Our Evidence-based Nightclubs
Three cheers for today’s excellent news from Manhattan.
I’ve been waiting for Congestion Pricing to happen in the U.S. for years; the stats from London, where Congestion Pricing has been on the books for two decades now, are impossible to ignore. It’s boosted transit use, lowered GHG emissions, and yes, reduced congestion.
I snapped this photo on my July 2017 trip to London
I also love how the surprise news challenges today’s conventional wisdom about the value of dense, urban downtowns. Post-pandemic, cities are supposedly dying as we apparently beg people to come back downtown. And yet, people in the suburbs (New Jersey) are clearly pissed about this news. Why? Because: They still fully understand that downtown is an important place to be.
I’ve long believed that urban centers provide free offsets to the stuck-up conservatives and the hypocritical liberals who opt for detached single-family homes and car culture lifestyles. While they frown at cities, these groups, at no charge, reap the universal benefits from all the transit-oriented, low-impact housing choices urban dwellers make.
I understand that many people are priced out of cities. But that’s the result of an intransigent resistance to zoning changes (more density) from both the suburbs and from single-family homeowners in cities themselves. Perversely, this anti-density pathology makes dense, transit-friendly zones more exclusive and, thus more expensive. If we would share the density regionally, a lot of problems, such as sky-high rents and car-dependent suburbs, go away; for example, it’s the opposite-of-efficient to run public transit through low-density neighborhoods.
So, why is dense NYC so damn expensive? Because it’s lit and everyone wants to be there. I’m glad they’re finally charging people to drive their cars into the mix.
I kid you not, one of my earliest poems was about congestion pricing. It was called “Downtown is an Offset.”
My poems aren’t polemics like this anymore, but it’s a kick to haul this out today:
Downtown is an Offset
Make drivers pay to enter downtown./ It’s the rejoinder to land/
use codes that have suspended habeas corpus./
If I was still the mayor,/
I would levy a lot-size tax to mitigate the impacts:/
high rent, silence, doggie daycare, maps./
Short of this executive decree, we must find a way/
to put a fee/
on the Philosophy of Hegel/
If you opened a nightclub, what would it be called?/
Just as cities tax things they want to discourage,/ like locusts,/
cities should make those whose yards grow private message boards/ pay to drive/
into/
Every Orchard & Delancey./
Every Istiklal Avenue./
Every Carnaby Street./
Every Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne./
After all, free rides and shrouded/
yards/
are subsidized/
by our evidenced-based nightclubs,/
and science-based bodies./
December, 2017
7/10/23. UPDATE. I wrote a column about all of this on PubliCola.
8/5/23. UPDATE. Excited to re-discover this old poem, I revised it and added it as one fragment in a new poem of collected fragments. Here’s the new version; the 4th fragment of 7 :
•
It helps to think of Emily Dickinson—
to know about souls and bodies —
evidenced-based and ajar.
To know trees by nightclubs , to know
land use by writ
of habeas corpus. If you opened a downtown haunt
on the Autumn pavement,
what would you call it?