I love this modest proposal so much I am making an exception to my no-New-York-Times rule, and split it off from what was going to be a bonus section in the weekly Covid post. Time to think big. Both Mayors Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg offered climate-change plans that included extending the shoreline along the East River in Lower Manhattan. But these proposals, while admirable, would be small steps and would hardly make a dent with problems of such big scale.
I think this would be an incredibly exciting and energizing project. In addition to its tangible benefits, it would energize the city in all sorts of intangible ways.
Today, investors are willing to assign trillions of dollars of value to all sorts of dubious assets, but when something ambitious in the real world is proposed, most people scoff.
I'd like to state first off that I want to seperate myself from bad-objections 3 and 4 by saying I *fear* we can't do this especially in NYC, not that I would *smuggly tweet* that of course everyone knows it. If you've ever read The Wizard and The Prophet, I'm a wizard from a long line of wizards (3 generation of civil engineers). This is, as far as I can tell, 100% feasable from a technological POV. I have less hope for it from a cultural and poltical POV, but I hope very much to be wrong.
Because the Status Quo is very strong. This is a risable idea to TOFDBROTW (Target of Freddie DeBoer's Rant of the Week) set. But as soon as it gets done, those same people would demand it happen in SF, LA, Seattle, etc. (And probably Denver, Austin and Minneapolis, where people have this weard obsession with mimickng the coastal cities).
The Bay Area has an easier version of this opportunity in the form of taking over federal waterfront property at Treasure Island and an old Army base in Oakland. They didn't even have to do hard engineering stuff like creating land where there is water.
SF took control of Treasure Island in 2010 and Oakland took control of the West Oakland base circa 1999.
Nothing has been done with either.
I think the viability of the NYC proposal really rests on this question: Do you know the name of your city councilman? That's not a non sequitur. We still live in a democracy and we all have the government we deserve.
So, this is really, really cool but I'm a bit of a doomer. I don't see any way this gets done which wouldn't be much costlier in time and resources than just reforming land use and building on what's already there. It reminds me of asteroid mining proposals where the main attraction is that they're really cool (and, don't get me wrong, they are really cool) but there's actually plenty of most raw materials here on Earth if we needed them, they'd just be a little more expensive to get to (but much less so than space rocks). Likewise, if we live in a New York City which has too many veto points to approve some new high-rise apartments, I don't see how that's compatible with having few enough veto points that we can approve a massive new kiloscale engineering project. I'd love to live in a society where we can build new housing to solve the housing crisis and then build a new borough of New York City cuz we can. But it seems like we pretty obviously don't. Is there something I'm not getting about NYC politics where this would be doable without massive political overhauls?
I think this would be an incredibly exciting and energizing project. In addition to its tangible benefits, it would energize the city in all sorts of intangible ways.
Today, investors are willing to assign trillions of dollars of value to all sorts of dubious assets, but when something ambitious in the real world is proposed, most people scoff.
I'd like to state first off that I want to seperate myself from bad-objections 3 and 4 by saying I *fear* we can't do this especially in NYC, not that I would *smuggly tweet* that of course everyone knows it. If you've ever read The Wizard and The Prophet, I'm a wizard from a long line of wizards (3 generation of civil engineers). This is, as far as I can tell, 100% feasable from a technological POV. I have less hope for it from a cultural and poltical POV, but I hope very much to be wrong.
Because the Status Quo is very strong. This is a risable idea to TOFDBROTW (Target of Freddie DeBoer's Rant of the Week) set. But as soon as it gets done, those same people would demand it happen in SF, LA, Seattle, etc. (And probably Denver, Austin and Minneapolis, where people have this weard obsession with mimickng the coastal cities).
The Bay Area has an easier version of this opportunity in the form of taking over federal waterfront property at Treasure Island and an old Army base in Oakland. They didn't even have to do hard engineering stuff like creating land where there is water.
SF took control of Treasure Island in 2010 and Oakland took control of the West Oakland base circa 1999.
Nothing has been done with either.
I think the viability of the NYC proposal really rests on this question: Do you know the name of your city councilman? That's not a non sequitur. We still live in a democracy and we all have the government we deserve.
https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/City-to-get-Treasure-Island-for-105-million-3206898.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Army_Base
“so what are you going to do about it, punk?”
(This seemed like one of those situations where it's worth encouraging you to use the “try harder”.)
I don’t live in NYC, but like the chutzpah here.
So, this is really, really cool but I'm a bit of a doomer. I don't see any way this gets done which wouldn't be much costlier in time and resources than just reforming land use and building on what's already there. It reminds me of asteroid mining proposals where the main attraction is that they're really cool (and, don't get me wrong, they are really cool) but there's actually plenty of most raw materials here on Earth if we needed them, they'd just be a little more expensive to get to (but much less so than space rocks). Likewise, if we live in a New York City which has too many veto points to approve some new high-rise apartments, I don't see how that's compatible with having few enough veto points that we can approve a massive new kiloscale engineering project. I'd love to live in a society where we can build new housing to solve the housing crisis and then build a new borough of New York City cuz we can. But it seems like we pretty obviously don't. Is there something I'm not getting about NYC politics where this would be doable without massive political overhauls?