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The question is what makes NYC different? I think a lot of it is differences in tenure - coops, condos which people live in for long time periods, and even rentals (rent controlled) that people live in for long time periods - plus with so few townhouses (relatively speaking) there isnt the selection bias.

Selection bias is important, because it suggests that while townhouse dwellers may have more of some charecteristic than apt building dwellers, it would say that it does not follow from that that you can make more peole with the charecteristics of TH dwellers by building fewer apt buildings. It suggests those are charecteristics of people, and not of a building, as the slur "vertical gated community" implies.

In any case we have gotten away from the question of waste. My sense is that, even absent zoning, lots of DC townhouses would be inhabited by single families. It seems just unfair to me to call a single person living in a 650 sq ft unit wasteful when a single person living in a 1300 sq ft TH is not, and a couple living in a 15 sq ft TH is not. And absurd to compare that to a family of 3 living in a 3500 sq ft house on a lot of one quarter acre or more. It suggests to me that the concern is less with waste than in finding rhetoric to attack a particular group of people or a particular form of development.

by AWalkerInTheCity on Jun 20, 2012 3:10 pm • link • report