On Sep 24, 2008, at 2:04 PM, John Garcia wrote: > Or (for those of us in Manhattan) should there be a law, zoning or > other > type, that > prevents Donald Trump or some other crazed real-estate magnate from > constructing > a building that is so tall, it robs nearby buildings of sunlight?
NYC used to have such laws, which mandated setbacks in the building facade based on height. The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building were both designed and built during the era when those setbacks were required, which is why they have the stepped shape they have. (I seem to recall. The GE Building (formerly the RCA Building) on Rockefeller Plaza was also built in this style, not sure if it was built to setback constraints or just built to mimic the style but it has the same general shape. The setback requirement was repealed some time after that, and most modern NYC buildings do tend to shade the surface streets pretty seriously as they're mostly built right up to the sidewalk lines. Trump's monstrosities are no exception to that, but he's far from being the only offender. Mostly, in Midtown and Downtown, big money tends to call the shots, which may or may not be the best way to run things, so while *some* zoning control might be a good thing, it probably won't fly because it can't get past City Hall. > Should the proper function of government be to do those things that > the > market will not > or can not do? Not only is that one of the most important things government does, it's one thing that *only* government can do, because it's not in private industry's interests to do things that affect market systems globally, especially when the secondary effects of those actions cause individual private industry actors to lose money in the short term, or when a given industry gets locked into a suboptimal equilibrium because none of the companies involved in that industry want to be the ones to bear the cost of breaking the equilibrium so all of their competitors can profit from it. (The fact that the auto industry is still selling internal combustion engine vehicles and only now making very limited R&D forays into hybrid and battery electric vehicles for the mass commuter market is an excellent example of a suboptimal equilibrium the industry could easily be pushed out of if the government decided to require corporate average fuel economies that made it necessary for them to produce at least some battery electric cars, and the market for electrics would expand fairly rapidly once the phase change is triggered. I can say quite confidently that there is considerable demand, and I'm fairly confident that at least one major factor keeping that phase change from happening is a suboptimal Nash equilibrium.) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
