Found it under construction. All concrete. Idk what it is about a concrete structure exactly, but the buildings just look better when they’re done.

For no other reason than I am sitting here having a coffee, this is one of my favorites of the last several years. 😍

My conservative uncle tried to mispronounce “Lady Gaga” once

Unfortunately this could lead to roofs that last longer than 15 years, and that is just un-American. If a Central American man is not risking his life on your roof every decade and a half for $21/hour, what is the point in even having a country?

I think @mattyglesias.bsky.social’s One Billion Americans would have been the more realistic consequence of open borders

These private data sources are trash. NYC produces way more than this. www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/new...

This is why the Arabian Peninsula monarchies sometimes use US building codes and standards – they got exposed to them through the US military’s requirements. Islam wasn’t actually spread by the sword, but the I-Codes were.

NYC waste collection is inefficient on a beautiful spring day, but after heavy snow, it becomes insanely laborious – I’ve seen them spend an hour on one block. DSNY could collect 10x as quickly if we had common containers that they had to dig out once and could then collect from twice a day.

Ten people died in the snowstorm and freezing cold that hit NYC this past weekend. We spoke with some of their family members and neighbors @wnyc.org @gothamist.com gothamist.com/news/among-1...

“.. the hearing suggests the real possibility that Trump will be unable to construct anything in the East Wing’s place, leaving just an empty site .. Destruction followed by stagnation seems to be something of an MO ..” @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

A general contractor in Tennessee is behind bars for texting his crew that ICE was on-site so they could get to safety. Just trying to build homes in a housing shortage. www.wbir.com/article/news...

“A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from arresting or detaining refugees in Minnesota, and ordered the release of those in custody.” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

This new Republican tic where they purposely mispronounce/misstate the names of things they don’t like (KaMAla, anTIfa, Somalians, Democrat as an adjective) is so interesting. Does it have a name?

2) The Niskanen Center is looking for a new deputy director for their Housing and Transportation team: jobs.gusto.com/postings/the...

Two great job opportunities: 1) Applications are open for the next cohort of Emerging Scholars at Mercatus. I would love to see people who work on housing or transportation policy or related issues, like insurance, in this program! www.mercatus.org/emerging-sch...

Trying to figure out how to bring back sub-$1m homes to n'hoods where a 50' lot costs $3m. At 2.0FSR you can have accessible flats (w limited/accessible parking) and a LWH. In this model they would need to sell for ~$1040psf. If self-developed by owner/investors it might be $900psf.

I had a relative who literally hid with Anne Frank in that attic. If you cannot be accused of exaggerating, it’s too late. Once they’re marching kids into gas chambers, it’s too late.

Disband the Port Authority

Some early signs that Mamdani is tacking to the center on housing gothamist.com/news/mayor-m... (this looks like a bad bill – it will add a lot of friction for the buildings that can least afford extra costs, and very few buildings will actually be able to be sold to nonprofits)

Massachusetts building code subcommittee is now debating this. There seems to be broad agreement that it's going to happen, but they seem to want to delay it till the next code, which realistically will mean no buildings till the late 2030s www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/05/o...

New morning screen time routine: 1. Check texts 2. Check email 3. Check headlines 4. Check weather nine days out to see if it will get above freezing (spoiler: it won’t) 5. Check CNN’s measles tracker

Helsinki is reviving its automation program. No cost figure on that yet, but the CBTC signaling is budgeted at 60 million € for a 43 km long system. www.railwaygazette.com/metro/helsin...

I know it's a bit chaotic out there right now, but it's still interesting to see middle class bus riders have to wait in the literal street while a tiny of handful of people driving $50k SUVs cruise around in perfectly cleared lanes.

Good lord Putin doesnt even rig it this big

Given the premium people put on single family living duplex style housing units seem particularly unlikely to survive a return urban living preference. It’s probably upzoning or extinction.

Doesn’t look great for Kaz Vilenchik, currently #2 official at the DOB according to the org chart www.nyc.gov/site/buildin...

Amazing how finely you need to slice immutable demographic characteristics to find support nationwide. I’m guessing he still has the support of a majority of white men?

"Amazon.com is closing all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores in a shift to focus on its online same-day delivery service and expand its Whole Foods Market business." www.wsj.com/business/ret...

#NEW: 2030 Apportionment Forecast based on 2025 Census Bureau Population Estimates (January 27, 2026). Forecast prepared by Dr. Jonathan Cervas (CMIST) at Carnegie Mellon University

The good news for New York is that while the Trump admin is using race- and sex-based contracting preferences as a pretext to punish us as enemies, these procurement set-asides for millionaires are also horrible policy, so we lose nothing by getting rid of them

Washington, DC's City Council is hearing its single-stair building now. You can find written testimony and a link to the Zoom feed here. The Department of Buildings' testimony is *very* positive. I'll be testifying at some point as well lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hea...

“San Francisco taxes new housing at about the same rate that it taxes cigarettes.” www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open... by @dbroockman.bsky.social

If you have time at 11am (NOTE: it was moved from 9am!), call in and register your opposition to the $12 billion Turnpike Extension widening through JC. This is the first meeting under the new governor & new Turnpike Authority chair; first impressions matter! Call 800-346-7359; access code 487219

I worry that the transit advocate high from congestion pricing revenue will be short-lived, and the reality of crippling, uncontrolled costs leaving New York dependent on the federal gov’t to throw billions at shorter and shorter lengths of tunnel will kick back in www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/n...

Breaking News: India and the EU announced a free-trade agreement nearly 20 years in the making.

Spain’s unemployment rate has fallen below 10% for the first time in almost 18 years, and only the second time in the last 40 years (imagine how low they could make it go if they would permit some housing!) www.eldiario.es/economia/esp...

Brooklyn Brooklyn President Antonio Reynoso shares the rubric he’ll use when he considers whether to overturn the City Council’s housing and land use decisions Reynoso and the 4 other BPs have new power to appear on a housing “appeals board” @gothamist.com @wnyc.org gothamist.com/news/nycs-bo...

They seem very fond of a pop-up in Malta

“Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski, who were Bovino’s biggest backers at DHS, are also at risk of losing their jobs, two of the people told me.”

OMG, "California Post" is going after SAJE in their inaugural issue lol nypost.com/2026/01/26/u...

Tim vs Alicia was complex, I don't know if he was a YIMBY per se but It presaged larger debates about Left Nimbyism that YIMBYs have basically won. If CB 9 had rezoned in 2013 we'd have 1000s of apartments on Empire Blvd instead of Wendys and McDonalds. cc @rachelholliday.bsky.social

Tim Thomas also ran the Q at Parkside blog, and documented the insane early 2010's CB 9 rezoning wars with Alicia Boyd et al. (They never did rezone CB 9).

The Church St. bike lane next to the World Trade Center was pretty clear this morning, so naturally one of the Port Authority mall cops was parked in the middle of it while a delivery guy tried to inch past him

Trump is back to threatening higher tariffs on South Korean imports today—we had a real, legally binding, Senate ratified trade agreement with South Korea that Trump illegally ripped up and now he’s upset they haven’t instantly approved a worse deal for both parties

Give me a break, nobody in the administration is mad at how Noem’s been handling this – she’s doing exactly what she was hired to do, same playbook as for Renée Good and the entire immigration crackdown. They’re just mad it’s not working anymore.

I can see the argument for cutting small owners in the outer boroughs a little bit of slack for not keeping the corners clean (I disagree but whatever), but the city should really be handing out huge fines to skyscraper owners in Manhattan with huge unionized staffs for this shit

From old municipal photos (~1940) we can see 174 Orchard St in the Lower East Side had not only 4 floors of residences but a pants shop, a vegetable market, a corset store, and a kosher butcher. With elevator reform we can bring back that level of vitality to these small lots.

Amazing that the MTA spent $1.4 billion building a mall that they can’t even manage to keep occupied at one of the most prime locations on earth, and it wasn’t any sort of scandal that tarred anybody’s reputation or made anybody think twice about how the agency operates

It’s interesting how poorly used Manhattan loading docks are. Some of the buildings are old and I’m sure the docks are substandard, but 255 Greenwich St. was built in the 1980s, and there is one (1) building worker parking their personal SUV in front of the dock for a 550,000-sq. ft. building.

News Analysis: Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodríguez is liberalizing the country's economy without dismantling her predecessor’s repressive apparatus, raising questions about her aims.