• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

NYC: Death of a Once Great City

More and more I think wealth inequality is the singular destroyer of the American way of life.
 
There’s a pretty strong analogy with KD and Cousins joining the Warriors. The rich keep getting richer.
 
I couldn't make it through the whole article, there were too many terrible takes in there.
 
You could write nearly that same article about London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris or Berlin. The global megalopolises barely belong to nations anymore, and attract huge volume of residents from all over the globe. This has created massive housing crunches and skyrocketing rent prices in all of those cities (and many others). Very, very few cities have at all been prepared for the massive shift of living situations from more rural to more urban in the past 25-30 years - and especially the shift to the megalopolises.

The answer is likely building massive amounts of affordable housing in nearly every major city - but that takes money and political commitment that very few cities have shown. The sociological factors driving people to congregate in the bigger global capitals is not going to lessen any time in the near future.
 
There is also the problem that real estate is often used as a money cleaning scheme. Dirty money buys lavish properties, driving up prices in the market as a whole. The purchasers of course have no intention to live there, limiting housing supply. Often they don’t have any desire to rent the properties out either.

I saw it all the time in Singapore and it seems very common in NY as well.
 
There’s a pretty strong analogy with KD and Cousins joining the Warriors. The rich keep getting richer.

Also very similar in that the Magic and Suns are still better basketball players than 99.99% of the rest of the world, but everyone just likes to bitch about how much they suck compared to the Warriors.
 
Almost feel sorry for the author who lives in a rent stabilized apartment. He had his rent triple in 20 years. He is probably paying $1200 for his 2 br/2 bth apartment on the upper west side.
 
Almost feel sorry for the author who lives in a rent stabilized apartment. He had his rent triple in 20 years. He is probably paying $1200 for his 2 br/2 bth apartment on the upper west side.

How do you know what the author has toupee?

That’s just a bald assertion by you.

Lots of people are rightfully wigging out over the transformation of NYC

The opportunity to live in NYC is significantly receding.

The situation is quite hairy, actually.

Your plugs for the super-rich notwithstanding.

Landlords are scalping tenants these days.

These days, NYC is barren of character.

The truth has been uncovered, the future stark.
 
I've been to manhattan several times. i think this affects residents far, far more than tourists
 
It's true here in Charleston too. A lot of a great dive bars of the past are gone and replace with boutique hotels. The affordable apartments and restaurants are being replaced with big apartment complexes and high end restaurants. Living on the peninsula has become a joke unless you want to spend $2k for a loft in a nicer part of town. As a lifelong resident here aside from college, it sort of makes me sad. The city only caters to tourists now.
 
Austin is an absolute clusterfuck of high rise condos, bullshit hotels, and parking lots where once brilliant local restaurants and dive bars once stood . I'm sure catamount loves this stuff though. Probably lives in one of those high rises.
 
There is also the problem that real estate is often used as a money cleaning scheme. Dirty money buys lavish properties, driving up prices in the market as a whole. The purchasers of course have no intention to live there, limiting housing supply. Often they don’t have any desire to rent the properties out either.

I saw it all the time in Singapore and it seems very common in NY as well.
Land banking is a major cause of rent inflation in major metropolitan cities - NYC, Seattle, and San Francisco especially. Foreign investors connected to urban development projects are especially responsible for basically laundering money this way
 
Smaller towns are not immune. Service industry workers in Colorado mountain towns have 1+ hour commutes. Telluride is struggling to build enough affordable housing for the workers.
 
You could write nearly that same article about London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris or Berlin. The global megalopolises barely belong to nations anymore, and attract huge volume of residents from all over the globe. This has created massive housing crunches and skyrocketing rent prices in all of those cities (and many others). Very, very few cities have at all been prepared for the massive shift of living situations from more rural to more urban in the past 25-30 years - and especially the shift to the megalopolises.

The answer is likely building massive amounts of affordable housing in nearly every major city - but that takes money and political commitment that very few cities have shown. The sociological factors driving people to congregate in the bigger global capitals is not going to lessen any time in the near future.

But what is “affordable housing” in a market economy? Affordable housing in a high demand market will quickly become unaffordable. The real solution is to make smaller markets and rural areas more viable places to live.

But the sad story is private and political interests that only service the wealthy are never going to look out for everyone else.
 
Back
Top