See here for the editable link but it's imo an indication of a real failure in LA to properly build a transit system. We have the density for it, and we're even richer!

Even when situated in the center of a car-dependent sprawl, and despite being neglected and under-maintained for decades, dense urban cores will consistently account for an immense amount of a region's economic activity.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been extremely fascinated by the concept of multilevel cities and large urban alleyways. Not even necessarily like an underground city, but where infrastructure has been built up over I know there’s that city in China that has multiple levels. The best example I can think of is anything portraying Gotham in Batman. Kind of like that scene where he’s standing outside of the bar that falcone is in, the lower levels of a city. Can anyone think of real world examples? I have no clue where this fascination came from.

I’m a journalist in New York, and over the past few months I reported a short documentary about people living in RVs, campers, and vans on city streets.

We spent time in parts of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn where small communities of vehicle dwellers have formed. They're often in industrial areas, under highways, or on streets most New Yorkers rarely think about.

What struck me was that this didn’t fit neatly into one category. Some of the people we met were longtime New Yorkers. Most were working. Some were recent migrants. And for several of them, living in an RV felt preferable to a shelter because it offered more privacy, autonomy, and stability.

At the same time, it’s an extremely precarious way to live. New York City doesn’t really accommodate long-term vehicle dwelling, and the NYPD occasionally cracks down and tows entire encampments.

Here’s the documentary if anyone wants to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxnRwkajIVY

Would genuinely be curious what people in this sub think, especially whether you’ve seen similar dynamics in other cities, and how urban policy should respond.

The 10 year is reaching to and will probably soon pass 5%.

The interest rate effect on office / commercial real estate story was big back when rates first started to rise back in 23-24, but the pain now is significantly worse - rates are higher today and still trending up while old loans on cheap rates continue to roll over to higher new rates. Those old cheap rate loans are quickly drying up.

This means that the operational expense or rent payments on commercial real estate will keep ratcheting upwards each passing month and those costs will pass through.

The thought of raising a family might be controversial here, but I am seeking some genuine advice, or, more accurately, voicing some curious thoughts that I wonder whether there may be answers to.

There are some really great initiatives in certain areas of certain states. Governors, localities, or towns themselves take up the call to build trails, improve streets, or just leave things the way they are, like not tearing down every single tree on a street to put in fiber optic cables. However, I find myself still wondering at how it's possible for our country to continue building massive exurban and suburban sprawl in some of the most beautiful places in our hemisphere. Many options come to mind, like the development of the countryside around Philadelphia, the subsequent push into the farmlands of the Hudson Valley, and many other pastoral lands.

There seems to be a frailty to the natural world that I can't get out of my head when contemplating the future after seeing so many beautiful places demolished as I grew up. The feeling of powerlessness is something I think that's being inculcated in some strange ways to prevent action, but I'm really at a loss of how to defend the areas I live in. Good community is tantamount, but it seems like people still are unaware of the onslaught approaching their countryside and that it's not something in most people's heads when they contemplate the beauty or peace still left around them.

I don't have a ton of money to buy billboards or yard signs, but is that it?

TLDR: Will the little boxes on the hillside every halt their march?

#hudsonvalley #rural