used Airbnb in Europe, we want the privacy of an entire unit. This NYC restriction kills that.
I can understand not wanting housing stock to be converted to de facto hotels when housing is short supply, but then why ban hotels, which compete with conversions?