Who owns our cities and why this urban takeover should concern us
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> " In the post-2008 period, much buying of buildings is to destroy them and replace them with far taller, far more corporate and luxurious types of buildings – basically, luxury offices and luxury apartments"
> "All of this cannot happen in a business park, regardless of its density – they are privately controlled spaces where low-wage workers can work, but not “make”. "
I mean, am I the only one reading this thing and shaking my head after each paragraph wondering what it was that I read, exactly?
This is really simple. Write for your grandma. It's great that you've absorbed some rather complex ideas in your travels, and we'd love to hear about them. But if you can't write for your grandma, you shouldn't be writing for a large audience.
I'll go even further and say that even if you're writing for an audience who is up to speed on whatever it is you like going on about, you should still back-track on some of the more nuanced topics and explain it like I'm 5. Many times a group of professionals will all think they have the same understanding of a subject -- until they actually start expounding on it.
I want to examine the details of this large corporate investment surge, and why it matters. Cities are the spaces where those without power get to make a history and a culture, thereby making their powerlessness complex. If the current large-scale buying continues, we will lose this type of making that has given our cities their cosmopolitanism.
...loses absolutely nothing if you lop off the entire first sentence. Whoever was editing this fell asleep at the switch.
In this approach, new construction would build a standard base structure of several levels. This base would have an open layout and the owners would only control enough space necessary to provide access to parking and the upper levels.
The building base would then assume the same ecological role as a set of small, traditional buildings having store fronts.
If this were to come into effect, community institutions could then govern how the base of a building structurally and aesthetically interfaces with the public. I don't think a central city government should take on this role though. Legally, the governing institution might simply lease the space out to management companies over very long terms, periodically upgrading or changing the allocation of commercial and public space as the needs emerge.
Or we could just continue to leave it up to faraway owners and builders to comply with code during construction and improvements. But it is actually quite obtuse to let law govern issues of human use in shorter time frames. Needs arise faster than concrete sets.
For example, in the current setup, what if a need arises that requires major reconstruction? An example: reducing crime by adding smaller shops with later hours to a building front that is not used at all after "work hours". That change would require prodding the owner to modify the base of their building, and that could take a very long time. Meanwhile, the community suffers economic damage (and the building owner may not care because they make their money off of tenants high up in the building).
Imagine how hard it would be to add pedestrian and bike infrastructure if every block of street were owned by a different corporation?
Another benefit to a community-run building base is that locals can be empowered to define the street level, mitigating the ill social and economic effects (perceived or actual) of larger-scale building development. If the neighborhood folks see that there will be several levels of familiar, local shops and community space, and these amenities have traditional architecture, they might not so strongly oppose that the upper levels are dense and modern.
Um, we do leave it up to them to comply with local codes. I'm not sure what the objection is. They don't get an option to comply with codes or not. You aren't building anything in a major downtown area without a permit, which means complying with all local codes.
If a community wanted to mandate that x% of a building's lower level had to be dedicated to street level retail, they could easily do that. Builders would either decide if it were worthwhile or not. For the most part, developers/owners do not need much encouragement to increase rentable square footage in a building.
I don't know if this model can scale up to a New York high rise, but they are currently working with quite a few properties in the Northeast.
1. refinance risk houses more than once
2. sell that for profit
3. send dividends to head quarters overseas
4. crash national branches, foreclose homes
5. get money from govt to fix things
6. buy those homes