Brickonomics

Over at Environmental and Urban Economics, Matthew E. Kahn links to a New York magazine article describing the controversy over the proposed ‘Atlantic Yards‘ development in Brooklyn. While the scale of the proposed development is vast, the politics are not so dissimilar to arguments over countless much smaller schemes. For example, the article author Chris Smith notes how the development’s promoter “manages to use the phrase “affordable housing” five times in two minutes. Not once does he mention the 4,610 market-rate (unaffordable?) apartments and condos to be built”. And the concerns are about massing, blocked views, “intersections choked with traffic [and] More kids than the local schools can possibly handle”.

Matthew seems a little sceptical about the concerns being expressed:

This looks like a classic case of public choice and heterogeneity. People will disagree over whether this project is good or bad. Mancur Olson would say that a small cohesive pressure group that loses the most from doing the project (i.e white upper middle class hipsters who already live in the community) have the greatest incentive to lobby against it. It will be interesting if the “silent majority” can launch a counter-attack. This Ratner looks quite well politically connected .

The last point is important, because a small cohesive group that has the most to win from doing the project can be very persuasive too while being no more representative of the greater good. In my view, there will always be enormous disagreements over a development like this, because once it’s built there will be no going back for decades at least, and if it goes wrong it could spoil a huge swathe of Brooklyn. The temptation is always to avoid the risk by saying no, but done well a large-scale redevelopment of this kind can transform a whole city for the better. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that it comes down to whether the details are right. And from first glance I’m not sure they are: why must the proposed buildings be so massively out of scale with their surroundings? Why does a development involving several thousand luxury flats and vast office space require over a billion dollars in public subsidy? And what makes the Ratner proposal better than this one? Both may have their qualities, but only one (if that) will be built.