Showing posts with label zone-busting development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zone-busting development. Show all posts

Friday, October 18, 2013

Amanda The People's Clueless Burden AKA Gentrification Enabler

'What We Haven't Figured Out Is the Question of Gentrification'

From The Atlantic :

Maintaining enough affordable housing and keeping income diversity in a city as it prospers are two of the most contentious and perplexing questions in U.S. urban policy today. In a CityLab panel on urban expansion, economist and New York University professor Paul Romer decried rent control and argued that affordability is a problem for the free market to solve — and met with objections from Amanda Burden, director of New York City’s department of city planning.

"I had believed that if we kept building in that manner and increasing our housing supply … that prices would go down," Burden said. "We had every year almost 30,000 permits for housing, and we built a tremendous amount of housing, including affordable housing, either through incentives or through government funds. And the price of housing didn’t go down at all. That’s a practitioner’s point of view."

"What we haven’t figured out is the question of gentrification," Burden added. "I have never, since I had this job, come up with a satisfactory answer of how to make sure everyone benefits. It’s a question I would welcome more answers as to how to make this a more equitable city. Because that’s how we continue to attract people from all over the world, is people perceive the city as an equitable city, and a city with opportunity for all. It’s not just those poetic words. But I really wonder how we can do it."

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Salt Water Corrosive Damage NYC Hurricane Sandy

Salt water damage is expected to damage the fragile, ancient electrical and switching systems of the New York City subway system. The Wall Street Journal published examples of some ways that salt water can damage the subway system :

Salt can eat at motors, metal fasteners and the electronic parts, some many decades old, that keep the system running. Salt water, and the deposits it leaves behind, degrades the relays that run the signal system, preventing train collisions.

Salt water also conducts electricity, which can exacerbate damage to signals if the system isn't powered down before a flood.

But the engineering risks don't just exist for the New York City subway system, but also to the construction materials of buildings, which were exposed to storm surge flooding.

Construction materials made of iron or steel that are exposed to water will rust and alter its shape and size. Building interiors, especially basements, when exposed to water, must be dried, otherwise constructions materials, such as metal fasteners or iron or steel beams, may continue to corrode long after the storm surge flooding subsides. If long-term moisture continues untreated, or if the ground becomes over-saturated by salt water, creating , the oxidation and rusting may cause construction materials made of iron and steel to fail.

Just like consumer affairs agencies advise drivers to avoid buying flood-damaged cars, what is the New York City Department of Buildings doing to secure the integrity of buildings and construction sites, which were exposed to the corrosive salt water storm surge flooding from Hurricane Sandy ?

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Quinn Skips Chelsea Market Hearing ; Angers Chelsea Voters

Quinn Skips Chelsea Market Expansion Hearing ; Angers Core Chelsea Supporters

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was absent from a City Council Hearing about the zone-busting real estate development expansion project for Chelsea Market by its owner, Jamestown Properties. Speaker Quinn's decision to blow off the hearing angered some of her core supporters.

“It’s her council district. She was elected from a district, even though she’s now got citywide ambitions, and she should be here to hear testimony about a project that’s going to destroy her community,” Michael McKee told The Wall Street Journal. Mr. McKee once worked with Speaker Quinn back in 1989, when she was an organizer with the Housing Justice Campaign.

“She was a great community organizer. She was one of the best I’ve ever met,” Mr. McKee added, “but I don’t know where that Chris Quinn is.”

Also from The Wall Street Journal :

Quinn spokesman Justin Goodman said the speaker doesn’t always appear at hearings, even for projects in her own district. The spokesman noted that she also missed a hearing last year on the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital.