Jake's blog
Let's talk about NYC's new commuter rail terminal, Grand Central Madison.
BOTTOM LINE, UP FRONT: NYC's new $12 billion commuter rail terminal is a fiasco, the product of crummy planning and a political system unwilling to oversee the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.New York City's shiny new commuter rail terminal, Grand Central Madison, is now open for business. Grand Central Madison is the culmination of a three-decade-long project to bring the Long Island Rail Road, one of New York's three commuter rail operators, to the East Side of Manhattan. This is a good idea, but it was executed incredibly poorly. It illustrates all the ways that you can fuck up a project. The...
Let's talk about how the State brought the hammer down on bad local governments, and now there's a lot of new housing in the pipeline as a result.
tl;dr: Earlier this year, the State threatened to nuke city zoning laws if cities didn't plan to build enough housing. The cities tried to play games, the State nuked the zoning, and now there's a TON of new housing in the pipeline. So, about seven months ago, I wrote an essay explaining that every city in greater LA has to establish a rezoning plan to add their fair share of housing. Overall, greater LA needs to try to add 1.3 million more houses between 2021 and 2029. The cities of SoCal divided the quota up amongst themselves. If your plans...
Let's talk about what the California Legislature has done recently to make housing easier to build.
Bottom line, up front:This year, there's been four major reforms that have come out of Sacramento so far. They're pretty good measures which (1) should make it cheaper to build more housing by eliminating mandatory parking near transit (bill AB2097); (2) make more land available to build apartments on by legalizing apartments in commercial zones (bills SB6 and AB2011); (3) putting a measure on the ballot this November where the voters will decide whether to make it easier for the State to fund affordable housing (bill SCA2); and (4) making student housing exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (Bill...
Let's talk about how homelessness, poverty, and mental health funding aren't the same problem.
I've gone quiet for a while, since I'm finalizing my manuscript and the artwork for my book, "The Lost Subways of North America", which, God willing, will come out next year. TL;DR: I've been traveling the country doing research for my book, and the low levels of homelessness in poor places with badly-funded mental health systems is shocking. One of the things that's hit me most about traveling the country for my research is just how little of a connection there is between poverty and homelessness. Places like Detroit and West Virginia are dirt poor. If you drive around the...
Let's talk about suburban decay.
One really interesting phenomenon I've seen as I've gone through the Rust Belt is that the blighted city neighborhoods are now extending into the first ring of suburbs, the types of places which were built and laid out during the wealthy years of the 1950s and 1960s. We talk a lot about urban decay as a people and as a country, but not a whole lot about suburban decay.This shouldn't come as a surprise, in some ways. Most cities have name recognition, branding power, as marketers say. New York = banks. Los Angeles = movies. Detroit = cars. And when...