He writes: This comparison encourages a lot of people (not necessarily Richard Green) to decide that we don’t need skyscrapers. Defenders of the Washington height limit often fall into this category. But there are two points worth making in response to this. One is that it would be harder to build Paris in America than [...]
Mumbai is among the densest cities in the world: as a metropolitan area, it is roughly ten times denser than New York (h/t Alain Bertaud). Yet residential zoning codes typically have FSIs (the equivalent of a floor-area ratio) of between 1 and 1.33. This compares with typical central business district FSIs of between 5 and 15 [...]
As noted in earlier posts, my students and I discussed Bill Cronon's Nature's Metropolis this past week. One of Cronon's explanations for Chicago's extraordinary growth was its role as a distribution center: railroads had both eastern and western terminals in Chicago, and so lots of stuff got collected and moved in the city. Chicago is [...]