dagblog - Comments for "Letter From The Editor: HuffPost’s New Chapter"

Skeptical - what happens when

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 02 May 2017 10:30:00 +0000

Skeptical - what happens when the river floods? (tip - pretty damn often) Plus it's pretty damn cold along the river. Plus there are also party zones nearby, and the beach zone will only be popular if it's inexpensive enough, somehow attracts squatters or those in lower rent control, creates higher-scale housing that hipsters can afford, or otherwise fits the market. As it is, this is just the East Gallery right on the Spree hoping that more will crop up around it, and from what I saw last time, there simply is no organic urban growth around the wall/river to speak of, what with S-Bahn tracks & a largish 4-5 lane street separating it from some more shopping/factory premises. What's the advantage over modern Kreuzberg or Warschauer/Reveler district which have hundreds of pubs and restaurants and way cool nightlife? Look up YAAM to see how lifeless & uninviting this area looks.

Berlin, party city:

artappraiser — Tue, 02 May 2017 07:36:38 +0000

In reply to Yeah, still quite a bit of

Berlin, party city:

.....The Holzmarkt development is the result of an unprecedented experiment in a major world capital: what if a city allowed a new quarter to be built not by the highest bidding property developers or the urban planners with the highest accolades, but the nightclub owners who put on the best parties in town? .....

And the smells of New York,

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 19:36:53 +0000

In reply to So sad it's hilarious.

And the smells of New York, plus free heating - in summer - so many delicious benefits.

So sad it's hilarious.

artappraiser — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 17:31:47 +0000

In reply to How Seattle Killed

So sad it's hilarious. Perfect depiction of why developers might want to vote Republican.

We've had "microhousing" in NYC for a very long time. My first apt. in NY was a 170 sq. ft. room plus little kitchenette and decent size bathroom, the Upper West Side in Manhattan, that's one nabe where newbies wanted to be at the time. But it's always been a little different: tiny studios and SRO's here never had those nice common usage facilities. For example, to do laundry, you dragged it blocks away to a filthy crowded laundromat with banker's hours. It was rent stabilized, that meant it basically went up with inflation (semi annually, increases in rent set by an independent board after listening to arguments from tenants and landlords) until it helped break me. But just like what the girl says in the article, it's nice to be close to the action when you're young and/or a newbie in town. And the cheaper rent in the outer boroughs does mean a huge added commuting expense. . NYC is so influenced by "location location location" this way that values of housing are quite affected by proximity to mass transit. Any jobs or gigs if you are free-lance that are not McJobs are in Manhattan. If you need a car, it's not a poor neighborhood. Etc. I know Paris and London are the same....

people in the "burbs" in flyover country don't really get this, what you give up to live in an urban center. not until they do it. It's a radical difference in lifestyle, you don't get to have space and amenities for equal money, that's what you trade out to be where the action is. Can be a real culture shock. Was to me when I moved to Manhattan at 29, I had a real nice 1 bedroom apt. in Milwaukee, had to switch to a tiny crummy place for much more money.

How Seattle Killed

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 01:34:17 +0000

In reply to location, location location

How Seattle Killed Microhousing

My take is that the profits

HSG — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 22:01:40 +0000

In reply to location, location location

My take is that the profits are all in building and marketing housing for the wealthy and upper middle class. Everybody else is too poor to pay very much and the gratin have so much that they'll pay just about any price for location location location. So my solution to the problem of unaffordable downtowns is like so many of my other solutions: reduce wealth and income inequality and take poverty head-on. So, here are three ways to make center cities more affordable:

1) Bring good jobs back to America through tariffs and much higher minimum wages.

2) Reduce the wealth gap even further with very high top marginal tax rates.

3) Provide significant relative tax advantages to developers and landlords who build/maintain affordable homes and/or rental units versus those who build, sell, or rent at very high prices.

Yeah, area n.e. of East

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 21:03:09 +0000

In reply to I was actually surprised how

Yeah, area n.e. of East Gallery is pretty amazing, much better than touristy Mitte, though even that has charm on sunmer nights when everyone's down by the river

I was actually surprised how

Obey — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 20:53:54 +0000

In reply to Yeah, still quite a bit of

I was actually surprised how gentrified the east has become. Prenzlauerberg is the Notting Hill of Berlin - the empty apartments that got occupied in the nineties by destitute artists, now getting sold off by those artists to internet millionaires for seven figures. The only noticeably grungy area to me was Kreuzberg in the old west. If anything the east is snazzier, entirely rebuilt except for the prewar apartment blocks, and the monumental structures of Karl Marx Allée turned into commie-chic bars with "authentic" cold war furniture.

I was amazed to learn from

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 18:31:33 +0000

In reply to location, location location

I was amazed to learn from Nate Silver that owning your home historically has been a bad deal.

location, location location

artappraiser — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:48:49 +0000

In reply to It's good to hear that

location, location location is the real estate value mantra. You can buy cheap livin' space where there are no jobs. So to solve this problem you either have to:

1) separate real estate from capitalism (need I remind how popular is the meme that owning one's own habitat is "the American dream" and that people worldwide can be made to go crazy to invest in pieces of paper saying they own a part of the dreamer's mortgages, beyond crazy and into dangerous to the world economy)

2) build public not-for-profit housing or subsidize developers to do so (where maybe half the denizens will still yearn for "the American dream")

3) go back to worker's living in a town owned by their boss

or ?