Yet many of New York’s buildings remain stuck in the past.
And that is as it should be. Building codes are designed to encourage growth when a city is new, control growth when a city is thriving, constrain growth when a city is mature and discourage growth when a city is overly dense.
Hey, chucklefuck: did you miss this part?
So. You... wanna see what the New York of unconstrained $22m penthouses looks like?
Here's where you get to live.
But hey, do go on:
Anybody else study Old Law Tenements in AP US History? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? 'cuz this shit will sear itself into your memory forever:
Keep in mind: Old Law Tenements were an improvement to knock the immigrant living conditions down to "1984 bad" from "Soylent Green bad."
You like that 6x9 room in there? You'll be interested to know that if you go to federal prison they'll give you 7x10 in solitary. Of course, you won't have that spectacular view.
Building codes are supposed to change. They're supposed to adapt to the conditions people live in every day. There were under a million people in NYC in 1870. There's 8.4 million now. A lot of that is because nobody has to live in dumbbell tenements. A lot of that is to keep the dystopia at bay. Because contrary to free market idealists, most people would rather live here:
Than here.