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.
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.
Enegizing the population is a hugely valuable public good. When I worked at NASA, every single person had a story about watching the moon landing, or learning about Sally Ride in grade school, or something like that. Its what helped them get up in the morning and drag themselves to a horrible, sclerotic "We don't do space anymore" organization.
I wasn't part of it, but if Neil Stevenson and the old Wired magazines are right, that kind of "anything is possible" energy is what powered Silicon Valley in the late 90's and early 00's.
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).
Yeah, I haven't seen even a hint of technical objection. I'd be curious of your estimate on real cost (both time and money) if we somehow decided to do it, before we turned it over to private real estate developers to build most of the buildings, and any details of how you'd do it.
I do agree that we definitely have a problem actually doing such things, and one reason I want to do it is to get us back to doing them.
I think the best comp are the Palm Islands in Dubai. A quick search says they are about 560 hectare is above-water land, took about 5 years for the first hotel to open, and cost $12billion.
For time, I have no doubt that this could be done in 5 years technologically. Palm Islands were not built with cutting edge technology. When we need to, we can build fast. See for example the Oroville Dam Spillway repear, done at an incredible speed. But watch the video on the Practical Engineering channel to get a sense of what had to happen on the regulartory side to make it happen.
For cost... a lot harder to say. IIRC, infrastructure in NYC runs about 20x the cost of France. So what multiplier we use for Dubai I have no idea. 40x would give you almost $500 billion. 400x would give you almost $5 trillion. If we took the approach China and Dubai took to development 20 years ago (removing all the veto points and yelling "GET IT DONE" until it got done) the price would be a lot lower. But it took something isomorphic to "All of California will die of dehydration" before we get there like with the dam repair.
(And I went rogue. I'm not a civil engineer. I do software and automation)
Thinking about the property development, I have no good ideas. I think the public-choice-informed solution is to sell it all to a developer with a requirement that they sell all of it off within X years so they can't be the worlds largest HOA. Let them figure out the highest use via the market. This is actually how a lot of cities get created in the last century in rural america, both as suburban developments or incorporating previously-unicorporated areas.
But rightly or wrongly, the concerns about environmental impact, equity, etc will never stand for that.
I’m hoping human instinct to favor novelty over boredom kicks in with all things DEI-related soon. How much longer can people talk about the same shit over and over and over again regardless of what the is?
I am not optomistic, but then again I have been known to say that none of you has ever seen a dead donkey, so that might just be more about me than anything else.
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.
I don't think this is quite true; they are building on Treasure Island as we speak, and new structures can be seen adjacent to the Bay Bridge. Although I would grant that it seems progress has been slow against the overall grand plan they put forth when they took control in 2010. (I don't know anything about the Oakland Army Base).
> The development of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island could take anywhere from 10 to 15 years to complete, according to Kheay Loke, a development manager for the Treasure Island Development project.
Yea we just have different definitions of done. I think these two projects should inform expectations and priors as to reasonable timelines and ambitions given a similar type of constituency and governance model.
We can agree that "things" are happening but nothing is done. We're talking about a timescale of decades and none of that land was reclaimed from the sea. It was literally a title transfer like any other real estate transaction.
But maybe NYC has a different type of constituency and governance that prioritizes development.
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.
Enegizing the population is a hugely valuable public good. When I worked at NASA, every single person had a story about watching the moon landing, or learning about Sally Ride in grade school, or something like that. Its what helped them get up in the morning and drag themselves to a horrible, sclerotic "We don't do space anymore" organization.
I wasn't part of it, but if Neil Stevenson and the old Wired magazines are right, that kind of "anything is possible" energy is what powered Silicon Valley in the late 90's and early 00's.
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).
Yeah, I haven't seen even a hint of technical objection. I'd be curious of your estimate on real cost (both time and money) if we somehow decided to do it, before we turned it over to private real estate developers to build most of the buildings, and any details of how you'd do it.
I do agree that we definitely have a problem actually doing such things, and one reason I want to do it is to get us back to doing them.
I think the best comp are the Palm Islands in Dubai. A quick search says they are about 560 hectare is above-water land, took about 5 years for the first hotel to open, and cost $12billion.
For time, I have no doubt that this could be done in 5 years technologically. Palm Islands were not built with cutting edge technology. When we need to, we can build fast. See for example the Oroville Dam Spillway repear, done at an incredible speed. But watch the video on the Practical Engineering channel to get a sense of what had to happen on the regulartory side to make it happen.
For cost... a lot harder to say. IIRC, infrastructure in NYC runs about 20x the cost of France. So what multiplier we use for Dubai I have no idea. 40x would give you almost $500 billion. 400x would give you almost $5 trillion. If we took the approach China and Dubai took to development 20 years ago (removing all the veto points and yelling "GET IT DONE" until it got done) the price would be a lot lower. But it took something isomorphic to "All of California will die of dehydration" before we get there like with the dam repair.
(And I went rogue. I'm not a civil engineer. I do software and automation)
Fair enough. Curious to hear other people's estimates.
Thinking about the property development, I have no good ideas. I think the public-choice-informed solution is to sell it all to a developer with a requirement that they sell all of it off within X years so they can't be the worlds largest HOA. Let them figure out the highest use via the market. This is actually how a lot of cities get created in the last century in rural america, both as suburban developments or incorporating previously-unicorporated areas.
But rightly or wrongly, the concerns about environmental impact, equity, etc will never stand for that.
I’m hoping human instinct to favor novelty over boredom kicks in with all things DEI-related soon. How much longer can people talk about the same shit over and over and over again regardless of what the is?
I am not optomistic, but then again I have been known to say that none of you has ever seen a dead donkey, so that might just be more about me than anything else.
If it's an argument over who gets the status and power, and who is in and out of the inner ring? Until there are no more people left to talk about it.
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
> Nothing has been done with either.
I don't think this is quite true; they are building on Treasure Island as we speak, and new structures can be seen adjacent to the Bay Bridge. Although I would grant that it seems progress has been slow against the overall grand plan they put forth when they took control in 2010. (I don't know anything about the Oakland Army Base).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island_Development#Project_status
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/construction-begins-for-long-awaited-treasure-island-development/
As of 2016 they were under construction:
> The development of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island could take anywhere from 10 to 15 years to complete, according to Kheay Loke, a development manager for the Treasure Island Development project.
Yea we just have different definitions of done. I think these two projects should inform expectations and priors as to reasonable timelines and ambitions given a similar type of constituency and governance model.
We can agree that "things" are happening but nothing is done. We're talking about a timescale of decades and none of that land was reclaimed from the sea. It was literally a title transfer like any other real estate transaction.
But maybe NYC has a different type of constituency and governance that prioritizes development.
Agreed on all your points here, and on the conclusion that any NYC project should be measured in decades, probably many of them.
“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?