Rob, i admit i havent had coffee this morning...only green tea, so maybe im slow.
Most of my urbanism views were shaped in Chicago...and tho I dont live there anymore, I know my biases. Who 'pro-urban' is touting LA as either the densest city or a success story? Out heree we know the drill...densest cities include San Fran, Manhatten borough, Chicago, etc, not in strict order...LA never 'placed in show'.
As for praising any let alone a single aspect of LA's built form...who in gawds name has been doing that? maybe it's a west coast LA_based PR campaign. LA-SoCal is utterly despised by pro-urban folks in the midwest and most of the east coast. or am i missing something?
Avl Dao (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 8:49 am
Rob, i admit i havent had coffee this morning...only green tea, so maybe im slow.
Most of my urbanism views were shaped in Chicago...and tho I dont live there anymore, I know my biases. Who 'pro-urban' is touting LA as either the densest city or a success story? Out heree we know the drill...densest cities include San Fran, Manhatten borough, Chicago, etc, not in strict order...LA never 'placed in show'.
As for praising any let alone a single aspect of its built form...who in gawds name has been doing that? maybe it's a west coast LA_based PR campaign. LA-SoCal is utterly despised by pro-urban folks in the midwest and most of the east coast. or am i missing something?
I know we are pigged.
Let's approach this from the other direction. Tell me what enumerable aspects of the urban form are desirable. Then we'll see how LA stacks up. And yes, LA is much denser than any of the Urban Areas you mention. LA is not used by the prourbanists as anything except a counterexample. What's strange is tht LA exhibits all the traits prourbanits claim are desirable.
Well, 2 comments from watching the video. California people are just relaxed. I don't think around here a tenant would be as mellow about the whole thing. At. All.
The other thing was the white feet. An outdoor worker dude I guess.
Missed all the Corus and problem bank list chat last evening driving my wife to a bike ride in Missouri. So Sheila did the good a bank/bad bank deal for Corus. Probably had no (or crappy) whole bank bids. I still can't see why anyone would buy the condo loans. The taxpayers just became prospective owners of a huge number of condos.
Scanning the problem bank list, California is well represented, yet relatively few have closed so far. Has the FDIC been leasing office space in the Golden State?
energyecon - maybe you aren't here anymore, but the whole balance thing between civilization and nature... Many a well-intentioned out-of-stater has lost their lives in the White Mountains, unsuspecting of how cruel and cold nature can be.
100% OT: I have a growing list of curious matters related to: 10-Q
.... Other banks that come close to Citibank’s 5-year certificate of deposit rate include E-Loan, their 5-year certificate of deposit yield is at 3.40 percent and Ally Bank, their 5-year CD yield is currently at 3.30 percent.
The Banco Popular de Puerto Rico
. The Corporation’s banking operations in Puerto Rico have been adversely impacted by the prolonged economic recession being experienced by the Puerto Rico economy, principally affecting the Corporation’s lending areas and credit losses. The main factors that contributed to the variance in the results for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, when compared to the first quarter of 2008, included:
• lower net interest income by $28.5 million, or 12%, primarily due to a lower net interest yield by 22 basis points, which was principally driven by the reduction in the yield of earning assets, principally commercial and construction loans. This decline can be attributed to two main factors: (1) the reduction in rates by the FED as described in the Net Interest Income section of this MD&A and (2) an increase in non-performing loans.
Re: TARP funds have been applied to a number of uses, including without limitation, investments in the Corporation’s banking subsidiaries, purchases of marketable securities, loans to the Corporation’s banking subsidiaries and satisfaction of the Corporation’s obligations. The Corporation has continued its lending activities in a disciplined and prudent manner in the different markets it serves, despite the difficult general economic conditions of such markets. The Corporation approved, in the aggregate, approximately $1.9 billion in new, renewed or restructured credit facilities during the quarter ended March 31, 2009.
Re: Banco Popular North America’s reportable segment consists of the banking operations of BPNA, E-LOAN, Popular Equipment Finance, Inc. and Popular Insurance Agency, U.S.A. Popular Equipment Finance, Inc. sold a substantial portion of its lease financing portfolio during the quarter ended March 31, 2009 and also ceased originations as part of BPNA’s strategic plan. BPNA operates through a retail branch network in the U.S. mainland, while E-LOAN supports BPNA’s deposit gathering through its online platform. All direct lending activities at E-LOAN were ceased during the fourth quarter of 2008. Popular Insurance Agency, U.S.A. offers investment and insurance services across the BPNA branch network...
Sorry for the interruption, just needed something to do....
I wonder if the guy was paying the previous owner. Maybe he hadn't paid
in a long time and 30 more days were actually gravy. Or, he had been worrying
when he would be kicked out and now he new for sure, so a relief.
People don't read those notices.
Wonder how much the mtg was; wonder how much a fair offering price would be.
It will be interesting how laid-back Californians cope with things financially, the tenant in Jim's video was fairly atypical of the breed, making no waves...
Rob, by counting the defined city limits controlled by each City's Mayor and Council, there's no way LA-proper is denser than San Fran, NYC, Chocago, or even Philly proper..even with the illegal immigrant undercount (Chi & others have huge illegal undercount themselves in their city limits).
There's pros & cons to limiting to the discussion to official city limits. But I know in Chicago we/they decry that our 3-state 9+-county metro of 9 million is pure sprawl with few exceptions....it's been LA'd...haha.
No, I wont debate 'other folk's' definition of "desirable urban form" ; I'll only debate my own. My references to despising LA-SoCal is that that's the prevailing thinking amongst the field in general..they will have to defend their views.
I havent been to LA in 10 yrs, Im sure they're winning examples of specific projects...Ive even met some architects who pride themselves on their specific project...but they're oasis projects for the most part, it seems.
Am I wrong.
Mother can be a mother lol - I still have friends and family up there - recall the incredible scorn of many for the kid who went and starved to death because he chose not to take a map...
The restructuring plan of E-LOAN (the E-LOAN Restructuring Plan) contemplates E-LOAN ceasing to operate as a direct lender over the next few weeks. E-LOAN will continue to market deposit accounts under its name for the benefit of BPNA and offer loan customers the option of being referred to a trusted consumer lending partner.
Although E-Loan’s financial results were not broken out by owner Popular, E-Loan is part of a banking unit, Popular North America, that has suffered serious financial setbacks lately.
For the first nine months of 2007, Popular North America lost $107.7 million, according to a Nov. 9 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that covered Popular’s third-quarter results. That unit’s loss compares with a profit of $20.3 million for the first nine months of 2006.
Gee, he knew what was coming, didn't pay rent, and now he's going to get "cash for keys", what's there to get worked up about? There's another rental just down the block I'll bet.
BTW- Jim sounds a little peeved about his REOs,...maybe he should think about holding a Wells Fargo soiree in one,...you know, loosen up a bit.
That's not fair. I've even gone to the effort of asking for which enumerable criteria we should examine. So far no one has been brave enough to mention even one.
I think we can all agree that city limits are not appropriate as this isn't about arbitrary political borders but urban form. I am prepared to defend my assertion that LA is the densest Urban Area in the US. I am also prepared to discuss the assertion that Los angeles exhibits the very characteristics prourbanists claim are desirable. Starting with density.
Rob, even the wiki pages for major cities often will give you the city size in sq. miles and the census pop, and calculate the density.
On a city limit basis, LA doesnt even 'place in show'.
EDIT:
Rob, there's one over-arching reason why city limits matter and it is not trump-able...or fungible
Its called governance and rules of law. LA Mayor & Council only directly contrlol sprawl within where they govern...and where the state law wont limit them. Ditto for Chicago.
Avl Dao (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:35 am
Rob, even the wiki pages for major cities often will give you the city size in sq. miles and the census pop, and calculate the density.
On a city limit basis, LA doesnt even 'place in show'.
The two feet you are standing on represent more than 13 million persons per square mile. Shall we use that? No, then use what the Census uses; Urban Area.
JD: I think "Real Estate Owned" is the most misleading real estate acronym out there...
"Homeowner" is closing fast on the finish line for the misleading title.
Various 'industries' invent the jargon that comes to dominate the language, often (usually?) contrary to the plain facts.
"Car owner" is another one. What percentage of folks have clear title to their ride?
One can see why home debtor or car debtor isn't good for biz, but very quickly the word/language distortion comes to represent the actual reality in people's pea brains.
Can't we return to popular outrage over Madison Avenue (dated reference to advertising/pr liars) being the great evil?
Nice edit after my reply. i'll let you finish whatever thoughts you are working with and then after they are settled i'll reply.
Where's the list you want to use to compare urban areas for urban character?
The following loans are the largest 10 loans in Fitch's loan delinquency index. The index consists of loans 60 days or more delinquent in addition to those characterized as nonperforming matured loans, in foreclosure, or REO. Of these 10 loans, four have experienced an appraisal ....
As rob noted, we're not talking city limits. Los Angles is like Boston, its composes of many sub-cities. From afar, Cambridge is part of the Boston urban area. Oh, I'm sure a local Realtor would argue for days on 'its different here,' but you get the idea. Just as Beverly Hills is not politically part of LA city, but it is part of the urban area.
LA is dense. What fools people is the lack of 'mid rise' buildings (due to earthquakes). Its not as dense as Manhattan for the most part, but it is a very dense city.
No one from LA would constrain themselves to considering just within the city of Los Angeles metro limits. As Rob Dawg noted, its 13 million people in the census area.
We could go one further and claim the catch basin for LAX.
Hello Warren, yah know that $33 billion of goodwill shit you had....
Wells Fargo Tower, GSMSC 2007-GG10
The $550 million loan is secured by a 1,385,325-square-foot, 53-story class A multitenant office building with a five-level subterranean parking garage in Los Angeles, CA. The loan is sponsored by Maguire Properties. The loan was underwritten based on pro forma rental rate increases by the banker that are not likely to materialize in this market.
That edit was before ur reply....im a slow typist.
I always stand by my word.
I made it extrememly clear I was refering to City Limits once u made it clear you were not.
Now...do we really really need to go thru the excercise of copying and pasting city limit lists?
i already know the suburban sprawl in NYC, ATL, Chgo is as bad as LA...but no one is championing the east coast, midwest or west coast suburban sprawl.
thats why there's those 3-letters sub.....in front of urban.
and Liz, u are also correct.
manhatten is many things.
It is a legally recognized county in NY.
It is a legally recognized burough with it's own executive and legislative barnches.
it is also under the governance of the NYC mayor.
Slow typist I may be.....but I do know urban planning and data.
JimPortlandOR (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:43 am
Speaking of 'urban character': MY city has it, and yours doesn't.
Portland is almost as nice as it thinks it is. Why is Greater Los Angeles considered to be sprawling when as an Urban Area it is by far and away the densest UA in the US. One reason is sinister; planners hate LA for its results despite it having the greatest proportions of planner advocated characteristics of anyplace in the US.
Portland still suffers from a single sentence that accidentally leaked out from a document more than a dozen years ago:
Los Angeles has 51 miles of freeway per one million people
while Portland has over 100 miles per one million people.
[Federal Highway Administration, "Highway Statistics 1998"].
Smart-growth planners in Portland compared Portland to
other major cities for purposes of identifying goals for
Portland's future. Planners concluded that "In public
discussions we gather the general impression that Los
Angeles represents a future to be avoided", but that "with
respect to density and road per capita mileage it displays
an investment pattern we desire to replicate" here in Portland.
[Metro, "Metro Measured", Portland, Ore., May 1994, p. 7].
Metro planners have decided to plan on reducing per capita
freeway mileage from more than 100 miles per million people
to under 70 miles per million, a ratio higher than only three
other major urban areas: Miami, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
[Metro, "Region 2040 recommended Alternative Technical
Appendix", Portland, Ore. 9-15-94].
So, Los Angeles' nightmare congestion reputation is the
result of the nation's highest metropolitan densities
(not low density sprawl) coupled with the fewest number
of freeway [centerline] miles per capita. [Randal O'Toole, "The
Vanishing Automobile and other Urban Myths", 2000, pp394-5].
"Wells Fargo Tower, GSMSC 2007-GG10'
Across the street: (Great link Doc!)
Two California Plaza, GSMSC 2007-GG10
The $470 million loan is secured by a class A 54-story office building with 1.33 million square feet, consisting of an atrium, three levels of retail, and a five-level subterranean parking garage in Los Angeles. The loan is sponsored by Maguire Properties.
Ghad... is this the start of capitulation in downtown LA?
I wonder what the next residential mortgage default rate will be reported as? We're at 15% of mortgages not being paid. When is the market totally broken? I think we're close to the threshold.
Neil, when ur paying for taxes for city services it sure does count whether u r in a city limit or not and whose it is.
There's a long list of times when it does matter where the city limit is...and a long list where it doesnt. Whe discussing density, it clearly matters where the city limits are.
People sometimes forget that LA and OC are tied @ the hip, one giant mélange of human beans...
But the difference between Melrose and Fairfax and PCH and Newport Blvd are different planets, inhabited by different species.
I was born in LA, and it was one of the great places on the planet in the 50's and 60's---
Now, after 2 days, I bail. I think if you are young, and talented, LA is a great city.
OC has always been a bland suburban nightmare, but it has been good to me financially.
Rob, as a rule, I like to be a Tanta-like uber-geek and check the source material and see if they are not gleefully interchanging multi-county or multi-jurisdictional data simply to score points over people who have no sense of math, stats, or geography.
Sadly that is rampant these days.
It's like pretending that just because San Diego and Tijuana are heavily populated, that there's no difference between them...and that Tijuana can control sprawl in San Diego County.
Purely nonsensical to not recognize the boundaries of governence when it's critical to recognize where those boundaries of control are.
Rob Dawg: I guess my snarkiness about 'urban character' was not conveyed. Yeah, Portland is nice, but I intended my comment to indicate everybody thinks their city is 'better' (there's no place like home).
(but I'll hazard the guess that you don't really think of freeway miles/capita is a good measure of any of the qualities that people like - a tiny city in population might have very percentage of freeway, even if it had only one mile.)
Like most pacific coasters outside of the LA basin, I hate LA, but that's largely a result of the total urban spread. Anywhere is 45 min away from anywhere else, and it seems like there's a freeway connecting any two potential points. But if people like it, that's fine by me.
There are various parts of Miami and South Beach where you can walk.
There are a very few cute walkable blocks in Cocoa Village.
If the towers had worked out, then amenities would have arrived to serve
the people in the towers, and there would have been some walkability.
But hardly any people in some.
There is supposed to be some rezoning in Miami to make it more urban, but
I don't know the details.
My architect daughter-who still has a job--hates urban planners.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:58 am
LA denser than Manhattan?
Sorry, Dawg, not buying it.
That's because you are letting other people put words in my mouth. Boruoghs are not Urban Areas and the US Census has reams of discussion as to why UA is the cachement when discussing urban density.
What about a revision of law that, if a plant is shut down, the former employees of that plant are free to reopen & run it as a worker cooperative? With 6 months-one year rent free & after that a true market value rent is paid to the owner of the plant. Assuming the plant owner hasn't just depreciated to 0 & walked away.
It's not always the case that the employees who work in a facility have the knowledge or experience in actually producing and marketing the product. Knowing how to fulfil your assigned task and having the expertise to create and market a product from scratch are very different things. In addition, the fixed cost of land rental/ownership is often a small component of overall costs; who would provide the group of employees with the capital necessary to source goods, pay utilities, and float inventory?
I wanna see a picture of Broward's leather pants.
I am quite certain that I do not want to see Broward in his assless chaps. Thank goodness we can't post pictures in the comments.
Liz-
You could live cheaply on the sand, open spirit, good drugs, great music----
Kinda of like Eden without the snakes.
Then all those people started showing up from elsewhere with their uptight moral values and work ethics.
My father was born in CA, so I have deep roots.
Shrug.
You're arguing semantics and legal definitions.
I care little about the argument but Manhattan was far more crowded (although I haven't been in LA proper for 20 years).
Most people in and around Los Angeles consider themselves part of Los Angeles. So it entirely reasonable to consider someone in Eagle Rock and someone in Glendale part of the same urban area.
To seperate them by local political boundaries is silly. It's not like comparing San Diego with TJ. In the Los Angeles Urban area we are all governed by the same Fed, State and county government. The local government just isn't as important in comparision.
Well, if a waking nightmare is a type of fantasy, then yes.
i could have sworn you mentioned assless chaps in a thread a while back, but if it was simply a rhetorical device then perfect. I'll be able to sleep again.
But, if some cases there were employees who could, then wouldn't it be a benefit to the region for them to do so?
And, if the US can afford to bail out banksters to the tune of what, 1.2 trillion, why couldn't it make low interest loans for the costs you list?
It doesn't seem as though all those MBAs who are supposed to be so good at running businesses are doing such a great job, so, how would it be that much different or worse if engineers and/or other workers tried their hands at running a factory or plant?
"I wonder if the guy was paying the previous owner. "
He said he'd stopped paying. He did read the notices. The property manager apparently copped to what was going on, and it didn't sound like there was any pressure to get him out. If the owner had indeed "worked something out," anybody's guess whether the tenant could have coughed up the back rent or not. Or should have.
Hey, since RD doesn't want to actually provide any data and just wave his arms around, guess I'll step into the breach.
From the Census Bureau, population per square mile:
New York City - 8159
Orange County - 3606
LA/Long Beach - 2344
LA-Riverside-Orange County together - 482
The refinery provides just over 50 percent of the jet fuel used at Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport, he said. Fuel shipments between North Pole and Anchorage account for about 35 percent of overall railroad revenue, Thompson said. At its peak in 2003, the railroad was hauling more than 800 million gallons of petroleum products from the refinery. Next year, the railroad is expecting to move about 400 million gallons.
Now it's just one giant mass of folks in a rat-maze
JimInPortland got me wondering exactly why I dislike L.A.
It's not a bad place but... part of it is the housing cost, part of it was the annual car theft, part of it the driving.
I like Seattle and Portland because they're smaller but not boring or job-impaired (relatively)
A lot of it is the driving.
Now I choose apartments close to where I'm working but I never did that in L.A.
Now i wonder why.
I lived in Reseda when I worked in Agoura Hills.
That makes no sense to me now.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 10:10 am
Shrug.
You're arguing semantics and legal definitions.
I care little about the argument but Manhattan was far more crowded (although I haven't been in LA proper for 20 years).
It becomes important when you understand that modern urban planning goals are directed at making other places more like Los Angeles by the numbers. It is a logical disconnect that has the potential for great harm.
Manhattan is certainly more crowded than "Los Angeles." It is a self selecting perceptual issue. If you spent your time in the Wilshire corridor where 100k/sq mi is common you might get a better comparative feel.
Numbers don't capture the true feeling of density, after all, if you like the people you're with, it's not bad, but a few jerks can make the Grand Canyon feel crowded. Okay, we need a Jerk per Sq. Mi. (JSM) number to properly assess density.
LA gets it's water from the Feather River, the Eastern Sierra and the Colorado River, so they've got a few bases covered, but next year will be the telling time...
The place running out of water is San Diego, which gets it's water from the Colorado and the Delta.
The former is full of quagga mussels (which have made their way into almost all of SD's reservoirs) and short on supply of water, and the later is being held hostage by a red herring in the guise of a Smelt.
If I owned a home in SD, i'd sell it for whatever the market would bear, NOW.
I wonder how many times in a day Jim the Realtor has to talk to pudgy guys who aren't wearing a shirt.
I must admit, however, that he took the news relatively well, all things considered. That, and the fact that he hadn't paid rent yet that month shows that he actually was paying attention...
In a somewhat naked grab for water, the No Cals got a judge to not allow around 25% of what SD used to get from the Delta to flow to them, to protect 3 inch fish called the Delta Smelt...
This in the face of the worst drought in a long time~
I'm still missing the point.
The current fad in urban planning is to make cities LIKE LA?
Or attempt to mimic part of LA's structure without creating the essential foundation?
Fruits and veggies don't vote, so they are being cut off ruthlessly, especially in the western San Joaquin Valley...
It's a Faustian bargain allowing suburbanites to have access to water that used to grow their food, and most importantly it allows people to think that there is plenty of water, which there most certainly isn't.
That's ridiculous, though. When we think of New York City, we DON'T think of it including Bridgeport, Stamford, and freaking TRENTON... unless we use your numbers.
You're cherry picking to try to prove your preconceived notions.
Well, I guess all those farmers/farm workers getting laid off can go on welfare and unemployment. The suburbanites will have to foot the bill to support the 30-40% unemployment in towns like Fresno, I guess.
I think you've just invalidated your own argument. You're saying if you include all of the land between Montauk and Scranton in your denominator, then LA has a higher density, except that is a pointless comparison to make. New York is less crowded because the land in Northern NJ is extremely low density?
I'd be making some Plan B's if I was you, it's not as if the hack politicians in your fine city are going to be able to outmaneuver savvy SF politicians, on this gig.
The CA water 'problem' is very heavy use of of it on central valley agriculture, often on crops that are water intensive (like rice). I don't recall the numbers, but I think over 60% of the state's water goes into ag in the CV.
LA could not exist (and SD too) if they didn't have the CA water project to survive - and don't ask me why on earth they allow backyard swimming pools and grass in the yard. Pure nutiness, which is in increasing and ample supply the further you get south of Santa Barbara.
I can't wait for the water wars - popcorn is stockpiled and LA's fleet of news/traffic copters will provide great zoom shots of the shots being fired.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 10:28 am
I'm still missing the point.
The current fad in urban planning is to make cities LIKE LA?
Or attempt to mimic part of LA's structure without creating the essential foundation?
No, you get it. You also get the parts about perceptual density. there's a reason people crowd along natural limits like beaches. Even a neighbor 20 feet away is psychologically acceptable when you can look out on the ocean. Here's a list of desirable urban characteristics according to the prourbanists:
Urban and Transit planners advocate:
Higher residential densities, just like LA.
Higher transit usage, just like LA.
Fewer roads per capita, just like LA.
Greater public dedications, just like LA.
Higher carpooling, just like LA.
New subways, just like LA.
Stricter emissions, just like LA (& Calif.).
Regional governance, just like LA.
See the planner paradox? Everything they want yields... LA.
Near as I can tell, sprawl is density independent but
congestion and crime are primarily density dependent.
That means advocating for higher density is actually
advocating for more crime and congestion with no decrease
in sprawl. NURBs, NUTs and SmUGLers don't admit this.
This is why I find dictionary definitions of sprawl or anti-sprawl to be
wholly inadequate to address a real and serious public
policy/planning concern.
Sorry for Rambling but this is pertinent. People drawn to the planning
"profession" do so out of a desire to make a difference. The thing they
think they see is sprawl and their solution to sprawl is density.
Higher residential densities squander land and resources and wealth in a
vain attempt to replicate the undesirable urban patterns of Pre WW-II
cities. Everything about higher density increases costs and expenses.
Everything. It's also a false economy to imagine building residential at
higher density "saves" land. It doesn't after you've allocated enough to
required roads and other urban amenities.
In general what planners want cannot be revisited because it never really
existed in the first place and no one would want to go there in the second.
If you'll pardon the language the real problem with New Urbanism and all the
other repackagings of urban planner graduate class theories is that they
want to put 10 lbs of manure in a 5 lb sack. Physics and geometry intrude
on the noble ideals of these schemes. The unfortunate part is that since
urban planning is not in any form a science the practitioners are not
familiar with math, physics, et. al.
.... Other banks that come close to Citibank’s 5-year certificate of deposit rate include E-Loan, their 5-year certificate of deposit yield is at 3.40 percent and Ally Bank, their 5-year CD yield is currently at 3.30 percent.
Ah, good ol' Ally Bank...I preferred their old name: GMAC.
Maybe fresh vegetables year round are unrealistic? If we can't grow in CA, then we will have to fly the stuff in from South America, which will become more and more expensive as the price of oil rises. As for agricultural CA, if the numbers we are hearing are correct (30%+ unemployment), we are starting to reach the threshold of social breakdown.
I'm sure we can provide for the farmers/farm workers well-being somewhat, but what about the food they used to grow?
Isn't Urban Agriculture the new meme? That idea that somehow you can produce enough food on your balcony to support yourself for an entire year, or something?
I'm being overly simplistic, of course, but I have a feeling that many of this nostalgic wistful wanna-be farmers really have no idea about the consequences of contemplating this type of system. There are a few on this site who grow a great deal of food for themselves at their own homestead. How much do you think could be grown on a quarter acre town lot? (Joanna, , and others feel free to jump in here )
Urban Agriculture sounds like the Great Leap Forward, except in lieu of making steel in your backyard, you try and grow enough food to sustain yourself...
Urban Agriculture sounds like the Great Leap Forward, except in lieu of making steel in your backyard, you try and grow enough food to sustain yourself...
I wonder if Mao ever recognized the intense irony in that title.
There really won't be any breakdown in the Central Valley, because virtually everybody that works the crops is Mexican, and they tend to keep a pretty low profile and are used to living well below our means, and a good number of them are headed down under, back home.
In a somewhat naked grab for water, the No Cals got a judge to not allow around 25% of what SD used to get from the Delta to flow to them, to protect 3 inch fish called the Delta Smelt...
JD, during the '70s I remember hearing longtime State Sen. Al Rodda, who represented Sacramento, saying he was ok with shipping NoCal water south. He believed that was the only thing keeping hordes of SoCals from decamping to NoCal.
U-3. yes, U-3. It is a little misleading as the depression zones are kind of self selecting for retaining the unemployed so poor off they cannot go elsewhere to find work and being agricultural the rate is always high anyway. Then there's the manufactured drought that's making things worse.
Damn, Dawg, you're trying to make me think.
It's too early.
Okay, I get the "definition of sprawl" argument.
Each side is trying to define the conditions for victory.
I somewhat understand the other arguments.
The biggest issue I see is that you can't dictate how and where people live.
In a network, I can alter scalability by forcing the most-connected / most-accessed resources to live close together.
I believe that you could build a more efficiency city which uses less energy and land, but you'd need the power to locate resources (including people) to where they "should" be.
they might have a problem removing the latex taste (condoms down the toilet) from the drinking supply.
i read years ago about the amazing quantity of condoms the course filters catch as the first step in water treatment - along with a amazing variety of other stuff (which I'll leave to the reader's imagination).
I believe that you could build a more efficiency city which uses less energy and land, but you'd need the power to locate resources (including people) to where they "should" be.
Nature's Metropolis, by Cronon, offers a very interesting take on urban development within the city of Chicago. It's a historical view, so it spends quite a bit of time focussing on which elements early-to-mid-1800's speculators thought comprised a potential big city. I've really enjoyed the book and I recommend it to anyone for their bunker
It is a very delicate balance between command land use and the necessary organic infill.
Interesting. An interesting application of network theory I hadn't seen before. There's issue of free will that you don't normally have but there's also issues of resource cost over long time periods. Who knows what gasoline will cost in twenty years? Or land, even? But... i have to say, you still need to make a best-guess stab at creating a top-down structure which attempts to be efficient.
That's why I mentioned Phoenix.
The traffic system was designed to be large from when Phoenix was small.
Other cities Vegas, Denver, Portland and Seattle, were largely grown ad hoc over time. Yeah, yeah, I know someone will claim that they did planning but from my viewpoint, not really. They did zoning restrictions but the arteries are ad hoc, "oh, crap we need something here now" reactive measures.
Okay, so just to reiterate in case anyone was confused upthread: contrary to what Rob Dawg says, according to the Census Bureau, New York City is far, far denser than Los Angeles. His belief that LA is denser than NYC is based on his absurd idea that Trenton, NJ, Stamford, CT, and other far-afield suburbs are part of New York City.
Discount any conclusions he draws from this use of the census data accordingly.
A surfing group blocked a desal plant from coming on line for almost 2 years in San Onofre, not all that far removed from Robert Duvall wanting to take a VC beach, because the waves broke right to left, in Apocalypse Now.
Desal uses a shitlode of electricity, and you need to hook it up to a nuke plant, of which there are only a few on the California coast.
It ain't rocket science, as Saudi Arabia has almost 30 desal plants up and running~
Imagine if we had taken 1/2 of the money we spent to build ever more prisons, and had 20 desal plants on line to show for it?
Desalinization is surprisingly expensive. We do it in the Navy quite a bit. Even reverse osmosis (what the new subs have) is relatively costly. For millions of gallons, the cost is prohibitive. I think some of the oil countries have it, but they also have lots of very cheap energy.
Agronox (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 11:03 am
Okay, so just to reiterate in case anyone was confused upthread: contrary to what Rob Dawg says, according to the Census Bureau, New York City is far, far denser than Los Angeles.
And if I had said that you'd be right. But since I didn't this is where you apologize for claiming I did. You don't get to deliberately misquote people and then point out that they are wrong.
Water is worth almost nothing when there's lots of it, and priceless when there isn't much left.
I was peripherally involved in a discussion over the weekend involving the act of defecating while swimming in a lake, and although I personally have never experienced this sensation, it got me wondering: could someone living in the Kalahari ever even contemplate such an action?
EDIT: I probably should have made up a different scenario; I have a feeling this one is going to go downhill very fast...
As near as I can tell, Portland works pretty good. I used the Max there for almost a year, my first long-term experience with mass transit and it changed my L.A.-driving mind. I believe that because of scale, Portland and Seattle are probably more efficient (overall) than L.A. The private car system is amazingly flexible and granular but it's probably overkill if you had a smaller city which was designed well to start.
It occurs to me that systems which are efficient in current real-time are not necessarily efficient over long periods or in dynamic environments.
Well, I know nothing about academic urban planning. But Rob Dawg has thrown down a few interesting challenges for the professionals, and so far they haven't really engaged him on the substance. If you guys want to advance the ball, you have to get past arguing over the definitions.
I am sure that, from the professional planner's perspective, the city and other political boundaries are super-important. But for regular people, what matters is the area of influence of a city. When I think of LA, I don't carve out the sub-cities within it. No one thinks they have to find a home in Santa Monica just because they find a job there. Yes, the political boundaries matter some, but they are not usually the most important drivers of what a coherent concentration of humans looks like, setting aside extreme examples such as conurbations straddling a first world country and a third world country.
When I think of LA, I don't carve out the sub-cities within it.
I never did.
I was surprised when I moved to Seattle that people care about city boundaries.
When they say "Seattle", they mean Seattle proper, not Redmond or Renton.
To me, it's one big amorphous mass.
But since I didn't this is where you apologize for claiming I did.
Not a chance. Here's what you used to show that LA is more dense than NYC. This is a direct quote from you:
"New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT--PA CMSA 2,028.7
Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA 2,344.2"
Which only proves what you're trying to say if you agree that New York City includes Stamford, Trenton, Danbury, etc. None of the New Urbanists who bring up New York as any sort of model would agree. And neither would you expect for the fact that it helps you make your points. So you "neglect" to mention that your version of New York includes those 'burbs.
....speaking of "diamonds & water"......Sheri's Ranch (brothel) had an auction sale for the business (brothel, hotel, rentals, restaurant, sports bar - 300 acres)........an elaborate party with girls, girls, & more girls ........and nobody came. Apparently the head 'el heife' is an idiot and in a bit of "cash-flow" challenges with his other girlie-bars in Vegas.
"It is common knowledge that the entire Sheri's empire has several investor partners. Moneyed individuals tweaked by the opportunity and the mystique of being part owners within this unique legal industry. The exact number of investors remains tightly guarded but apparently in the area of a dozen. Apparently there is also "great unrest" among the current partners." - (Pahrump Mirror, Sept. 10, 2009)
I ought to find out if any of these gals know how to take care of a garden or milk a cow..........don't say a word, JD..... LOL
When they say "Seattle", they mean Seattle proper, not Redmond or Renton.
To me, it's one big amorphous mass.
It's the same with Toronto. From east to west, once you hit Whitby/Ajax it really doesn't let up until you're past Oakville or Milton. That's like a 50-60 mile amorphous blob as well, with few defining boundaries. The fact it's composed of many individual towns and cities is relatively meaningless, until it comes time to pay for services.
"A surfing group blocked a desal plant from coming on line for almost 2 years in San Onofre, not all that far removed from Robert Duvall wanting to take a VC beach, because the waves broke right to left, in Apocalypse Now.
Desal uses a shitlode of electricity, and you need to hook it up to a nuke plant, of which there are only a few on the California coast."
Yes, however - Carlsbad is at the final approval, sans the nuke plant stage (there is a plant in place, but it isn't of the nuke variety). It will be the "test case" to watch going forward.
"Imagine if we had taken 1/2 of the money we spent to build ever more prisons, and had 20 desal plants on line to show for it?"
Agreed, "imagine". Makes me think of the desert mirage effect. If only more thought and planning was put before supposed "progress".
I am sure that, from the professional planner's perspective, the city and other political boundaries are super-important. But for regular people, what matters is the area of influence of a city.
I'd actually love to spend some time in a 'planned' city someday. For those of you more well-travelled than I, have you spent a whole lot of time in cities like Brasilia? It's on my list of places to visit, but as of yet, no luck.
I'll take the floor then, though it will veer OT with respect to the urban planning beef - shall we discuss counter factual claims with respect to the level of reserves in the USA today vs. the 1970's?
.
edit: lunch time!
Dyed in the wool, baby. And, it's even worse than that, it also springs from my fortunate/unfortunate (depending upon the prism you choose to apply) Roman Catholic indoctrination...sigh...
Re: overuse of water by suburbanites crowding out the poor farmers in California:
The proportion of water use in Calif. used to be given as ag 80 percent, industry 10 percent, residential 10 percent. I doubt it's changed all that much.
In our off-the-water grid county, ag is overdrafting the available groundwater down in the Pajaro Valley and saltwater intrusion is now a serious problem. Ag wants someone to "solve the problem;" but the real solution is not to grow 'way too many acres of water-intensive berry crops in a water-restricted environment. They don't wanna hear that, all those fine self-made men.
Up in our end of the county, the "water shortage" is entirely political. All we need to do is build more storage, but the arch-druids and the NIMBYs (much overlap between the two groups) have historically opposed more supply as a backdoor development cap. Now they're backing desal as an "emergency only" solution that doesn't add basic capacity. We're all going to pay for this madness.
Dyed in the wool, baby. And, it's even worse than that, it also springs from my fortunate/unfortunate (depending upon the prism you choose to apply) Roman Catholic indoctrination...sigh...
Don't feel bad; I've found that even the most through-and-through free market evangelist will, when pushed on a specific issue, arrive at conclusions they feel would better resolve the situation, if only they were in charge.
I'm pretty sure it's human nature, and also the reason why economists should play no more than a peripheral role in determining and setting policy.
In our off-the-water grid county, ag is overdrafting the available groundwater down in the Pajaro Valley and saltwater intrusion is now a serious problem. Ag wants someone to "solve the problem;" but the real solution is not to grow 'way too many acres of water-intensive berry crops in a water-restricted environment. They don't wanna hear that, all those fine self-made men.
I work with farmers for a living. I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons I'm so cynical.
They are usually hard-working, intelligent, and successful businessmen, but they have few-to-no qualms about involving the government in their operations. In their defence, however, the government has few qualms about wading neck deep into regulating and politicking agriculture, so I suppose it's some sort of twisted symbiotic relationship.
Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town, Cobalt 2007-C2, ML-CFC 2007-5, ML-CFC 2007-6, WBCMT 2007-C30
The $3 billion loan is secured by 56 multistory buildings with 110 different addresses situated on 80 acres that include 11,227 residential apartments in New York City. The borrowers, Tishman Speyer Properties, LP and BlackRock Realty, acquired the property with the intent of converting rent-stabilized units to market rents. As of July 2009 there were 4,461 market units and 6,768 rent-stabilized units, with a vacancy rate of 4.1%.
First of all, 11,227 units. Wow. Just wow. Second, how would they convert rent-stabilized units to market rents? Sounds shady.
I am not going to step into a more-heat-than-light discussion amongst (professional?) urban planners, but I do understand RD's point, I think, in spite of his tendency to state and argue his case provocatively. We all know that Manhattan is denser than LA. But the question you have to ask next is whether Manhattan is a substantially self-supporting entity. If a lot of the people working there who have kids, or aren't wealthy, actually live in areas outside Manhattan, then you need to combine those areas with Manhattan to assess it as a proposal for how human beings can organize themselves into communities.
Sure. But neither of us was talking about just Manhattan.
But the question you have to ask next is whether Manhattan is a substantially self-supporting entity. If a lot of the people working there who have kids, or aren't wealthy, actually live in areas outside Manhattan, then you need to combine those areas with Manhattan to assess it as a proposal for how human beings can organize themselves into communities.
We call these areas "the outer boroughs." And every number I've pointed to in this thread includes them.
And so that I don't misconstrue you: what do you mean by a "substantially self-supporting entity?"
Try Salt Lake City, UT...home of the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was laid out as a grid based city at the direction of pioneer Brigham Young, back in the 1850's; with specified block sizes and street widths; and certain blocks reserved for religious and civil structures. Obviously since then newer development ideas have changed the city somewhat, but the core design still frames all development.
Agronox (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 12:13 pm
sorry to kill the thread
Lying does that. Pretty soon nobody wants to play with you and then you have to change your name like aladinsane.
Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 12:15 pm
Meanwhile, the most dense, populous city in North America is running out of water rapidly...
Nah, That's not true. Union City, New Jersey is doing fine. Oh, populous? Then NYC is doing fine as well. Of course if you didn't really mean "city" but something else like the more useful Urbanized area then...
Gosh, it's almost like words mean things and not what some people want them to mean.
Reporting from Mexico City - In the parched Mexican countryside, the corn is wilting, the wheat stunted. And here in this vast and thirsty capital, officials are rationing water and threatening worse cuts as Mexico endures one of the driest spells in more than half a century.
A months-long drought has affected broad swaths of the country, from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving crop fields parched and many reservoirs low. The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching.
"...what do you mean by a "substantially self-supporting entity?" "
This is an invitation to step into quicksand
I see that as being about the same as "What do you mean by porn?", or "what is the dividing line between physics and chemistry?".
When I drive through LA, I see just one giant coherent collection of people's homes and businesses and public spaces. There are variations and pockets, but it is clear that the people's lives in every pocket are interwoven tightly with the surrounding area, connected by jobs, services, etc. When I drive from LA to San Diego, I see a real separation. San Diego is fairly separate from LA. OC is not. How can I boil that down into a tight definition that would satisfy a professional or amateur urban planner? I don't know, and I don't care to invest that much effort. But I think a lay person's commonsense notion of what constitutes a substantially self-supporting community is still useful, just as I think I can effectively choose my own food at the grocery store without being able to articulate my method in terms that would be complete enough to satisfy a nutrionist, or opine on what styles of home are appealing without being an architect.
Do you have a useful definition for a substantially self-supporting entity that we lay people can work with, and isn't designed just to "win the argument" between proponents of dense versus less dense?
A months-long drought has affected broad swaths of the country, from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving crop fields parched and many reservoirs low. The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching.
I was in NW Mexico a few months back & it was dry then - I can only imagine what it is like now... IIRC this is the driest part of the year [unless a hurricane blesses them]... it has got to be a bit frightening for them.
With respect, not comparing to LA, Portland OR is a mess from a planning/transportation standpoint. Yes, the MAX is good, but if you don't live fairly close to it, it is useless to you. Then, the downtown core is between the river and steep hills, which requires 7(?) bridges to link the core to the rest of the city on the east side and tunnels and fairly steep highways to link to the westside suburbs. Then you have a sizeable portion of the metro area living in another state across another river which has only two bridges.
But at least we have had some mass transit for a while, unlike Seattle metro, which is just getting started.
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said on Thursday the U.S. central bank was developing tools to move away from its extremely loose monetary policy, but such an exit would not happen any time soon.
Somebody answer my question. How would you go about converting thousands of rent-stablized units to market rents in NYC?
Well, I quit smoking by just not lighting another cigarette. I suppose it's overly simplistic, but sometimes the solution to an addiction is to simply stop consuming the substance.
I'm not being completely facetious here; any sort of phase-in approach would tend to keep rents elevated, whereas a complete change-over would temporarily elevate rents, before falling back to a market-driven level, at least in my mind.
The real question is, besides rent control, what regulations and restrictions are in place that would prevent the addition or subtraction of new rental units in the city? If supply can't adjust, it's kind of a pointless exercise.
Parts of Florida now have a flood warning, which is stronger than a flood
watch. Like a hurricane warning, it means that you'd better take it seriously,
because there's a decent chance you'll get zapped.
The bottom line is, there are too many people right now. Like non-sentient
animals, we breed right up to the maximum possible numbers. And then
we act surprised when something happens to lower the max.
Is it safe to enter the thread . . . or is the Rob Dawg bluster, I have my own facts (don't tell me yours), you cannot have a civil discussion, you owe me an apology for being you . . . bullshit still going?
noob - my question was in the context of a RE investment plan that called for mass conversion of rent-controlled units. Financing was obtained based on income projections using market rents. Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
noob - my question was in the context of a RE investment plan that called for mass conversion of rent-controlled units. Financing was obtained based on income projections using market rents. Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
Oh, disregard me then, I thought maybe someone was contemplating the mass removal of rent controls in NYC.
I agree...I'm not really all that familiar with NYC RE, but it seems that rent controls have been kind of a sacred cow for NYC voters. Anyone that thought that mass conversions might take place without a lot of legal battles and so forth had to be smoking something, or thought that some kind of fix was in the works.
Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
There is, but I'm hazy on the details. I think the owner has to show that the tenant isn't actually using the apartment as his or her primary residence or that the renter is trashing the place. Or the landlord has to make substantial capital improvements to the property.
(But don't quote me on that because I'm not positive and I can't find the actual answer.)
The area I grew up in, in Balto of the 50s was walkable too. I could walk to
school, or I could take the bus. I could walk to a playground in 1 minute, to a library
in 2 or 3 minutes.
To a pharmacy in 3 minutes.
There was also a public grade school, a Jewish school, another playground with
tennis courts nobody used, a commercial swimming pool, numerous delis, a 5 and
dime. Etc. If you wanted to do serious shopping you could take the bus or drive
downtown. Balto was killed by allowing the suburbs to grow. My neighborhood
was killed by street widening to allow the cars to reach the burbs. The people who
ran to the burbs were often running away from black people.
None of this was planned, as far as I know, except the evil street widening.
Using hindsight, what could have stopped this destruction?
I don't know, but not pulling up the trolley tracks, and refusing to widen the streets
might have been a start. If the people who didn't even want one black family on
their street had been forced to cope with incredible congestion, maybe they
would have stopped fleeing? But then where would the black people have squeezed
in?
So was the area the hub lived in. Walkable.
My childhood house is still there, but the neighborhood was utterly destroyed.
Blow some smoke around the room, would you, noob? Might mellow everybody a bit.
No bong for me, unfortunately. Just trying to figure out the difference between developing map applications in MapPoint vs ArcGIS so I'm in and out here. Anyone with a pile of experience in MapPoint? Has 2010 made it easier to import shape files and develop personalized applications? How strong are the routing algorithms, and is there any flexibility to make changes to them or are you stuck with what comes out of the box?
The new Stuy owners tried to push out 4000 renters with the capital improvements clause. They took on too many at once and also ran out of money to act fast.
MapPoint - A piece of software by Microsoft that is similar to most GPS units people buy for their cars, except able to work with your own data. For example, if you have a list of clients with their addresses on your computer, you could put them into MapPoint and it would give you the shortest route between them, for example.
ArcGIS - a very powerful peice of spacial data mapping software (basically plotting pieces of data based on their location in space, i.e. addresses and GPS coordinates), but expensive and requires additional purchase of data (i.e. roads, postal codes, etc etc.) because it comes with nothing. The advantage is that it is exceptionally flexible, so I've been told.
Import - like the trade term, being able to bring additional pieces of data into the program, i.e. adding outlines of farm fields to the pre-existing roads and railway tracks already in MapPoint.
Shape - ArcGIS uses somethign called a "Shapefile" to store spacial data. Without getting into technicalities, it's just a file format like an XLS spreadsheet, or a DOC document, but it stores geographical/geometric locations and attributes.
Importing Shapefiles - Sometimes data exists in one format, like a shapefile, and I might want to bring it into MapPoint so I could write an instruction for a program that would use that data. For instance, if I had a shapefile containing farm fields, and I imported it into mappoint, I could create an instruction that would tell a crop inspector, for example, which fields he needed to visit, which order, and the shortest route possible.
Routing Algorithm - Using a computer to determine the shortest path between many distinct points, the so-called Travelling Saleman problem, for example, is actually a very difficult computational problem and minute changes in how you calculate a route, for example, can result in big differences to the bottom line. While we think of FedEx as a package delivery company, it doesn't make any of it's money on owning/leasing trucks and airplanes. It's competitive advantage is the algorithm it uses to tell drivers and pilots the shortest way to pick up and drop off packages, and to ensure they make it to their destination on time. So if the algorithm is fixed in MapPoint, it's difficult to know exactly how it's calculated and if it's optimal; conversely, at least it's included and I wouldn't have to create one from scratch...
Tanta vive
Rats.
This got OINKED! Re-posting.
Rob, i admit i havent had coffee this morning...only green tea, so maybe im slow.
Most of my urbanism views were shaped in Chicago...and tho I dont live there anymore, I know my biases. Who 'pro-urban' is touting LA as either the densest city or a success story? Out heree we know the drill...densest cities include San Fran, Manhatten borough, Chicago, etc, not in strict order...LA never 'placed in show'.
As for praising any let alone a single aspect of LA's built form...who in gawds name has been doing that? maybe it's a west coast LA_based PR campaign. LA-SoCal is utterly despised by pro-urban folks in the midwest and most of the east coast. or am i missing something?
I think "Real Estate Owned" is the most misleading real estate acronym out there...
All real estate is owned. . . .by somebody.
Avl Dao (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 8:49 am
Rob, i admit i havent had coffee this morning...only green tea, so maybe im slow.
Most of my urbanism views were shaped in Chicago...and tho I dont live there anymore, I know my biases. Who 'pro-urban' is touting LA as either the densest city or a success story? Out heree we know the drill...densest cities include San Fran, Manhatten borough, Chicago, etc, not in strict order...LA never 'placed in show'.
As for praising any let alone a single aspect of its built form...who in gawds name has been doing that? maybe it's a west coast LA_based PR campaign. LA-SoCal is utterly despised by pro-urban folks in the midwest and most of the east coast. or am i missing something?
I know we are pigged.
Let's approach this from the other direction. Tell me what enumerable aspects of the urban form are desirable. Then we'll see how LA stacks up. And yes, LA is much denser than any of the Urban Areas you mention. LA is not used by the prourbanists as anything except a counterexample. What's strange is tht LA exhibits all the traits prourbanits claim are desirable.
Accidental landlords and keys for cash.
What a country!
La just can't be denser than Manhattan.
Well, 2 comments from watching the video. California people are just relaxed. I don't think around here a tenant would be as mellow about the whole thing. At. All.
The other thing was the white feet. An outdoor worker dude I guess.
There's more people in Manhattan, but the people tend to be more dense in the City of Angles.
Missed all the Corus and problem bank list chat last evening driving my wife to a bike ride in Missouri. So Sheila did the good a bank/bad bank deal for Corus. Probably had no (or crappy) whole bank bids. I still can't see why anyone would buy the condo loans. The taxpayers just became prospective owners of a huge number of condos.
Scanning the problem bank list, California is well represented, yet relatively few have closed so far. Has the FDIC been leasing office space in the Golden State?
lawyerliz (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:07 am
LA just can't be denser than Manhattan.
Manhattan isn't an Urban Area.
energyecon - maybe you aren't here anymore, but the whole balance thing between civilization and nature... Many a well-intentioned out-of-stater has lost their lives in the White Mountains, unsuspecting of how cruel and cold nature can be.
For what's it worth:
Rancho Penasquitos roughly translates as :
Rancho Cliff (diver?)
100% OT: I have a growing list of curious matters related to: 10-Q
The Banco Popular de Puerto Rico
. The Corporation’s banking operations in Puerto Rico have been adversely impacted by the prolonged economic recession being experienced by the Puerto Rico economy, principally affecting the Corporation’s lending areas and credit losses. The main factors that contributed to the variance in the results for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, when compared to the first quarter of 2008, included:
• lower net interest income by $28.5 million, or 12%, primarily due to a lower net interest yield by 22 basis points, which was principally driven by the reduction in the yield of earning assets, principally commercial and construction loans. This decline can be attributed to two main factors: (1) the reduction in rates by the FED as described in the Net Interest Income section of this MD&A and (2) an increase in non-performing loans.
Re: TARP funds have been applied to a number of uses, including without limitation, investments in the Corporation’s banking subsidiaries, purchases of marketable securities, loans to the Corporation’s banking subsidiaries and satisfaction of the Corporation’s obligations. The Corporation has continued its lending activities in a disciplined and prudent manner in the different markets it serves, despite the difficult general economic conditions of such markets. The Corporation approved, in the aggregate, approximately $1.9 billion in new, renewed or restructured credit facilities during the quarter ended March 31, 2009.
Re: Banco Popular North America’s reportable segment consists of the banking operations of BPNA, E-LOAN, Popular Equipment Finance, Inc. and Popular Insurance Agency, U.S.A. Popular Equipment Finance, Inc. sold a substantial portion of its lease financing portfolio during the quarter ended March 31, 2009 and also ceased originations as part of BPNA’s strategic plan. BPNA operates through a retail branch network in the U.S. mainland, while E-LOAN supports BPNA’s deposit gathering through its online platform. All direct lending activities at E-LOAN were ceased during the fourth quarter of 2008. Popular Insurance Agency, U.S.A. offers investment and insurance services across the BPNA branch network...
Sorry for the interruption, just needed something to do....
I wonder if the guy was paying the previous owner. Maybe he hadn't paid
in a long time and 30 more days were actually gravy. Or, he had been worrying
when he would be kicked out and now he new for sure, so a relief.
People don't read those notices.
Wonder how much the mtg was; wonder how much a fair offering price would be.
It will be interesting how laid-back Californians cope with things financially, the tenant in Jim's video was fairly atypical of the breed, making no waves...
OT but econ, Bonddad has an interesting post up on unemployment, with some plots on the decline in hiring and the ratio of unemeployed to new hires, YoY changes in job openings:
The Bonddad Blog: Some Off-Beat Observations on the State of Things
LA is dense, Manhattan is congested.
Rob, by counting the defined city limits controlled by each City's Mayor and Council, there's no way LA-proper is denser than San Fran, NYC, Chocago, or even Philly proper..even with the illegal immigrant undercount (Chi & others have huge illegal undercount themselves in their city limits).
There's pros & cons to limiting to the discussion to official city limits. But I know in Chicago we/they decry that our 3-state 9+-county metro of 9 million is pure sprawl with few exceptions....it's been LA'd...haha.
No, I wont debate 'other folk's' definition of "desirable urban form" ; I'll only debate my own. My references to despising LA-SoCal is that that's the prevailing thinking amongst the field in general..they will have to defend their views.
I havent been to LA in 10 yrs, Im sure they're winning examples of specific projects...Ive even met some architects who pride themselves on their specific project...but they're oasis projects for the most part, it seems.
Am I wrong.
Mother can be a mother lol - I still have friends and family up there - recall the incredible scorn of many for the kid who went and starved to death because he chose not to take a map...
When duelling with the Dawg, the pair trade is long assertions and short supporting data, just sayin'
Just weird that E-Loan seems to still be active, with CD's??? Yes..... I'm done (with this)
this is a server
E-Loan announces layoffs
The restructuring plan of E-LOAN (the E-LOAN Restructuring Plan) contemplates E-LOAN ceasing to operate as a direct lender over the next few weeks. E-LOAN will continue to market deposit accounts under its name for the benefit of BPNA and offer loan customers the option of being referred to a trusted consumer lending partner.
Although E-Loan’s financial results were not broken out by owner Popular, E-Loan is part of a banking unit, Popular North America, that has suffered serious financial setbacks lately.
For the first nine months of 2007, Popular North America lost $107.7 million, according to a Nov. 9 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that covered Popular’s third-quarter results. That unit’s loss compares with a profit of $20.3 million for the first nine months of 2006.
Bad deal for everyone. Feel bad for the renter and Jim the Realtor for having to break the news to him.
On the positive side, the renter got to listen to the Detroit River while he lived there.
That sounded like one bad ass dog though!
Why does Jim hate America?
Gee, he knew what was coming, didn't pay rent, and now he's going to get "cash for keys", what's there to get worked up about? There's another rental just down the block I'll bet.
BTW- Jim sounds a little peeved about his REOs,...maybe he should think about holding a Wells Fargo soiree in one,...you know, loosen up a bit.
That's not fair. I've even gone to the effort of asking for which enumerable criteria we should examine. So far no one has been brave enough to mention even one.
I think we can all agree that city limits are not appropriate as this isn't about arbitrary political borders but urban form. I am prepared to defend my assertion that LA is the densest Urban Area in the US. I am also prepared to discuss the assertion that Los angeles exhibits the very characteristics prourbanists claim are desirable. Starting with density.
Rob, even the wiki pages for major cities often will give you the city size in sq. miles and the census pop, and calculate the density.
On a city limit basis, LA doesnt even 'place in show'.
EDIT:
Rob, there's one over-arching reason why city limits matter and it is not trump-able...or fungible
Its called governance and rules of law. LA Mayor & Council only directly contrlol sprawl within where they govern...and where the state law wont limit them. Ditto for Chicago.
Avl Dao (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:35 am
Rob, even the wiki pages for major cities often will give you the city size in sq. miles and the census pop, and calculate the density.
On a city limit basis, LA doesnt even 'place in show'.
The two feet you are standing on represent more than 13 million persons per square mile. Shall we use that? No, then use what the Census uses; Urban Area.
JD: I think "Real Estate Owned" is the most misleading real estate acronym out there...
"Homeowner" is closing fast on the finish line for the misleading title.
Various 'industries' invent the jargon that comes to dominate the language, often (usually?) contrary to the plain facts.
"Car owner" is another one. What percentage of folks have clear title to their ride?
One can see why home debtor or car debtor isn't good for biz, but very quickly the word/language distortion comes to represent the actual reality in people's pea brains.
Can't we return to popular outrage over Madison Avenue (dated reference to advertising/pr liars) being the great evil?
Nice edit after my reply. i'll let you finish whatever thoughts you are working with and then after they are settled i'll reply.
Where's the list you want to use to compare urban areas for urban character?
more
Largest Delinquent Loans
The following loans are the largest 10 loans in Fitch's loan delinquency index. The index consists of loans 60 days or more delinquent in addition to those characterized as nonperforming matured loans, in foreclosure, or REO. Of these 10 loans, four have experienced an appraisal ....
Hotels, Retail Properties Make Up More Than 63% of Largest Problem Loans - CoStar Group
Isn't 'urban character' like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography? You know it when you see it.
As rob noted, we're not talking city limits. Los Angles is like Boston, its composes of many sub-cities. From afar, Cambridge is part of the Boston urban area. Oh, I'm sure a local Realtor would argue for days on 'its different here,' but you get the idea. Just as Beverly Hills is not politically part of LA city, but it is part of the urban area.
LA is dense. What fools people is the lack of 'mid rise' buildings (due to earthquakes). Its not as dense as Manhattan for the most part, but it is a very dense city.
No one from LA would constrain themselves to considering just within the city of Los Angeles metro limits. As Rob Dawg noted, its 13 million people in the census area.
We could go one further and claim the catch basin for LAX.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
Hello Warren, yah know that $33 billion of goodwill shit you had....
Wells Fargo Tower, GSMSC 2007-GG10
The $550 million loan is secured by a 1,385,325-square-foot, 53-story class A multitenant office building with a five-level subterranean parking garage in Los Angeles, CA. The loan is sponsored by Maguire Properties. The loan was underwritten based on pro forma rental rate increases by the banker that are not likely to materialize in this market.
Speaking of 'urban character': MY city has it, and yours doesn't.
That edit was before ur reply....im a slow typist.
I always stand by my word.
I made it extrememly clear I was refering to City Limits once u made it clear you were not.
Now...do we really really need to go thru the excercise of copying and pasting city limit lists?
i already know the suburban sprawl in NYC, ATL, Chgo is as bad as LA...but no one is championing the east coast, midwest or west coast suburban sprawl.
thats why there's those 3-letters sub.....in front of urban.
People sometimes forget that LA and OC are tied @ the hip, one giant mélange of human beans...
Cash for keys, teh Californicators win again. :sigh:
and Liz, u are also correct.
manhatten is many things.
It is a legally recognized county in NY.
It is a legally recognized burough with it's own executive and legislative barnches.
it is also under the governance of the NYC mayor.
Slow typist I may be.....but I do know urban planning and data.
Could you imagine Jim in Detroit, offering tenants a grandido or 2 to vacate the presences?
JimPortlandOR (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:43 am
Speaking of 'urban character': MY city has it, and yours doesn't.
Portland is almost as nice as it thinks it is. Why is Greater Los Angeles considered to be sprawling when as an Urban Area it is by far and away the densest UA in the US. One reason is sinister; planners hate LA for its results despite it having the greatest proportions of planner advocated characteristics of anyplace in the US.
Portland still suffers from a single sentence that accidentally leaked out from a document more than a dozen years ago:
Los Angeles has 51 miles of freeway per one million people
while Portland has over 100 miles per one million people.
[Federal Highway Administration, "Highway Statistics 1998"].
Smart-growth planners in Portland compared Portland to
other major cities for purposes of identifying goals for
Portland's future. Planners concluded that "In public
discussions we gather the general impression that Los
Angeles represents a future to be avoided", but that "with
respect to density and road per capita mileage it displays
an investment pattern we desire to replicate" here in Portland.
[Metro, "Metro Measured", Portland, Ore., May 1994, p. 7].
Metro planners have decided to plan on reducing per capita
freeway mileage from more than 100 miles per million people
to under 70 miles per million, a ratio higher than only three
other major urban areas: Miami, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
[Metro, "Region 2040 recommended Alternative Technical
Appendix", Portland, Ore. 9-15-94].
So, Los Angeles' nightmare congestion reputation is the
result of the nation's highest metropolitan densities
(not low density sprawl) coupled with the fewest number
of freeway [centerline] miles per capita. [Randal O'Toole, "The
Vanishing Automobile and other Urban Myths", 2000, pp394-5].
Wow, there's some raw meat.
"Wells Fargo Tower, GSMSC 2007-GG10'
Across the street: (Great link Doc!)
Two California Plaza, GSMSC 2007-GG10
The $470 million loan is secured by a class A 54-story office building with 1.33 million square feet, consisting of an atrium, three levels of retail, and a five-level subterranean parking garage in Los Angeles. The loan is sponsored by Maguire Properties.
Ghad... is this the start of capitulation in downtown LA?
I wonder what the next residential mortgage default rate will be reported as? We're at 15% of mortgages not being paid. When is the market totally broken? I think we're close to the threshold.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
Anybody ever take a drive east of Broadway in downtown LA?
It used to be a really sketchy area, and now there are bright and shiny empty condos everywhere, and it's still as sketchy as ever...
Neil, when ur paying for taxes for city services it sure does count whether u r in a city limit or not and whose it is.
There's a long list of times when it does matter where the city limit is...and a long list where it doesnt. Whe discussing density, it clearly matters where the city limits are.
People sometimes forget that LA and OC are tied @ the hip, one giant mélange of human beans...
But the difference between Melrose and Fairfax and PCH and Newport Blvd are different planets, inhabited by different species.
I was born in LA, and it was one of the great places on the planet in the 50's and 60's---
Now, after 2 days, I bail. I think if you are young, and talented, LA is a great city.
OC has always been a bland suburban nightmare, but it has been good to me financially.
LA denser than Manhattan?
Sorry, Dawg, not buying it.
Rob, as a rule, I like to be a Tanta-like uber-geek and check the source material and see if they are not gleefully interchanging multi-county or multi-jurisdictional data simply to score points over people who have no sense of math, stats, or geography.
Sadly that is rampant these days.
It's like pretending that just because San Diego and Tijuana are heavily populated, that there's no difference between them...and that Tijuana can control sprawl in San Diego County.
Purely nonsensical to not recognize the boundaries of governence when it's critical to recognize where those boundaries of control are.
Rob Dawg: I guess my snarkiness about 'urban character' was not conveyed. Yeah, Portland is nice, but I intended my comment to indicate everybody thinks their city is 'better' (there's no place like home).
(but I'll hazard the guess that you don't really think of freeway miles/capita is a good measure of any of the qualities that people like - a tiny city in population might have very percentage of freeway, even if it had only one mile.)
Like most pacific coasters outside of the LA basin, I hate LA, but that's largely a result of the total urban spread. Anywhere is 45 min away from anywhere else, and it seems like there's a freeway connecting any two potential points. But if people like it, that's fine by me.
There are various parts of Miami and South Beach where you can walk.
There are a very few cute walkable blocks in Cocoa Village.
If the towers had worked out, then amenities would have arrived to serve
the people in the towers, and there would have been some walkability.
But hardly any people in some.
There is supposed to be some rezoning in Miami to make it more urban, but
I don't know the details.
My architect daughter-who still has a job--hates urban planners.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 9:58 am
LA denser than Manhattan?
Sorry, Dawg, not buying it.
That's because you are letting other people put words in my mouth. Boruoghs are not Urban Areas and the US Census has reams of discussion as to why UA is the cachement when discussing urban density.
I grew up in LA in the 60's and it really was a paradise, but paradise lost... as it turned out.
paradise lost....
is that anything like virginity lost?
My architect daughter-who still has a job--hates urban planners.
Liz-
Doesn't Miami have one of the best urban planning schools?
Dawgma is an expert at winning battles not worth waging over much ado about nothing, an interesting character flaw...
Dunno ghost. Maybe.
She went to U of Florida in Gainesville.
Dawgma--excellent.
Juvie--what was good about it and why did it go away.
We now know what Eric and Pavel look like.
I wanna see a picture of Broward's leather pants.
What about a revision of law that, if a plant is shut down, the former employees of that plant are free to reopen & run it as a worker cooperative? With 6 months-one year rent free & after that a true market value rent is paid to the owner of the plant. Assuming the plant owner hasn't just depreciated to 0 & walked away.
It's not always the case that the employees who work in a facility have the knowledge or experience in actually producing and marketing the product. Knowing how to fulfil your assigned task and having the expertise to create and market a product from scratch are very different things. In addition, the fixed cost of land rental/ownership is often a small component of overall costs; who would provide the group of employees with the capital necessary to source goods, pay utilities, and float inventory?
I wanna see a picture of Broward's leather pants.
I am quite certain that I do not want to see Broward in his assless chaps. Thank goodness we can't post pictures in the comments.
Liz-
You could live cheaply on the sand, open spirit, good drugs, great music----
Kinda of like Eden without the snakes.
Then all those people started showing up from elsewhere with their uptight moral values and work ethics.
My father was born in CA, so I have deep roots.
Shrug.
You're arguing semantics and legal definitions.
I care little about the argument but Manhattan was far more crowded (although I haven't been in LA proper for 20 years).
I didn't know his pants were assless.
Most people in and around Los Angeles consider themselves part of Los Angeles. So it entirely reasonable to consider someone in Eagle Rock and someone in Glendale part of the same urban area.
To seperate them by local political boundaries is silly. It's not like comparing San Diego with TJ. In the Los Angeles Urban area we are all governed by the same Fed, State and county government. The local government just isn't as important in comparision.
They're not.
Noob is fantasizing.
Oooooooooooooohh.
Noob is fantasizing.
Well, if a waking nightmare is a type of fantasy, then yes.
i could have sworn you mentioned assless chaps in a thread a while back, but if it was simply a rhetorical device then perfect. I'll be able to sleep again.
I grew up in the hinterlands, 25 miles east of LA, and it was incredibly rural, and I never lacked for adventure, real or imagined...
Now it's just one giant mass of folks in a rat-maze.
it was simply a rhetorical device
I'm not a big fan of toys.
Isn't LA out of water yet? That was a big topic of discussion years ago.
But, if some cases there were employees who could, then wouldn't it be a benefit to the region for them to do so?
And, if the US can afford to bail out banksters to the tune of what, 1.2 trillion, why couldn't it make low interest loans for the costs you list?
It doesn't seem as though all those MBAs who are supposed to be so good at running businesses are doing such a great job, so, how would it be that much different or worse if engineers and/or other workers tried their hands at running a factory or plant?
"I wonder if the guy was paying the previous owner. "
He said he'd stopped paying. He did read the notices. The property manager apparently copped to what was going on, and it didn't sound like there was any pressure to get him out. If the owner had indeed "worked something out," anybody's guess whether the tenant could have coughed up the back rent or not. Or should have.
Hey, since RD doesn't want to actually provide any data and just wave his arms around, guess I'll step into the breach.
From the Census Bureau, population per square mile:
New York City - 8159
Orange County - 3606
LA/Long Beach - 2344
LA-Riverside-Orange County together - 482
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-CONTEXT=gct&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_GCTPH1_US25&-redoLog=false&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=&-format=US-10|US-10S&-_lang=en
Interesting news from Alaska:
The refinery provides just over 50 percent of the jet fuel used at Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport, he said. Fuel shipments between North Pole and Anchorage account for about 35 percent of overall railroad revenue, Thompson said. At its peak in 2003, the railroad was hauling more than 800 million gallons of petroleum products from the refinery. Next year, the railroad is expecting to move about 400 million gallons.
Alaska Railroad plans significant layoffs: Alaska News | adn.com
Sorry, off topic.
Now it's just one giant mass of folks in a rat-maze
JimInPortland got me wondering exactly why I dislike L.A.
It's not a bad place but... part of it is the housing cost, part of it was the annual car theft, part of it the driving.
I like Seattle and Portland because they're smaller but not boring or job-impaired (relatively)
A lot of it is the driving.
Now I choose apartments close to where I'm working but I never did that in L.A.
Now i wonder why.
I lived in Reseda when I worked in Agoura Hills.
That makes no sense to me now.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 10:10 am
Shrug.
You're arguing semantics and legal definitions.
I care little about the argument but Manhattan was far more crowded (although I haven't been in LA proper for 20 years).
It becomes important when you understand that modern urban planning goals are directed at making other places more like Los Angeles by the numbers. It is a logical disconnect that has the potential for great harm.
Manhattan is certainly more crowded than "Los Angeles." It is a self selecting perceptual issue. If you spent your time in the Wilshire corridor where 100k/sq mi is common you might get a better comparative feel.
Numbers don't capture the true feeling of density, after all, if you like the people you're with, it's not bad, but a few jerks can make the Grand Canyon feel crowded. Okay, we need a Jerk per Sq. Mi. (JSM) number to properly assess density.
LA gets it's water from the Feather River, the Eastern Sierra and the Colorado River, so they've got a few bases covered, but next year will be the telling time...
The place running out of water is San Diego, which gets it's water from the Colorado and the Delta.
The former is full of quagga mussels (which have made their way into almost all of SD's reservoirs) and short on supply of water, and the later is being held hostage by a red herring in the guise of a Smelt.
If I owned a home in SD, i'd sell it for whatever the market would bear, NOW.
I know nothing about urban planning but i do know design and scalability.
L.A. is just plain too big for how it was grown.
Phoenix was designed in a much better fashion to scale out big.
But cities like Vegas, Denver, Portland, Seattle (lived in them all) were never designed to be large or they lack the proper terrain.
Phoenix is the only city I've seen that's designed to be large.
Smelt?
I wonder how many times in a day Jim the Realtor has to talk to pudgy guys who aren't wearing a shirt.
I must admit, however, that he took the news relatively well, all things considered. That, and the fact that he hadn't paid rent yet that month shows that he actually was paying attention...
Cute. Do it again. this time use the same cachements. CMSA:
New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT--PA CMSA 2,028.7
Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA 2,344.2
Oh and what's this about not providing data?
In a somewhat naked grab for water, the No Cals got a judge to not allow around 25% of what SD used to get from the Delta to flow to them, to protect 3 inch fish called the Delta Smelt...
This in the face of the worst drought in a long time~
JD:
Is that related to agricultural water supplies being cut off?
I'm still missing the point.
The current fad in urban planning is to make cities LIKE LA?
Or attempt to mimic part of LA's structure without creating the essential foundation?
Fruits and veggies don't vote, so they are being cut off ruthlessly, especially in the western San Joaquin Valley...
It's a Faustian bargain allowing suburbanites to have access to water that used to grow their food, and most importantly it allows people to think that there is plenty of water, which there most certainly isn't.
In a somewhat naked grab for water
Yeah, we built that 500 mile long waterway, we deserve that water. Screw those Smelt and the f'ing Delta. And the SF Bay.
That's ridiculous, though. When we think of New York City, we DON'T think of it including Bridgeport, Stamford, and freaking TRENTON... unless we use your numbers.
You're cherry picking to try to prove your preconceived notions.
JD:
Well, I guess all those farmers/farm workers getting laid off can go on welfare and unemployment. The suburbanites will have to foot the bill to support the 30-40% unemployment in towns like Fresno, I guess.
I think you've just invalidated your own argument. You're saying if you include all of the land between Montauk and Scranton in your denominator, then LA has a higher density, except that is a pointless comparison to make. New York is less crowded because the land in Northern NJ is extremely low density?
Also, why is LA labeled as PMSA and not CMSA?
I'd be making some Plan B's if I was you, it's not as if the hack politicians in your fine city are going to be able to outmaneuver savvy SF politicians, on this gig.
The CA water 'problem' is very heavy use of of it on central valley agriculture, often on crops that are water intensive (like rice). I don't recall the numbers, but I think over 60% of the state's water goes into ag in the CV.
LA could not exist (and SD too) if they didn't have the CA water project to survive - and don't ask me why on earth they allow backyard swimming pools and grass in the yard. Pure nutiness, which is in increasing and ample supply the further you get south of Santa Barbara.
I can't wait for the water wars - popcorn is stockpiled and LA's fleet of news/traffic copters will provide great zoom shots of the shots being fired.
JimPortlandOr:
As I recall, there were shooting wars back in the 1930's between AZ and CA militias over water...
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 10:28 am
I'm still missing the point.
The current fad in urban planning is to make cities LIKE LA?
Or attempt to mimic part of LA's structure without creating the essential foundation?
No, you get it. You also get the parts about perceptual density. there's a reason people crowd along natural limits like beaches. Even a neighbor 20 feet away is psychologically acceptable when you can look out on the ocean. Here's a list of desirable urban characteristics according to the prourbanists:
Urban and Transit planners advocate:
Higher residential densities, just like LA.
Higher transit usage, just like LA.
Fewer roads per capita, just like LA.
Greater public dedications, just like LA.
Higher carpooling, just like LA.
New subways, just like LA.
Stricter emissions, just like LA (& Calif.).
Regional governance, just like LA.
See the planner paradox? Everything they want yields... LA.
Near as I can tell, sprawl is density independent but
congestion and crime are primarily density dependent.
That means advocating for higher density is actually
advocating for more crime and congestion with no decrease
in sprawl. NURBs, NUTs and SmUGLers don't admit this.
This is why I find dictionary definitions of sprawl or anti-sprawl to be
wholly inadequate to address a real and serious public
policy/planning concern.
Sorry for Rambling but this is pertinent. People drawn to the planning
"profession" do so out of a desire to make a difference. The thing they
think they see is sprawl and their solution to sprawl is density.
Higher residential densities squander land and resources and wealth in a
vain attempt to replicate the undesirable urban patterns of Pre WW-II
cities. Everything about higher density increases costs and expenses.
Everything. It's also a false economy to imagine building residential at
higher density "saves" land. It doesn't after you've allocated enough to
required roads and other urban amenities.
In general what planners want cannot be revisited because it never really
existed in the first place and no one would want to go there in the second.
If you'll pardon the language the real problem with New Urbanism and all the
other repackagings of urban planner graduate class theories is that they
want to put 10 lbs of manure in a 5 lb sack. Physics and geometry intrude
on the noble ideals of these schemes. The unfortunate part is that since
urban planning is not in any form a science the practitioners are not
familiar with math, physics, et. al.
Oh, and its going to get really fun when LA SWAT's water cannon are useless against the riots because they ......
have no water!
I'm sure we can provide for the farmers/farm workers well-being somewhat, but what about the food they used to grow?
.... Other banks that come close to Citibank’s 5-year certificate of deposit rate include E-Loan, their 5-year certificate of deposit yield is at 3.40 percent and Ally Bank, their 5-year CD yield is currently at 3.30 percent.
Ah, good ol' Ally Bank...I preferred their old name: GMAC.
Yeah, I live in a heavily populated desert,...
water rationing is coming.
sdtfs: followed by runoff water/sewer recycling into your faucet.
you'll like it, you really will. maybe with some koolaid flavoring.
Could you imagine Jim in Detroit, offering tenants a grandido or 2 to vacate the presences?
They'd go buy the house next door and throw a block party with the 'change' left over.
JD:
Maybe fresh vegetables year round are unrealistic? If we can't grow in CA, then we will have to fly the stuff in from South America, which will become more and more expensive as the price of oil rises. As for agricultural CA, if the numbers we are hearing are correct (30%+ unemployment), we are starting to reach the threshold of social breakdown.
Maybe we can hire Blackwater to run our graywater program.
dawg:
They are Xe now.
I'm sure we can provide for the farmers/farm workers well-being somewhat, but what about the food they used to grow?
Isn't Urban Agriculture the new meme? That idea that somehow you can produce enough food on your balcony to support yourself for an entire year, or something?
I'm being overly simplistic, of course, but I have a feeling that many of this nostalgic wistful wanna-be farmers really have no idea about the consequences of contemplating this type of system. There are a few on this site who grow a great deal of food for themselves at their own homestead. How much do you think could be grown on a quarter acre town lot? (Joanna,
, and others feel free to jump in here 
)
you'll know it's Wednesday when the water is strawberry. Thursday is grape.
you won't even have to buy the Cialis, it comes in the water.
Nuke,
Sacbee unemployment interactive graphic: Unemployment in California - Interactive Graphics - sacbee.com
along with the hormones for birth control....
Heck, there are so many trace pharmaceuticals in the effluent now we might as well hire Amgen.
Urban Agriculture sounds like the Great Leap Forward, except in lieu of making steel in your backyard, you try and grow enough food to sustain yourself...
i'm thirsty now: time for my liquid prozac straight from the faucet.
Dawg:
Is this U3 or U6? There are depression statistics.
Urban Agriculture sounds like the Great Leap Forward, except in lieu of making steel in your backyard, you try and grow enough food to sustain yourself...
I wonder if Mao ever recognized the intense irony in that title.
There really won't be any breakdown in the Central Valley, because virtually everybody that works the crops is Mexican, and they tend to keep a pretty low profile and are used to living well below our means, and a good number of them are headed down under, back home.
In a somewhat naked grab for water, the No Cals got a judge to not allow around 25% of what SD used to get from the Delta to flow to them, to protect 3 inch fish called the Delta Smelt...
JD, during the '70s I remember hearing longtime State Sen. Al Rodda, who represented Sacramento, saying he was ok with shipping NoCal water south. He believed that was the only thing keeping hordes of SoCals from decamping to NoCal.
U-3. yes, U-3. It is a little misleading as the depression zones are kind of self selecting for retaining the unemployed so poor off they cannot go elsewhere to find work and being agricultural the rate is always high anyway. Then there's the manufactured drought that's making things worse.
Damn, Dawg, you're trying to make me think.
It's too early.
Okay, I get the "definition of sprawl" argument.
Each side is trying to define the conditions for victory.
I somewhat understand the other arguments.
The biggest issue I see is that you can't dictate how and where people live.
In a network, I can alter scalability by forcing the most-connected / most-accessed resources to live close together.
I believe that you could build a more efficiency city which uses less energy and land, but you'd need the power to locate resources (including people) to where they "should" be.
they might have a problem removing the latex taste (condoms down the toilet) from the drinking supply.
i read years ago about the amazing quantity of condoms the course filters catch as the first step in water treatment - along with a amazing variety of other stuff (which I'll leave to the reader's imagination).
Great graphic.
Imperial County 30.2%
Fresno 15.0%
OC 9.5%
Glad the recession is over.
OT: I just passed a strip club in Nashville that had on it's sign: "stimulus sundays".
Love it!
Rocky: Saturday is extend and pretend day.
Strap-on economy?
You do get it. I've called where you are going "Nodaltopia." It is a very delicate balance between command land use and the necessary organic infill.
I believe that you could build a more efficiency city which uses less energy and land, but you'd need the power to locate resources (including people) to where they "should" be.
Nature's Metropolis, by Cronon, offers a very interesting take on urban development within the city of Chicago. It's a historical view, so it spends quite a bit of time focussing on which elements early-to-mid-1800's speculators thought comprised a potential big city. I've really enjoyed the book and I recommend it to anyone for their bunker
"My father was born in CA, so I have deep roots."
LMAO! But, I guess when you're talking mostly sand and desert, that's about as deep as roots get.
The most interesting thing about LA is that there is still tons of oil underfoot, although not one homeowner has any mineral rights...
Rocky: i'll bet the strip club is considering a BFF too - with a focus on the split part of the lower torso
WTF did I miss?
"I didn't know his pants were assless."????
??
It is a very delicate balance between command land use and the necessary organic infill.
Interesting. An interesting application of network theory I hadn't seen before. There's issue of free will that you don't normally have but there's also issues of resource cost over long time periods. Who knows what gasoline will cost in twenty years? Or land, even? But... i have to say, you still need to make a best-guess stab at creating a top-down structure which attempts to be efficient.
That's why I mentioned Phoenix.
The traffic system was designed to be large from when Phoenix was small.
Other cities Vegas, Denver, Portland and Seattle, were largely grown ad hoc over time. Yeah, yeah, I know someone will claim that they did planning but from my viewpoint, not really. They did zoning restrictions but the arteries are ad hoc, "oh, crap we need something here now" reactive measures.
Okay, so just to reiterate in case anyone was confused upthread: contrary to what Rob Dawg says, according to the Census Bureau, New York City is far, far denser than Los Angeles. His belief that LA is denser than NYC is based on his absurd idea that Trenton, NJ, Stamford, CT, and other far-afield suburbs are part of New York City.
Discount any conclusions he draws from this use of the census data accordingly.
Strap-on economy?
Another connotation of extend and pretend.
Jim, I'll have to think about that one before I get it
Gotta run. On the road.
"If I owned a home in SD, i'd sell it for whatever the market would bear, NOW."
Nah, desalination baby. It's the 'wave' of the future.
Ha Ha
A surfing group blocked a desal plant from coming on line for almost 2 years in San Onofre, not all that far removed from Robert Duvall wanting to take a VC beach, because the waves broke right to left, in Apocalypse Now.
Desal uses a shitlode of electricity, and you need to hook it up to a nuke plant, of which there are only a few on the California coast.
It ain't rocket science, as Saudi Arabia has almost 30 desal plants up and running~
Imagine if we had taken 1/2 of the money we spent to build ever more prisons, and had 20 desal plants on line to show for it?
Desalinization is surprisingly expensive. We do it in the Navy quite a bit. Even reverse osmosis (what the new subs have) is relatively costly. For millions of gallons, the cost is prohibitive. I think some of the oil countries have it, but they also have lots of very cheap energy.
Speaking of BFF. I think we've found a corporate sponsor: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zqzPMzXNGso/SqvjLu0whQI/AAAAAAAADt4/STSBY0laCA8/s1600-h/IMG_0307.jpg
Water is worth almost nothing when there's lots of it, and priceless when there isn't much left.
Agronox (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 11:03 am
Okay, so just to reiterate in case anyone was confused upthread: contrary to what Rob Dawg says, according to the Census Bureau, New York City is far, far denser than Los Angeles.
And if I had said that you'd be right. But since I didn't this is where you apologize for claiming I did. You don't get to deliberately misquote people and then point out that they are wrong.
"I didn't know his pants were assless."????
You missed a strong argument for why we do not permit pictures in these threads.
JD:
That reminds me of the comparison between diamonds and water from a classic econ text.
Water is worth almost nothing when there's lots of it, and priceless when there isn't much left.
I was peripherally involved in a discussion over the weekend involving the act of defecating while swimming in a lake, and although I personally have never experienced this sensation, it got me wondering: could someone living in the Kalahari ever even contemplate such an action?
EDIT: I probably should have made up a different scenario; I have a feeling this one is going to go downhill very fast...
So aside from BSR, have any of you considered investing in water in some fashion?
Hereby be acknowledged that this thread is dead
Another connotation of extend and pretend.
That's just wrong.
As near as I can tell, Portland works pretty good. I used the Max there for almost a year, my first long-term experience with mass transit and it changed my L.A.-driving mind. I believe that because of scale, Portland and Seattle are probably more efficient (overall) than L.A. The private car system is amazingly flexible and granular but it's probably overkill if you had a smaller city which was designed well to start.
It occurs to me that systems which are efficient in current real-time are not necessarily efficient over long periods or in dynamic environments.
noob goldberg,
Thanks for that update! I assume that there should not be a poll...
Hereby be acknowledged that this thread is dead
I love Jim the Realtor, but this video didn't leave me with a lot of questions. And there isn't a whole lot else going on today, either...
Well, I know nothing about academic urban planning. But Rob Dawg has thrown down a few interesting challenges for the professionals, and so far they haven't really engaged him on the substance. If you guys want to advance the ball, you have to get past arguing over the definitions.
I am sure that, from the professional planner's perspective, the city and other political boundaries are super-important. But for regular people, what matters is the area of influence of a city. When I think of LA, I don't carve out the sub-cities within it. No one thinks they have to find a home in Santa Monica just because they find a job there. Yes, the political boundaries matter some, but they are not usually the most important drivers of what a coherent concentration of humans looks like, setting aside extreme examples such as conurbations straddling a first world country and a third world country.
When I think of LA, I don't carve out the sub-cities within it.
I never did.
I was surprised when I moved to Seattle that people care about city boundaries.
When they say "Seattle", they mean Seattle proper, not Redmond or Renton.
To me, it's one big amorphous mass.
If only there was a WTR ETF, for some of you addicted gamblers to wet your whistle...
But since I didn't this is where you apologize for claiming I did.
Not a chance. Here's what you used to show that LA is more dense than NYC. This is a direct quote from you:
"New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT--PA CMSA 2,028.7
Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA 2,344.2"
Which only proves what you're trying to say if you agree that New York City includes Stamford, Trenton, Danbury, etc. None of the New Urbanists who bring up New York as any sort of model would agree. And neither would you expect for the fact that it helps you make your points. So you "neglect" to mention that your version of New York includes those 'burbs.
....speaking of "diamonds & water"......Sheri's Ranch (brothel) had an auction sale for the business (brothel, hotel, rentals, restaurant, sports bar - 300 acres)........an elaborate party with girls, girls, & more girls ........and nobody came. Apparently the head 'el heife' is an idiot and in a bit of "cash-flow" challenges with his other girlie-bars in Vegas.
"It is common knowledge that the entire Sheri's empire has several investor partners. Moneyed individuals tweaked by the opportunity and the mystique of being part owners within this unique legal industry. The exact number of investors remains tightly guarded but apparently in the area of a dozen. Apparently there is also "great unrest" among the current partners." - (Pahrump Mirror, Sept. 10, 2009)
I ought to find out if any of these gals know how to take care of a garden or milk a cow..........don't say a word, JD.....
LOL
When they say "Seattle", they mean Seattle proper, not Redmond or Renton.
To me, it's one big amorphous mass.
It's the same with Toronto. From east to west, once you hit Whitby/Ajax it really doesn't let up until you're past Oakville or Milton. That's like a 50-60 mile amorphous blob as well, with few defining boundaries. The fact it's composed of many individual towns and cities is relatively meaningless, until it comes time to pay for services.
Agronox (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 11:29 am
But since I didn't this is where you apologize for claiming I did.
Not a chance.
I wasn't expect civil behavior but I wasn't expecting outright bluster in the face of your being busted either. The floor is yours.
I'm eating a steak as I type that used to be part of a grass-fed cow across the river from me, delish~
"A surfing group blocked a desal plant from coming on line for almost 2 years in San Onofre, not all that far removed from Robert Duvall wanting to take a VC beach, because the waves broke right to left, in Apocalypse Now.
Desal uses a shitlode of electricity, and you need to hook it up to a nuke plant, of which there are only a few on the California coast."
Yes, however - Carlsbad is at the final approval, sans the nuke plant stage (there is a plant in place, but it isn't of the nuke variety). It will be the "test case" to watch going forward.
"Imagine if we had taken 1/2 of the money we spent to build ever more prisons, and had 20 desal plants on line to show for it?"
Agreed, "imagine". Makes me think of the desert mirage effect. If only more thought and planning was put before supposed "progress".
I am sure that, from the professional planner's perspective, the city and other political boundaries are super-important. But for regular people, what matters is the area of influence of a city.
I'd actually love to spend some time in a 'planned' city someday. For those of you more well-travelled than I, have you spent a whole lot of time in cities like Brasilia? It's on my list of places to visit, but as of yet, no luck.
I'll take the floor then, though it will veer OT with respect to the urban planning beef - shall we discuss counter factual claims with respect to the level of reserves in the USA today vs. the 1970's?
.
edit: lunch time!
If only more thought and planning was put before supposed "progress".
*******SOCIALIST-LIKE TYPING DETECTED*********
/I keed, I keed.
shall we discuss counter factual claims with respect to the level of reserves in the USA today vs. the 1970's?
What, you throw a grenade like that and then bail for lunch?
Which counter-factual claims are we going to discuss, whilst you butter your bread? Any background reading for us?
I wasn't expect civil behavior but I wasn't expecting outright bluster in the face of your being busted either.
I show that your claims are based on a willful misreading of the census data, then you demand an apology from me and whine when you don't get one.
And I'm the one you think was busted?
He always pleads for an apology, it's part of his Dawgma & Pony Show act that's wearing thin.
"SOCIALIST-LIKE TYPING DETECTED"
Dyed in the wool, baby. And, it's even worse than that, it also springs from my fortunate/unfortunate (depending upon the prism you choose to apply) Roman Catholic indoctrination...sigh...
Re: overuse of water by suburbanites crowding out the poor farmers in California:
The proportion of water use in Calif. used to be given as ag 80 percent, industry 10 percent, residential 10 percent. I doubt it's changed all that much.
In our off-the-water grid county, ag is overdrafting the available groundwater down in the Pajaro Valley and saltwater intrusion is now a serious problem. Ag wants someone to "solve the problem;" but the real solution is not to grow 'way too many acres of water-intensive berry crops in a water-restricted environment. They don't wanna hear that, all those fine self-made men.
Up in our end of the county, the "water shortage" is entirely political. All we need to do is build more storage, but the arch-druids and the NIMBYs (much overlap between the two groups) have historically opposed more supply as a backdoor development cap. Now they're backing desal as an "emergency only" solution that doesn't add basic capacity. We're all going to pay for this madness.
They are hitting saltwater intrusion in Salinas, so the 3,000 mile salad is in serious trouble.
Dyed in the wool, baby. And, it's even worse than that, it also springs from my fortunate/unfortunate (depending upon the prism you choose to apply) Roman Catholic indoctrination...sigh...
Don't feel bad; I've found that even the most through-and-through free market evangelist will, when pushed on a specific issue, arrive at conclusions they feel would better resolve the situation, if only they were in charge.
I'm pretty sure it's human nature, and also the reason why economists should play no more than a peripheral role in determining and setting policy.
In our off-the-water grid county, ag is overdrafting the available groundwater down in the Pajaro Valley and saltwater intrusion is now a serious problem. Ag wants someone to "solve the problem;" but the real solution is not to grow 'way too many acres of water-intensive berry crops in a water-restricted environment. They don't wanna hear that, all those fine self-made men.
I work with farmers for a living. I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons I'm so cynical.
They are usually hard-working, intelligent, and successful businessmen, but they have few-to-no qualms about involving the government in their operations. In their defence, however, the government has few qualms about wading neck deep into regulating and politicking agriculture, so I suppose it's some sort of twisted symbiotic relationship.
This is from the link posted by Doc at 9:41 PDT.
Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town, Cobalt 2007-C2, ML-CFC 2007-5, ML-CFC 2007-6, WBCMT 2007-C30
The $3 billion loan is secured by 56 multistory buildings with 110 different addresses situated on 80 acres that include 11,227 residential apartments in New York City. The borrowers, Tishman Speyer Properties, LP and BlackRock Realty, acquired the property with the intent of converting rent-stabilized units to market rents. As of July 2009 there were 4,461 market units and 6,768 rent-stabilized units, with a vacancy rate of 4.1%.
First of all, 11,227 units. Wow. Just wow. Second, how would they convert rent-stabilized units to market rents? Sounds shady.
I am not going to step into a more-heat-than-light discussion amongst (professional?) urban planners, but I do understand RD's point, I think, in spite of his tendency to state and argue his case provocatively. We all know that Manhattan is denser than LA. But the question you have to ask next is whether Manhattan is a substantially self-supporting entity. If a lot of the people working there who have kids, or aren't wealthy, actually live in areas outside Manhattan, then you need to combine those areas with Manhattan to assess it as a proposal for how human beings can organize themselves into communities.
We all know that Manhattan is denser than LA.
Sure. But neither of us was talking about just Manhattan.
But the question you have to ask next is whether Manhattan is a substantially self-supporting entity. If a lot of the people working there who have kids, or aren't wealthy, actually live in areas outside Manhattan, then you need to combine those areas with Manhattan to assess it as a proposal for how human beings can organize themselves into communities.
We call these areas "the outer boroughs." And every number I've pointed to in this thread includes them.
And so that I don't misconstrue you: what do you mean by a "substantially self-supporting entity?"
sorry to kill the thread
Try Salt Lake City, UT...home of the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was laid out as a grid based city at the direction of pioneer Brigham Young, back in the 1850's; with specified block sizes and street widths; and certain blocks reserved for religious and civil structures. Obviously since then newer development ideas have changed the city somewhat, but the core design still frames all development.
It was pretty dead already. We're just kicking the corpse...
It wasn't you, Agronox.
Tanta would have put a stop to this ridiculous pissing contest. What's the matter with you guys?
Meanwhile... the most dense, populous city in North America is running out of water rapidly...
Mexico City is running out of water?
Agronox (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 12:13 pm
sorry to kill the thread
Lying does that. Pretty soon nobody wants to play with you and then you have to change your name like aladinsane.
Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Sat, 9/12/2009 - 12:15 pm
Meanwhile, the most dense, populous city in North America is running out of water rapidly...
Nah, That's not true. Union City, New Jersey is doing fine. Oh, populous? Then NYC is doing fine as well. Of course if you didn't really mean "city" but something else like the more useful Urbanized area then...
Gosh, it's almost like words mean things and not what some people want them to mean.
Tanta would have put a stop to this ridiculous pissing contest.
Early Tanta might have - later on she would have just ignored it realizing full well some are always denser than others.
Reporting from Mexico City - In the parched Mexican countryside, the corn is wilting, the wheat stunted. And here in this vast and thirsty capital, officials are rationing water and threatening worse cuts as Mexico endures one of the driest spells in more than half a century.
A months-long drought has affected broad swaths of the country, from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving crop fields parched and many reservoirs low. The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching.
(from the LA Times)
"...what do you mean by a "substantially self-supporting entity?" "
This is an invitation to step into quicksand
I see that as being about the same as "What do you mean by porn?", or "what is the dividing line between physics and chemistry?".
When I drive through LA, I see just one giant coherent collection of people's homes and businesses and public spaces. There are variations and pockets, but it is clear that the people's lives in every pocket are interwoven tightly with the surrounding area, connected by jobs, services, etc. When I drive from LA to San Diego, I see a real separation. San Diego is fairly separate from LA. OC is not. How can I boil that down into a tight definition that would satisfy a professional or amateur urban planner? I don't know, and I don't care to invest that much effort. But I think a lay person's commonsense notion of what constitutes a substantially self-supporting community is still useful, just as I think I can effectively choose my own food at the grocery store without being able to articulate my method in terms that would be complete enough to satisfy a nutrionist, or opine on what styles of home are appealing without being an architect.
Do you have a useful definition for a substantially self-supporting entity that we lay people can work with, and isn't designed just to "win the argument" between proponents of dense versus less dense?
Dawgma,
You are a miasma of misinformation writ large.
Stop it, you guys. Just stop it.
Somebody answer my question. How would you go about converting thousands of rent-stablized units to market rents in NYC?
Spot on with respect to discussing oil production and reserve statistics for the USA in particular...
A months-long drought has affected broad swaths of the country, from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving crop fields parched and many reservoirs low. The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching.
I was in NW Mexico a few months back & it was dry then - I can only imagine what it is like now... IIRC this is the driest part of the year [unless a hurricane blesses them]... it has got to be a bit frightening for them.
I nominate Feckless for thread moderation by acclamation and the
o' death...
.
paz
With respect, not comparing to LA, Portland OR is a mess from a planning/transportation standpoint. Yes, the MAX is good, but if you don't live fairly close to it, it is useless to you. Then, the downtown core is between the river and steep hills, which requires 7(?) bridges to link the core to the rest of the city on the east side and tunnels and fairly steep highways to link to the westside suburbs. Then you have a sizeable portion of the metro area living in another state across another river which has only two bridges.
But at least we have had some mass transit for a while, unlike Seattle metro, which is just getting started.
Federal Reserve's Kohn: We Plan to Keep Throwing Kerosene on the Fire
Federal Reserve's Kohn: We Plan to Keep Throwing Kerosene on the Fire | Benzinga.com
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said on Thursday the U.S. central bank was developing tools to move away from its extremely loose monetary policy, but such an exit would not happen any time soon.
Re: his is from the link posted by Doc at 9:41 PDT.
Nice to see someone reads this stuff now and then.... thanks Feck!
Bribery and intimidation?
You long on kerosene, Doc?
Somebody answer my question. How would you go about converting thousands of rent-stablized units to market rents in NYC?
Well, I quit smoking by just not lighting another cigarette. I suppose it's overly simplistic, but sometimes the solution to an addiction is to simply stop consuming the substance.
I'm not being completely facetious here; any sort of phase-in approach would tend to keep rents elevated, whereas a complete change-over would temporarily elevate rents, before falling back to a market-driven level, at least in my mind.
The real question is, besides rent control, what regulations and restrictions are in place that would prevent the addition or subtraction of new rental units in the city? If supply can't adjust, it's kind of a pointless exercise.
"Gosh, it's almost like words mean things and not what some people want them to mean."
Words have always meant what people wanted them to mean. Use precedes dictionary definition.
Saturday rock blogging:
YouTube - The Doors - Light My Fire
Parts of Florida now have a flood warning, which is stronger than a flood
watch. Like a hurricane warning, it means that you'd better take it seriously,
because there's a decent chance you'll get zapped.
The bottom line is, there are too many people right now. Like non-sentient
animals, we breed right up to the maximum possible numbers. And then
we act surprised when something happens to lower the max.
Aren't mkt rents falling like
bricks in NYC now?
Is it safe to enter the thread . . . or is the Rob Dawg bluster, I have my own facts (don't tell me yours), you cannot have a civil discussion, you owe me an apology for being you . . . bullshit still going?
Either way, it's not worth taking the chance.
noob - my question was in the context of a RE investment plan that called for mass conversion of rent-controlled units. Financing was obtained based on income projections using market rents. Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
noob - my question was in the context of a RE investment plan that called for mass conversion of rent-controlled units. Financing was obtained based on income projections using market rents. Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
Oh, disregard me then, I thought maybe someone was contemplating the mass removal of rent controls in NYC.
I'll go back to my bong now.
Blow some smoke around the room, would you, noob? Might mellow everybody a bit.
I agree...I'm not really all that familiar with NYC RE, but it seems that rent controls have been kind of a sacred cow for NYC voters. Anyone that thought that mass conversions might take place without a lot of legal battles and so forth had to be smoking something, or thought that some kind of fix was in the works.
The bottom line is, there are too many people right now.
In FL or on the planet?
I might do an interview for Ft Lauderdale next week.
The overall cost proposition is pretty good.
Sounds fraudulent to me, unless there is some legal mechanism for converting the units.
There is, but I'm hazy on the details. I think the owner has to show that the tenant isn't actually using the apartment as his or her primary residence or that the renter is trashing the place. Or the landlord has to make substantial capital improvements to the property.
(But don't quote me on that because I'm not positive and I can't find the actual answer.)
I seldom hear about rent control here in So Cal. Thought maybe some of our NY members would know the ropes about conversions.
kcoop - can we have a cream pie icon? So people can throw pies instead of writing incendiary posts?
Rent control in New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The area I grew up in, in Balto of the 50s was walkable too. I could walk to
school, or I could take the bus. I could walk to a playground in 1 minute, to a library
in 2 or 3 minutes.
To a pharmacy in 3 minutes.
There was also a public grade school, a Jewish school, another playground with
tennis courts nobody used, a commercial swimming pool, numerous delis, a 5 and
dime. Etc. If you wanted to do serious shopping you could take the bus or drive
downtown. Balto was killed by allowing the suburbs to grow. My neighborhood
was killed by street widening to allow the cars to reach the burbs. The people who
ran to the burbs were often running away from black people.
None of this was planned, as far as I know, except the evil street widening.
Using hindsight, what could have stopped this destruction?
I don't know, but not pulling up the trolley tracks, and refusing to widen the streets
might have been a start. If the people who didn't even want one black family on
their street had been forced to cope with incredible congestion, maybe they
would have stopped fleeing? But then where would the black people have squeezed
in?
So was the area the hub lived in. Walkable.
My childhood house is still there, but the neighborhood was utterly destroyed.
On the planet. You move there, we have to do lunch.
Prices very low there now.
Blow some smoke around the room, would you, noob? Might mellow everybody a bit.
No bong for me, unfortunately. Just trying to figure out the difference between developing map applications in MapPoint vs ArcGIS so I'm in and out here. Anyone with a pile of experience in MapPoint? Has 2010 made it easier to import shape files and develop personalized applications? How strong are the routing algorithms, and is there any flexibility to make changes to them or are you stuck with what comes out of the box?
/wrong forum, I know.
Phooey--
I don't mind your posting just rewrite the post so that the following words are explained
in normal English, without using any geek words. I dare you.
MapPoint
ArcdGis
import
shape
files or
import shape files
routing algorithms.
The new Stuy owners tried to push out 4000 renters with the capital improvements clause. They took on too many at once and also ran out of money to act fast.
Tricky questions, Liz
MapPoint - A piece of software by Microsoft that is similar to most GPS units people buy for their cars, except able to work with your own data. For example, if you have a list of clients with their addresses on your computer, you could put them into MapPoint and it would give you the shortest route between them, for example.
ArcGIS - a very powerful peice of spacial data mapping software (basically plotting pieces of data based on their location in space, i.e. addresses and GPS coordinates), but expensive and requires additional purchase of data (i.e. roads, postal codes, etc etc.) because it comes with nothing. The advantage is that it is exceptionally flexible, so I've been told.
Import - like the trade term, being able to bring additional pieces of data into the program, i.e. adding outlines of farm fields to the pre-existing roads and railway tracks already in MapPoint.
Shape - ArcGIS uses somethign called a "Shapefile" to store spacial data. Without getting into technicalities, it's just a file format like an XLS spreadsheet, or a DOC document, but it stores geographical/geometric locations and attributes.
Importing Shapefiles - Sometimes data exists in one format, like a shapefile, and I might want to bring it into MapPoint so I could write an instruction for a program that would use that data. For instance, if I had a shapefile containing farm fields, and I imported it into mappoint, I could create an instruction that would tell a crop inspector, for example, which fields he needed to visit, which order, and the shortest route possible.
Routing Algorithm - Using a computer to determine the shortest path between many distinct points, the so-called Travelling Saleman problem, for example, is actually a very difficult computational problem and minute changes in how you calculate a route, for example, can result in big differences to the bottom line. While we think of FedEx as a package delivery company, it doesn't make any of it's money on owning/leasing trucks and airplanes. It's competitive advantage is the algorithm it uses to tell drivers and pilots the shortest way to pick up and drop off packages, and to ensure they make it to their destination on time. So if the algorithm is fixed in MapPoint, it's difficult to know exactly how it's calculated and if it's optimal; conversely, at least it's included and I wouldn't have to create one from scratch...
Jim totally rocks! It is so cool to be able to see the events on the front lines. Adds a lot of reality to the numbers.