NYC’s First Sustainable Home Planned at 61 Pitt Street
8th May 2011
It won’t happen. Two words: ‘Building code’. Like most tax laws, the building code in New York City is the size of a set of encyclopedias and enshrines various political favors that politicians have given various unions and other special interests for nigh unto two hundred years. Like the Internal Revenue Code or immigration law, it has also spawned a specialist slither of lawyers who specialize in gaming the system–for a price.
I do admire their charming optimism, though. Kids can be so cute.
May 9th, 2011 at 14:28
Whatever else it may be, it won’t be “NYC’s first sustainable home”. Every tepee on Manhattan 500 years ago was sustainable. Every farmhouse 400 years ago was sustainable.
“Sustainable” is a buzzword meaning “can continue indefinitely assuming the current social and technological environment” – a useless attribute given that the current social and technological environment *cannot* continue indefinitely.