New York City – Page 3 – artdiamondblog.com

Poor Are Exiting High-Housing-Cost Cities

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A3) Americans are leaving the costliest metro areas for more affordable parts of the country at a faster rate than they are being replaced, according to an analysis of census data, reflecting the impact of housing costs on domestic migration patterns.

Those mostly likely to move from expensive to inexpensive metro areas were at the lower end of the income scale, under the age of 40 and without a bachelor’s degree, the analysis by home-tracker Trulia found.
. . .
Another study this year from California policy group Next 10 and Beacon Economics found that New York state and California had the largest net losses of domestic migrants between 2007 and 2014, and that lower- and middle-income people were more likely to leave.

For the full story, see:
CHRIS KIRKHAM. “Costly Cities See Exodus.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Nov. 3, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 1, 2016, and has the title “More Americans Leave Expensive Metro Areas for Affordable Ones.”)

“To Understand Zoning, You Have to Have a Law Degree”

(p. 27) Not all buildings are worth keeping. In Midtown East, many nonconforming structures have low ceilings and columns that make them unappealing to new businesses. Some developers have gone so far as to demolish all but the bottom quarter of their buildings, and then build up from there, allowing them to retain the old zoning for their plots so as not to sacrifice a single square foot. The city is currently reconsidering a proposal that would allow these buildings to be rebuilt to their original size and possibly even larger.
It does not have to be this complicated. In honor of the code’s 100th anniversary, the Municipal Art Society of New York has called on City Hall to consider overhauling the code in a way that would make it intelligible to all.
“To understand zoning, you have to have a law degree, it’s so convoluted and so dense,” Mike Ernst, director of planning at the civic group, said. “The whole process of how buildings get built these days is so confusing and opaque to people. There really should be more transparency, so people can have an understanding of what the future holds for their city.”

For the full story, see:
“Reviled, Revered, and Still Challenging Russia to Evolve.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., MAY 22, 2016): 27.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 20, 2016, and has the title “40 Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today.” It is substantially longer than the print version and includes three authors, while no authors were listed for the print version. The authors listed for the online version were: QUOCTRUNG BUI, MATT A.V. CHABAN and JEREMY WHITE.)

Regulations and Bureaucratic Inefficiency May Kill Restaurant

(p. A22) To begin with, although the B&H Dairy Restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan now hangs by a thread, no one was hurt there on March 26 [, 2015], the day that three buildings on the same block were leveled by a gas explosion.
. . .
“On the third day after the explosion, people from the building department and Con Edison came together,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “They inspected the place, upstairs, downstairs, the pipes, the basement. They told me, ‘You are O.K., you should be fine, no problem.’ ”
That changed, he said, in the charged days that followed, as it emerged that apparently illegal alterations to the gas lines had been made in one of the buildings down the street.
The original inspector returned, he said, and told him that another inspection was going to happen in a couple of days. “He said, ‘You’re not going to pass that inspection. Because of what happened next door, I don’t want to be responsible for the future,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said.
All of the gas piping in the building has to be replaced, a job the landlord has taken on, though it is not clear what deficiencies it had. The Buildings Department file for 127 Second Avenue shows that there were no open violations on the premises in March, and none now.
After questions were put four times to the city on Thursday about the nature of the problems with B&H’s operation, a spokesman for the mayor said the administration was trying to help small businesses affected by the explosion, including the restaurant.
In B&H, Mr. Abdelwahed said, the inspector noted that his stove had five burners, but the plans on file showed only four. “He required me to correct it on the plan,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “Originally it was four. I don’t know how it came to be five. It’s not an issue. Where was an inspector before all this? You’re trying to show you’re working?”
. . .
“He told me, ‘You have to change the fire system,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said of the inspector. “Of course, I had a fire suppression system all the time, inspected. I told him, ‘I am going to go out of business.’ He said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’ They don’t want to be responsible for anything.”
Because the fire suppression system was going to jut into the backyard, Mr. Abdelwahed had to apply for permission from the city’s Landmarks Commission as the block is part of a historic landmark district. Only after that approval was granted could his contractor apply for a building permit.
“What’s killing them is the lag time,” said Mr. Reynolds, who is organizing crowdfunding support for the restaurant. Bernadette Nation, an official with the city’s Department of Small Business Services, has cut red tape in getting permits issued, and their story has been covered on New York 1 and by many blogs.

For the full story, see:
JIM DWYER. “About New York; Unharmed by a Gas Explosion, but Choked by the Red Tape That Followed.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 10, 2015): A22.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The quote from Mr. Reynolds in the last passage above, appears in the print version of the article, but not in the online version of the article.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 9, 2015.)

Ugly, Invasive, Depressing Federal LEDs Disrupt Sleep and Increase Risk of Breast Cancer

(p. B1) In my repellently contented middle age, I don’t seek blue light. Like most sane people, I spurn restaurants whose lighting glares. I recoil from mirrors under fluorescent tubes. I switch on an overhead only to track down a water bug while wielding a flip-flop. Yet each evening from March onward, in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live part of the year, it seems as if the overhead is always on.
Along with other parts of South Brooklyn, Windsor Terrace is an early recipient of the Department of Transportation’s new light-emitting diode streetlights. New Yorkers who have not yet been introduced to these lights: We are living in your future.
Our new street “lamps” — too cozy a word for the icy arrays now screaming through our windows — are meant to be installed across all five boroughs by 2017. Indeed, any resident of an American municipality that has money problems (and what city doesn’t?) should take heed.
In interviews with the media, my fellow experimental subjects have compared the nighttime environment under the new streetlights to a film set, a prison yard, “a strip mall in outer space” and “the mother ship coming in for a landing” in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Although going half-blind at 58, I can read by the beam that the new lamp blasts into our front room without tapping our own Con Ed service. Once the LEDs went in, our next-door neighbor began walking her dog at night in sunglasses.
Medical research has firmly established that blue-spectrum LED light can disrupt sleep patterns. This is the same illumination that radiates in far smaller doses from smartphone and computer screens, to which we’re advised to avoid exposure for at least an hour before bed, because it can suppress the production of melatonin. . . .
While the same light has also been associated with increased risk of breast cancer and mood disorders, in all honesty my biggest beef with LEDs has nothing to do with health issues. These lights are ugly. They’re invasive. They’re depressing. New York deserves better.
. . .
Even fiscally and environmentally conscientious California has compromised on this point. Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco have all opted for yellow-rich LEDs. These cities have willingly made the modest 10-15 percent sacrifice in efficiency for an ambience that more closely embodies what Germans call Gemütlichkeit and Danes call hygge: an atmosphere of hospitality, homeyness, intimacy and well-being.
. . .
As currently conceived, the D.O.T.’s streetlight plan amounts to mass civic vandalism. If my focus on aesthetics makes this issue sound trivial, the sensory experience of daily life is not a frivolous matter. Even in junior high school, I understood that lighting isn’t only about what you see, but how you feel.

For the full commentary, see:
LIONEL SHRIVER. “Ruining That Moody Urban Glow.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., OCT. 18, 2015): 5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 17, 2015.)

The Dynamism of Venturesome New Yorkers: “If You Want Country Living, Move to the Country”

(p. A18) One cannot live any closer to the terminals of La Guardia Airport than the residents of East Elmhurst, Queens. Some homes sit only a few hundred yards away from the control tower, on the opposite side of the Grand Central Parkway. The new $4 billion airport hub envisioned for the site, announced this week by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, would be even closer.
So it might be assumed that the promise of years of heavy-duty construction and the associated noise, traffic and dust would fill residents with dread.
Not quite.
“We live in New York City, honey,” said Michele Mongeluzo, 56, whose house sits on a rise just south of the parkway, offering an unobstructed view of the airport and the proposed construction site. “If you want country living, move to the country.”
In interviews this week along the blocks closest to the airport, residents almost universally said that they not only had no trepidation about the construction but that they also actually welcomed it. Improvements, they said, were long overdue.
Furthermore, they suggested, what was a little construction on top of the aural challenges — the roaring jet engines, the chop of helicopter rotors, the incessant highway traffic — that they had already contended with and apparently overcome?
“If it’s noisy, I’m used to it,” said Freddy Fuhrtz, 75, who retired as an employee in the cargo division of Pan Am and still lives in the two-story house on 92nd Street where he grew up and raised his children. “It’s progress.”

For the full story, see:
KIRK SEMPLE. “Construction Plans Don’t Faze Airport Neighbors.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 31, 2015): A18 & A21.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 30, 2015, and has the title “Construction Plans for La Guardia Airport Don’t Faze Its Neighbors.”)

Uber Used Political Entrepreneurship to Fight Government Regulations

(p. A15) Mayor Bill de Blasio’s summertime battle with Uber exposed vulnerabilities in his political operation and has given rise to resentment among many of the allies he will need to advance his agenda at City Hall.
. . .
Aides to the mayor said they weren’t prepared for the force of Uber’s campaign-style attack of television ads, which began to air on July 14, the day after they met with Uber officials to negotiate.
Uber also ran a sophisticated digital strategy, with more than 40,000 people emailing the mayor and almost 20,000 sending him twitter messages.
City Hall repeatedly stumbled when it tried to fight back.
Aides managed to send emails to thousands of Uber users, saying they were only trying to slow the car service’s expansion–while studying the issue–but were flooded by many people incorrectly accusing them of trying to totally ban the service.
. . .
After Uber staged several large rallies, the mayor’s office aggressively tried to find supporters. But a rally on City Hall steps had fewer than 200 people, and many other officials didn’t want to enter the fray.
Many of the city’s influential black leaders were already backing Uber and had appeared at a July 14 news conference. Aides to the mayor were furious. “It was the African-American ministers that turned this fight,” said Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a pro-business group.

For the full story, see:
JOSH DAWSEY. “War With Uber Hurt de Blasio With Allies; Aides to the mayor say they weren’t prepared for the force of Uber’s campaign-style attack of TV ads.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 31, 2015): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 30, 2015.)

Cat Stevens Protests New York Government Ban on Paperless Tickets

(p. C3) Yusuf, the singer until recently called Yusuf Islam, but better known as Cat Stevens for his 1970s hits like “Peace Train,” has canceled a concert at the Beacon Theater in frustration over New York state laws on ticket scalping.
. . .
“I have been a longtime supporter of paperless tickets to my shows worldwide and avoiding scalpers,” Yusuf wrote. “Unfortunately NY has a state law that requires all tickets sold for shows in NYC to be paper, enabling them to be bought and sold at inflated prices.”
After heavy lobbying by the ticketing industry, New York passed a law in 2010, which has since been renewed, requiring promoters to offer customers the option of transferrable tickets.

For the full story, see:
BEN SISARIO. “Cat Stevens Cancels Show and Cites Ticket Law.” The New York Times (Thurs., SEPTEMBER 25, 2014): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPTEMBER 24, 2014, and has the title “Yusuf, the Former Cat Stevens, Cancels New York Concert.”)

Government Wire Inspectors Only Showed Up to Get Their Pay

(p. 121) Edison had originally planned to offer service to the entirety of south Manhattan, south of Canal Street and north of Wall Street, but engineering considerations forced him to carve out a smaller district, bounded by Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry Streets. Still, his company had to place underground some eighty thousand linear feet of electrical wire. This had never been attempted before, so it should not have been a surprise when H. O. Thompson, the city’s commissioner of public works, summoned Edison to his office to explain that the city would have to be assured that the lines were installed safely. Thompson was assigning five inspectors to oversee the work, whose cost would be covered by an assessment of $5 per day, per inspector, payable (p. 122) each week. When Edison left Thompson’s office, he was crestfallen, anticipating the harassment and delays ahead that would be caused by the inspectors’ interference. On the day that work began, however, the inspectors failed to appear. Their first appearance was on Saturday afternoon, to draw their pay. This set the pattern that the inspectors followed as the work proceeded through 1881 and into 1882.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Among 1890s Wall Street Elite, “It Was Fashionable to Be Anti-Semitic”

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) J.P. Morgan may well have been the most powerful banker who ever lived. Certainly he was the most powerful American banker. But the banking world that he and his firm dominated was a short-lived one, lasting only from the 1890s to the Depression of the 1930s. Susie J. Pak explores Morgan’s world, especially its social aspects, in “Gentlemen Bankers,” and the exploration is very interesting indeed.
. . .
In Wall Street at the time, there were two groups of private banking firms; those with Jewish partners and those with gentile ones. And while they did business together, often forming syndicates to handle large underwritings, they led separate social lives. They belonged to different clubs, stayed at different hotels and resorts. They didn’t attend the weddings of one another’s children. The reason, of course, was anti-Semitism. But as Ms. Pak notes, it had nothing to do with the ancient, religiously motivated anti-Semitism typical in Europe. This latter-day anti-Semitism was essentially social in character: To be blunt, it was fashionable to be anti-Semitic.
In earlier decades of the 19th century, affluent Jews had mingled socially with their gentile neighbors. They had been among the founding members of such old-line clubs as the Union Club (est. 1836) and the Union League Club (1863). Jesse Seligman, a partner in the well-regarded Jewish banking firm of J. & W. Seligman, was vice president of the Union League Club in 1893. But when he put his son up for membership that year, he was rejected. “Those who voted against him,” a biographer of the Seligman family wrote, “said they had nothing against him personally; they objected to his race.” His stunned father resigned from the club. He died the next year, aged 66; some said the incident contributed to his death.

For the full review, see:
JOHN STEELE GORDON. “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Gentlemen Bankers’ by Susie J. Pak; In the age of J.P. Morgan, the sons of Jewish bankers attended Ivy League colleges, but were excluded from the myriad social and athletic organizations.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri, August 30, 2013): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date August 29, 2013, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Gentlemen Bankers’ by Susie J. Pak; In the age of J.P. Morgan, the sons of Jewish bankers attended Ivy League colleges, but were excluded from the myriad social and athletic organizations.”)

The book under review, is:
Pak, Susie J. Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J.P. Morgan, Harvard Studies in Business History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

FDR and LaGuardia Legacy for NYC: Feds Fund Foolish Projects?

Source of book image: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-XZ916_bkrvam_DV_20130627152210.jpg

(p. 16) Fiorello La Guardia is regularly ranked not only as the greatest mayor of New York City, but as the greatest mayor of any city in all of American history. His pugnacious charisma, managerial competence and expansive vision still set a near-impossible standard for any candidate for municipal office.

But, as Mason B. Williams’s fascinating new book “City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York” reminds us, La Guardia’s success rested to a large degree on Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to “channel the resources of the federal government through the agencies of America’s cities and counties.”
The questions raised by the New Deal’s role in the development of New York remain relevant. President Obama champions infrastructure spending, but does that spending create local value? Should Washington support cities, like Detroit, that cannot support themselves? Does the power created by an expansive public sector lead to unacceptable abuse?
. . .
Williams tells the story of La Guardia and Roosevelt with insight and elegance, but his book doesn’t address the deeper controversies around that partnership. Did La Guardia’s New Deal spending saddle New York with obligations too expensive to maintain in the long run? Did a car-heavy construction strategy eventually enable an exodus from the city? La Guardia built much that still has value, but did the precedent of federal funding make foolish projects more likely?
Still, Williams’s aim is to write history, not policy analysis, and he succeeds impressively at that. America’s cities are the country’s true economic heartland, and much of our most important past is urban. “City of Ambition” helps us to understand that past.

For the full review, see:
EDWARD L. GLAESER. “Fiorello!; LaGuardia’s Outsize Personality Contributed to His Success, But So Did His Partnership with Franklin D. Roosevelt.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., July 18, 2013): 16.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 18, 2013, and the title “Fiorello!; ‘City of Ambition,’ by Mason B. Williams.”)

The book under review, is:
Williams, Mason B. City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.