New York City

Greening public housing

The Clinton Global Initiative is arranging to have banks finance green retrofits of NYC public housing. CGI is, for my money, one of the most interesting groups figuring out practical, post-ideological solutions to climate change.

A good NYT piece on Alice Waters

Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism. Alice Waters is so beloved and renowned in the sustainable-food world that her status approaches that of a saint. Inevitably, all that reverence gives rise to a certain amount of irreverence. I don’t think anyone’s gone after her with the vitriol that Christopher […]

Rebuilding the NYC financial district has resulted in a walkable residential community

On this anniversary of that horrible morning six years ago, perhaps we are starting to see some good rising from the ashes. The southern part of the island of Manhattan, which used to turn into a ghost town after work, is starting to take on some of the characteristics of many of the other neighborhoods in New York City -- what University of Michigan architecture and urban design professor Christopher B. Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism":

From an urban planning point of view it means a place where, within a quarter- to half-mile radius, you can get pretty much everything you need and maybe even walk to work.

According to the New York Times, the financial district is becoming home to a considerable residential population -- albeit tilted toward the wealthy -- but this permanent population enriches many other aspects of the area:

Optimism abounds now among developers and merchants, who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into real estate along the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan. They are counting on the district, in its next incarnation, to be not just a collection of office towers and trading floors, but also a self-sustaining residential neighborhood that will appeal to families.

Back before the World Trade Center was built starting in the late 1960s, the area where it stood was known as an electronics district -- my dad used to go there in the 1930s to find parts for radios. The first retail television set was sold there.

And New York City is the healthiest of all

As rural and suburban areas have grown, they have become more car dependent. Meanwhile, cities have reduced air pollution. As a consequence, the old urban health disadvantage has disappeared. City dwellers have higher life expectancies and better health on average [PDF] than people in suburbs or the country. And according to New York Magazine, New York City, probably the most urban of U.S. cities, has the greatest health advantage.

The difference seems to boil down to walking. People in urban areas walk more than people in rural or suburban areas (on average).

Why do New Yorkers do better than, say, people in Portland or Seattle, which are also pretty walkable cities? Apparently people in New York walk faster. The people who promoted the whole power walking thing got it right. Walking quickly is healthier than walking slowly.

On Edit: one other relevant difference between rural/suburban and urban: city dwellers, by driving fewer miles, are less likely to be invovled in auto accidents.

Who knew things grew in NYC?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Brooklyn), I got lunch with one of our Gristmill readers, Marielle Anzelone, who works as a botanist for the city of New York. We talked for well over an hour. I learned more about plants, invasive species, urban ecology, and biodiversity than I could possibly […]

Subsidizing drivers needs to end

This article in the NYT highlights the absurdity of current transportation policy. While New York City is trying to get federal funding to help it pay for a congestion pricing and traffic congestion policy, the federal government is, at the same time, handing out large tax breaks to help people reduce the costs of driving to work. It's yet another example of government policy gone awry, badly.

The solution isn't sexy, won't get you on TV, and doesn't make for great headlines that will earn prestige: eliminate all government subsidies, and either cap pollution or tax it. It's not rocket science.

But still no actual decision on whether it will happen

The federal government has agreed to allot $354 million to New York City to help it launch its congestion pricing plan. Yeah, that one where state legislators were first like “Hmmm, I dunno,” and then they were all like “no way,” and then some enviros were like, “Eh, maybe it’s not that great anyway.” Not […]

Subways are the best

Recently I tracked down an article on the annual electricity use of the New York City subway system: 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh). To put that in perspective, the entire U.S. economy uses about 4,000 billion kwh annually. According to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, there were 1.499 billion trips made on the subway in 2006. So it takes a little over 1 kwh to move one person on trips, of varying length, in New York City.

That's 4.1 million riders per day, on average. So if 200 million trips a day are required in the U.S. for everybody, and if everybody rode a subway, we would need about 90 billion kwh for personal transportation -- about 2 percent of our current electricity use.

For comparison, let's use Gar Lipow's estimation that a super-duper plug-in hybrid would travel 65 miles using 8 kwh.  If the average trip was 8 miles, we would also have 1 kwh per trip. Something to strive for?

Only cyclists and walkers remain calm

At around 4:30am today, a powerful storm swept through New York City and surrounding areas, dumping nearly two inches of rain over Central Park in just one hour before spinning into "tornado-like" gusts in Brooklyn.

The downpour was over soon enough, but the sudden surge of water flooded our subway system, causing every major line to be shut down. Service on buses and trains into the city was either suspended or delayed, right in the midst of rush hour on a sweltering hot day.

By now, most people have either made it to work or given up trying, and at City Room, a blog in the NY Times regional section, many are weighing in about their morning commutes.