Category: History|Policy

  • Tri-State Trillions

    Tri-State Trillions

    $1.2 trillion dollars for US infrastructure. How do you wrap your head around such a large number? (Believe it or not, it’s not even close to the amount spent by the U.S. government in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is around the size of the NYC metropolitan region’s GDP.) The NYC region will hopefully be…

  • Urban Legends

    Urban Legends

    NYC has plenty of urban legends, many of which are literally urban legends. Perhaps this article will finally put an end to these largely untrue “myths” about the city’s built environment! NYC is fully “built-up”. The New York metropolitan region is populated by more than 20 million people. Approximately 70% of the world’s countries have…

  • Planning Beyond Boundaries

    Planning Beyond Boundaries

    The New York region functions more inefficiently due to its municipal and state boundaries. The Northeastern megalopolis is home to more than 50 million people and 20 percent of America’s GDP, centered around New York. Seventy percent of Manhattan employees commute from outside the borough. The region historically was entirely within New Netherland, but the British split up…

  • Cost

    Cost

    In around the same time it takes me to travel from D.C. to Boston on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC), I was whisked from Guangzhou to Luoyang, one of China’s ancient capital cities – roughly the distance from Dallas to Chicago (or double the mileage on the NEC) in a little over 7 hours by rail.…

  • Governance

    Governance

    Our region’s political infrastructure stifles growth and prosperity, and keeps our 21st century economy from reaching its full potential. As a public authority, the MTA is a quasi-private corporation, with boards of directors appointed by elected officials, and it is exempt from many state and local regulations. The MTA is allowed to issue more debt…

  • Speed

    Speed

    Our commutes need to be sped up to improve our quality of life and public health. Not only would it allow us to be more efficient, and allow our cities to be more sustainable, but it could even help increase social capital, giving us more time for family, friends, and neighbors. NYC has the highest…