matt439miller.bsky.social
Personal tweets on transit, urbanism, and (increasingly) housing.
130 posts
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634 following
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Hmm, yeah, I guess it was one of the minis across the river my friend had a basement ADU in.
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Undeniably. A developer who can gain access to location amenities being squatted by NIMBYs has a lot to gain. But their political position is weak, so they get nudged to the lowest financially viable thing, which is far lower density than land values would support.
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Arguably, freight in central cities is kind of a legacy issue of their historic role as central places. But moving freight yards is hard, because you need a big contiguous area, and those simply don't exist in even moderately central locations.
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? Public road, not a lot we can do to stop them.
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Have they ditched the owner occupier requirement yet?
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There are lots of reasons to rent:
1. Maybe you can’t afford a downpayment.
2. Maybe interest rates are too high.
3. Maybe you’d rather invest your money in stocks or a small business.
4. Maybe you want the option to upsize or downsize or move closer to work in a few years.
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The US subsidizes ownership as part of a political project to convert socialist sympathizers into petite bourgeoisie capitalist identiers, as part of the undying War on Communism. (Only semi joking).
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So we have an incumbent versus challenger dynamic. Which, again, is why ADUs (and parking and zoning) are such hot tickets fights right now.
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We've gotten incrementally better at All the Things, but there's been no paradigm shift. Maybe self -driving vehicles or advanced air mobility will do the trick. Until then, we're stuck with a near-fixed supply of developable land. And so all of today's battles are about land use and who decides.
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A sequence of revolutions in urban transportation technology (railed omnibus, funicular, rapid transit, electric traction, automobiles, limited access roads) have repeatedly expanded the developable area. But there's been nothing new in high capacity transportation in decades.
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That's an entirely normal circumstance in most places. (There is a cool map of land vs structure value out there).
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Less land per unit means less cost per unit. Lowering rents can only be achieved be either sharing land, or by lowering transportation costs in a way that adds to the supply of developable land.
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No, not in the traditional taxi sense. But they will circulate in high traffic areas in order to be proximate to where the next passenger pickup is likely to be.
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Which is why ADUs and other forms of 'barnacling' and #missingmiddle are really revolutionary: they upset the political equilibrium by pitting subsets of owner-occupiers against one another, while creating a constituency of small developers who aren't just profiting on 'development facilitation'.
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So if you are either an owner sitting on an appreciating asset (while enjoying its amenity value) or a developer specialized in securing entitlements, there is no reason to rock the boat.
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As anyone living in a moldy cardboard shack in SF can attest, most of the value in property isn't in the structure, but in the land, and future use value for redevelopment.
Our under-supply of housing means that the ROI on the handful of new units is quite nice.
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If you just upzone for duplex, eventually the rents from a duplex minus rebuilt costs will exceed rents from one plex. (Eventually). Until then, it's just the entitlement capitalized into the OnePlex's value.
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Upzoning from one plex to duplex is basically worthless for affordability. (Exception being an ADU, as it can be added without replacement costs.
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The rule of thumb I have is that redevelopment happens when the new thing that can be built is 3x the value of the existing use. So, if I upzone, and it only increases the value by 2x, redevelopment won't happen, which will impair housing affordability.
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Only a handful of transit systems make a lot of their budget from fares. Those systems are also the largest and oldest systems. Pandemic wrecked ridership, feds band-aided it with cash, cash is running out, but ridership still hasn't recovered to pre pandemic levels.
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Good signage is a skill.
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Presuming competition between developers...
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Quick look at the map says thru running to/from NJ probably more helpful.
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If you “almost hit a cyclist,” the problem isn’t the kid on the bike — it’s you in the 6000 lb machine.
Cyclists aren’t creating danger by existing.
Drivers are creating danger by pretending they own the road.
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Fear that if exposed to cheap and cheerful china mobiles, most of the US would simply abandon our high end tanks (again). Real fear is that if e-cars replace g-cars, the US simply has very little competence to fight back with.
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Making cars is hard. so, despite the high end price, it may be best to think about early generation Teslas as 'just good enough' rather than good. So long-term viability never a concern, any more than it was for the early e-scooters.
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The theory in it is pretty clear: easier driving means longer drives. While circling for fares (robotaxies) means more central city congestion.
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I'm not clear on what the chart is showing with relation to what you've said
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Been guilty of that. A few times.
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We all deserve to get home safe, efficiently & w/out an extra 30-50mins on the 401. Many on our team drive. Traffic on the 400 series hwys delays & causes them to miss time from work & their families. It's about time the premier stops belly aching about bike lanes & gets serious about congestion.
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Ethnostate is gonna ethnostate