A TED talk, The Shadow Cities Of The Future and Why Squatter Cities Are A Good Thing by Robert Neuwirth, author, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, gives a different take on development economics, from mud hut cluster to developed city, with or without debt and property rights.
Video after jump.
Bethlehem Township developer Abraham Atiyeh announced two weeks ago that he's building a downtown Bethlehem development of town homes starting at $129,000, and national builder Pulte Homes has halted its large-home building in the area and last winter began marketing a new home, called "The Lehigh", with 1,050 square feet and starting price of $139,000.
McMansions No More ** Fewer behemoth homes may be built in the Lehigh Valley as turmoil in the housing market opens the door for smaller, more affordable living
Morning Call - Allentown, Pa.
Author: Matt Assad
Date: May 25, 2008
Start Page: A.1
Section: National
Text Word Count: 2299
[Via McAll]
Experts say the phenomenon of the newly rich gravitating
toward country-club enclaves like Alpine is well established
in American society.
The old adage is crowding into the winner’s circle
and so these superaffluent communities are very desirable
for the big winners in our society, and there’s always
the contrast between the old money and new money.
-- Jim Hughes,
Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and
Public Policy at Rutgers University.
Especially in the case of hip-hop stars, many of whom insist
they’ll never lose touch with their street roots.
-- NYT, on Alpine NJ, 07620.
Shorter Silicon Valley.
Need nerds (smart creative fanoys, not computer operators)
and rich people (investors and mentors within an hour's drive),
nice place to live (San Fanciscso, Boston, Seattle, Buffalo, Pittsburgh)
Need free thinking ofbeat (Portland, Boulder, New York, ) not stodgy (
Los Angeles, Las VegasSaint Louis, Detroit) bureaucrats.
Silicon Valley is grown, not built (comments).
-- Paul Graham
Continue reading "Silicon Valley is grown, not built. By Paul Graham" »
City views, cityscapes: Top 18 skylines in world.
When neighbors return, after having moved out temporarily to
have one of these steroid palaces built for them, I'm at a loss
for what to say.
Nice house seems insincere.
Where the hell did you get the money ?
would be aggressive and intrusive.
But it seems as if you should say something, right?
I want to say,
Why ? or,
You expecting quintuplets ?
I settle for
Looks like it's really coming along.
Agent for some nice downtown New Haven apartments.
Update 2006 November 24: transportblog is back to full strength posting.
Sadly, transportblog was on hiatus in 2005
Coverage of transport and transit, wide ranging.
An investigation of the not-so-subtle bad architecture in Beijing.
New urbanism proposes new models for the urban design of
master-planned communi-ties and town centers. The financial
performance of three projects is examined in detail: Seaside, a
second-home resort in Florida; Lakelands, a master-planned community
in Gaithersburg, Maryland; and Haile Village Center, a mixed-use
residential, commercial, and retail center outside Gainesville,
Florida.
Seaside, which consists of 630 residential units, about 45,000 square
feet of retail, and about 18,000 square feet of commercial space, has
slowly developed into a financial success. The first lots sold in 1982
for $15,000; by 1992, the average price of new lots sold was $130,000
and by 2001 it was $690,000. The project has become a model for
several larger second-home village-type resorts in northwest Florida.
Lakelands, with 220 developable acres, has about 1,572 residential
units (houses as well as multi-family), the majority produced by
national homebuilders. The selling rate has been good: in the first
three years, the project sold about 400 units a year.
The land at Haile Village was originally bought for $2,500 per acre
and is today sell-ing for more than $300,000 per acre; the value of
the project at build-out is estimated to be about $500,000 per acre.
Due to lack of visibility, there has been some difficulty in
attracting a large variety of retail tenants.
Union City, CA intermodal station will connect BART, Dumbarton Rail,
Capitol Corridor, and ACE Rail.
Excelent Urban Review STL architrectural review of Saint Louis, MO
housing and commercial real estate.
Free parking isn't really free. In fact, the average parking space
costs more than the average car. Initially, developers pay for the
required parking, but soon tenants do, and then their customers, and
so on, until the cost of parking has diffused throughout the economy.
When we shop, eat in a restaurant, or see a movie, we pay for parking
indirectly because its cost is included in the price of everything
from hamburgers to housing. The total subsidy for parking is
staggering, about the size of the Medicare or national defense
budgets. But free parking has other costs: It distorts transportation
choices, warps urban form, and degrades the environment.
It doesn't have to be this way. In The High Cost of Free Parking,
Donald Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely,
charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue
to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove
zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according
to the Yale-trained economist and UCLA planning professor, will make
parking easier and driving less necessary.
Torto Wheaton Research (TWR) studies commercial real estate.
Their Debt Risk Management has a nice list of features. See also
Portfolio strategy and misc research desk.
New Partnews for New Urbanism have a nice conference in Miami.
Architectural eyesore of the month, selected by James Howard Kunstler.