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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Calling a space a "transit desert" implies the problem is too little transit and pushes for more transit.

How about overdevelopment?

I'm all for public transit, but building and then calling for the public to provide transit service is externalizing costs to raise property value. In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city, national, and global level.

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"Raising property value" is a positive externality. That's what the government exists for. If you only consider the bad effects of everything the government does and not the net, you're going to inevitably be an anarchist. Which is weird, because "externalities" started out being a way to attack private enterprise.

We need more growth in cities and less growth in "sprawl" areas.

You think it’s better to move out of cities, build highways and own cars?

The earth likes it better when we don’t sprawl.

As George Carlin said, The Earth is fine. The Earth ain't goin nowhere. We're all gonna die.

Anytime anyone talks about saving the earth, substitute it for the idea of saving the earth's configuration that is most comfortable for us humans.

It's perhaps a little ambiguous, but I understood the comment as arguing the exact opposite. I interpreted "overdevelopment" to basically mean the kind of sprawl explainted here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... ...where cities expand horizontally for short-term tax revenue gains/federal grants while accruing long-term infrastructure costs that their tax bases can't pay.

“ In an overpopulated world, we don't need more growth but de-growth, at the city,...”

Perhaps it is a little ambiguous. However, the story is about New York City. There’s not much room to grow outwards.

More mass transit in and around the city would reduce the need to own a car.

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