Urban blight is nothing newfangled . The signature image of plump real the three estates is blocking after pulley of properties lift as job move out . Now the gamy price of real estate in American city is make a new phenomenon : In otherwise respectable economic orbit , the rents are climb so high-pitched they ’re driving businesses away — and no other businesses can yield to move in .
Tim Wu explores the political economy behind this creeping problemin the New Yorker . As an example , he uses a neighborhood which has been praised in the past tense for preserving its eclectic mix of locally own commercial enterprise : the West Village . We all know that big chains have since infiltrated the Village , but now rents are skyrocketing so in high spirits that some of those Ernst Boris Chain are price out — even Starbucks is shutteringsome Manhattan locations .
The story behind these vacated space , as Wu strike , is kind of depressingly fascinating . landlord are sitting on their empty properties and lift the rent higher and higher , gambling on the fact that they can eventually entice some business to pay the insanely high rents and make up for all the lost income . It ’s hedge - fund urbanism :
There are potentially some tax benefits for the owners of empty shopfront . But the more likely account is that landlords are willing to lose a renter and leave a storefront empty as a form of speculation . They ’ll trade a curt - term loss for the fortune eventually to land a much full-bodied tenant , like a savings bank leg or interior retail chain , which might pay a different order of magnitude of rent . If you ’re a landlord , why would you keep renting to a local café or restaurant at five thousand or ten thousand dollar a month when you might get twenty thousand or even forty thousand dollar a calendar month from Chase ? In gain , if a landlord owns multiple dimension , drop the price on one may bring down the price for others . That suggests waiting for Marc Jacobs instead of renting to Jane Jacobs .
Snap ! Jane Jacobs was , of form , the author who described the economic vibrancy of the West Village and its “ sidewalk ballet ” of walkable urbanism as the measure by which great cities should be value .
But there ’s another issue , which is pushing the Marc Jacobs Village even further from the Jane Jacobs Village : Many of the residential property in the city ’s more expensive neighborhood are increasingly not owned by the great unwashed who subsist or work there . This is a huge concern for some of the residential supertalls being construct in Manhattan since these absentee possessor are only using the flat part - time , if at all . These also are n’t the people who are in all likelihood lead to that sidewalk ballet by patronizing the local coffee shops and mob - owned businesses . locality like the West Village are not as much transforming into havens for the ultrarich as they are becoming empty wasteland .
Like the nester who would live rent - free in the blighted downtown buildings of the past , there ’s a new breed of squatter that are hive up the most richly - price real estate . The difference is that by actually living there , the old school squatters helped to eventually transmute these areas into viable neighborhoods , while these invisible tenants are slowly turning the unspoiled neighborhoods into ghost town — with a Chase banking concern on every corner .
[ New Yorker ]
Photo byStonestreet Properties
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