<story><title>Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-use-worlds-greatest-cities-carries-huge-cost-space-and-city</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dankohn1</author><text>I may live in the densest neighborhood of any HN participant: North Battery Park City [1] in Lower Manhattan. As an example, my son&amp;#x27;s 500 kid elementary school serves &lt;i&gt;9&lt;/i&gt; buildings.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m here to tell you, the future feels great. Specifically, living vertically has all sorts of wonderful aspects in terms of community (the kids can trick-or-treat without leaving the building), access to resources (my kids can ride the elevator barefoot to the waterpark out the back door in the summer) and environmentally (we live in the first LEED platinum residential building in the US).&lt;p&gt;The only problem is that it is expensive, and it doesn&amp;#x27;t need to be as expensive as it is. Building lots more residential skyscrapers, eliminating parking minimums [2], and reducing the incentive to warehouse vacant lots through land taxes or similar can all make New York City even more livable than it already is.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Battery_Park_City&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Battery_Park_City&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.streetsblog.org&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;report-details-how-onerous-nycs-parking-regressive-minimums-really-are&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.streetsblog.org&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;report-details-how-one...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-use-worlds-greatest-cities-carries-huge-cost-space-and-city</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that.&lt;p&gt;And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint of the average American. And while the city is pretty segregated, the New York subway is a unique setting of rich and poor people of all races utilizing a public service together.</text></comment>