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Jonathan English
4,801 posts
Jonathan English
@EnglishRail
Fellow, @NYUMarron. PhD in Urban Planning, Columbia University. Writer for pubs incl @CityLab, @GlobeandMail.
Joined January 2014
- Truly the most New York thing ever is finally coming around to waste containers rather than piling garbage bags on the street, but then making it so the sanitation workers have to lift each bag out individually rather than just dumping whole thing like every other place on earth.
- One of the things that’s really hard for our generation to wrap our heads around is that until quite recently, the US had such a severe housing surplus that homes were literally being abandoned because nobody wanted to live in them in big cities all over the country, incl NYC 1/
- Replying to @EnglishRailOf course that world was an artifact of a one-time transportation revolution and is very unlikely to ever happen again. That’s why we need policies that reflect the world we now live in, not the world of 1970. 9/
- Replying to @EnglishRailPeople obviously know about places like Detroit but take Charlotte St in the Bronx (made famous by Jimmy Carter visit). It had apartment buildings that were abandoned & burned out. Was rebuilt as suburban style houses. Nobody could imagine there’d ever be demand for apartments 2/
- Rather than seeing it as a moral failing that suburbanites don’t ride transit, maybe we should consider it a rational response to the absence of decent transit service (a solvable problem).
- Main reason that midtown grew is that they banned steam trains south of 42nd street so the original grand central station was there. Once they built Grand Central Terminal, the New York Central did an extremely good job of developing the air rights with prestige office space. 1/You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
- I’m increasingly convinced that high(ish) speed regional rail could be the first big urban transport innovation since the expressway. If large numbers of people can affordably commute 60km in a half-hour, that’s a game changer.The world's fastest metro service, which reaches 160km/h, Guangzhou metro Line 18.
00:00 - Replying to @EnglishRailPart of the reason for the huge generational disconnect is that boomers grew up in that world and it’s been a dramatic shift to a world of housing shortage so quickly. They really did once live in a world where building too many homes meant house next door could be abandoned. 8/
- Replying to @EnglishRailOne of the most notable elements of Ed Koch’s mayoralty was that they renovated a lot of abandoned apartments into affordable housing. Many of the buildings had been seized by the city for unpaid taxes since they had effectively no property value. 3/
- Replying to @EnglishRailBut this is why artists could take over whole buildings in places like Soho. Declining industrial areas weren’t in high demand when even middle class people could live by Central Park. 5/
- Replying to @EnglishRailWhat caused this extreme surplus? The biggest reason was that the car and especially the expressway allowed people to commute much further and therefore live on houses built on previously low-value farmland far from the city center. 6/
- If I gave you a fifty year old map of New York City, you could navigate the city pretty much perfectly. So many problems are rooted in having built almost no new transportation infrastructure in a a half century.
