A stickplex is a dense residential structure or group of structures built with inexpensive materials and techniques, most commonly wood. Stickplexes use 2,500 square feet of land per unit or less. Stickplexes have per-square-foot construction costs roughly in line with detached houses due to avoidance of costly features like elevators and more expensive construction […]
How to Price Congestion: The Benefits of Dynamic Variable Tolling
Find the full-length report draft here.New York’s political community and the general public have yet to come to terms with reality on congestion pricing. While … [Read More...]
Get the tuck out of here
Tuck-under duplexes in Palisades Park, NJ (Google Streetview)In two previous posts, I’ve raised questions about the competitiveness of missing middle housing. … [Read More...]
In praise of fee simple ownership
In yesterday's post, I showed that missing middle housing, as celebrated in Daniel Parolek’s new book, may be stuck in the middle, too balanced to compete with single family housing on the one hand and multifamily on the other.But what about all the … [Read More...]
Stuck in the (Missing) Middle
Everybody loves missing middle housing! What’s not to like? It consists of neighborly, often attractive homes that fit in equally well in Rumford, Maine, and Queens, New York. Missing middle housing types have character and personality. They’re often … [Read More...]
Survey: New Yorkers like Manhattan, the subway and more housing
The Manhattan Institute, a conservative (by New York standards) think tank, recently published a survey of New York residents; a few items are of interest to urbanists. A few items struck me as interesting.One question (p.8) asked "If you could live … [Read More...]
Mini-review: From Mobility to Accessibility
I just read a 2018 book by a variety of authors (most notably Jonathan Levine, author of Zoned Out), From Mobility to Accessibility: Transforming Urban Transportation and Land Use Planning.The key point of the book is that rather than focusing solely on … [Read More...]
How Developers Became Hollywood’s Favorite Villain
If there's one thing that unites TV and film since the fifties, it's the archetype of the dastardly developer - forever destroying homes and hiking rents. But it wasn't always this way. Where did this trope come from, and is it true? This week on Pop Culture … [Read More...]
The City Planning Behind Avatar: The Last Airbender
Has the Water Tribe gone full NIMBY? Can Avatar Aang overcome his angry impulse to preserve? Why is Ba Sing Se so segregated? And what can we learn from the success of Republic City? In this week's episode of Pop Culture Urbanism, we explore the trade-offs and … [Read More...]
The Amazing Housing Politics of Spider-Man
How can Spider-Man possibly afford to live in New York? And how can we make the city more affordable for dear Aunt May? In the first episode of my brand new YouTube series on pop-culture urbanism, we dig into the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy to uncover the … [Read More...]
The Limits of the Singapore Housing Model
In 2015, urban studies professor Anne Haila published a book on Singapore’s land ownership and housing system called Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State. The Singapore housing model has recently been getting some attention for its widespread … [Read More...]