Chris Goldammer

It should be the official map: (www.nyc.gov/site/plannin...).

But the zoning calculations are their own very special beast, that I've only partially attempted.

I'll try to find out. I find out after the fact when stuff doesn't look right :)

Good point, I’ll review that as well. Others have alerted me to other things (park ave, broadway in Manhattan). Will see how that’s treated in the data.

Patterns are everywhere

See the full list here: citytracker.ai/images/stree...

(Still figuring out some minor issues, updates coming).

Coming up in a few days: NYC car traffic levels, predicted at the lot level (not a traffic model, some simple ML instead).

Instead of a single “walk score”, I want the components for quality of life. It’s not just that I can walk to a subway station, but that I can do safely and in quiet.

By borough, but this might be a bit too much data.

Working on a new map: The width of the nearest street.

If you want to avoid (or pursue) living on a wide street.

I'm reading up on the NY/NYC income tax proposals, and I really wish there was a data-driven political discussion in between:

A. The revenue of a tax is exactly Base x Rate. No one changes behavior in response.
B. Every tax ever is on the down-trending part of the Laffer curve and loses us money.

Yes I'm about to find out!

I'd want it to be just a text interface, so you can interact with it on social media if you want, and you get a summary and map and all the verified raw data from the API.

I want *you* to create your own maps. I’m done creating them myself :).

If you like the maps I've created, then I want to create your own maps, for free.

The full ambition (we're on it): Summarize anything (tax lots, filings, permits, sales, etc), based on any filter, by any geography.

The blog post shows how to do it.
blog.citytracker.ai/creating-map...

„Those that are not … will be 1 story commercial with 2-4 stories residential, unless neighbors worry about shadows, then it’ll be shorter“

How do historic districts (black outline) change over time? Let's look at the West Village and nearby Manhattan.

Are we getting new units via new buildings? No!
Instead, we're losing units via townhouse combinations.

“Here’s one simple change to cut housing costs and make us more safe”

And probably the biggest effect: New and dense housing has dramatically lower fire risk than single family. By enabling denser housing we lower *overall* fire risk.

Not in my vineyard!

The water analogy for NYC housing and the charter changes.

There’s a water shortage and each neighborhood has a well.

Should the city take into account how using the well affects neighbors? Yes.

Should neighbors be able to block reasonable usage of the well by others in the city? No.

These Historic-District-Townhouse-Combos in NYC are extremely concentrated:

Multiple blocks have 20 or more filings. Those few blocks explain a big share of all combos.

Image 1: West Village
Image 2: UWS + UES

All you're preserving is ... the facade.

If only we had research that looks at the impact of market-rate housing on general affordability!

This article is like a best-of collection of claims that can be refuted with minimal research:

E.g.: "will make adjacent land more expensive". Misleading, because price per square foot goes down.

Phenomenal article, glad to contribute.

If you want to learn about townhouse combinations (excludes combining buildings), I've got a research tool for you!

Maps show conversions ending with one unit.

First image: Neighborhoods
Second image: Manhattan blocks.

citytracker.ai/results/publ...

A lot of the housing crisis is driven by unstated, and bad, defaults.

When rents increase, cities attempt upzoning, huge process to justify the change.

A better default: If rents rise, zoned capacity automatically expands, and we’d have to justify the status quo to keep it.

There's also the whole category of "10-ft front setbacks, used to store trash cans and unwanted couches", but that's a future post.

Zoning pet peeve: Wasteful front setbacks.

See 76 S 2nd Ave in Brooklyn: A few feet set back.

Likely to be at same setback as left adjacent ... but that's unnecessary.

The building to the right (after empty lot) has no setbacks! So we could've removed setbacks, consistent with building on right.

Oh yes I see that now. Just an odd case, would love to understand the full development math that they went though.

And they also seem to have a front setback, which is extra bizarre when you have a 75ft-lot. That's super-valuable space and we're using it for stairs.

Oh, important note: It's a small lot (for NYC) at 17x75, which probably contributed to this result.

Some added data for context.

It's a new build, and it's very uncommon (pretty sure) to have it at 1 unit.

I'll try to see where else this happened.

Same for fine particle pollution making us less intelligent.

This argument is misleading because, in practice, it will get used as "oh, fancy economics tells us we can just raise property taxes on owners to finance things, without affecting renters".