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Starting in the late 1930s, New York City began hiring photographers to document each and every building in the city. It did this to improve the accuracy of its tax assessments, and so every photo was taken with a sign board indicating the building’s block and lot number. The photos looked like this (taken from here):
The initiative produced over 700,000 black and white photos, all of which have been recently digitized according to the New York Times. The Times also recently published this interactive piece where they go back to these archival photos to see how the city has and hasn’t changed.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, documenting a city and its buildings was clearly a manual endeavor. Today we have Google Street View (launched in 2007), which has now photographed much of the world. Many countries, including all of North America, are reported as having “mostly full coverage.”
But already autonomous vehicles (and their supporting services) are starting to scan and map our cities in new ways. So it will be interesting to see what ends up getting built on top of this data. I am certain it will empower much more than just better tax assessments.
Happy New Year, friends. Thanks for reading over the last year.
Proposition C will be on San Francisco’s ballots this November 6th, 2018.
If approved by voters, the following additional taxes would be levied on businesses in order to create a dedicated fund to both support and prevent homelessness in the city:
For businesses that pay a gross receipts tax, an additional tax of 0.175 percent to 0.690 percent on those gross revenues in San Francisco over $50 million;
For businesses that pay the administrative office tax, an additional tax of 1.5 percent of their payroll expense in San Francisco.
Marc Benioff – the founder of Salesforce (which happens to be the city’s largest employer) – has emerged as the lead supporter of Prop C. Between personal and corporate funds, he has contributed almost $8 million to getting this passed.
But other billionaires in the Bay Area, such as Jack Dorsey of Twitter, have taken a different position, instead siding with Mayor London Breed, who does not support Prop C.
If you’re interested in this topic, the New Yorker has a piece called, The Battle of the Big-Tech Titans Over San Francisco’s Tax for the Homeless
Starting in the late 1930s, New York City began hiring photographers to document each and every building in the city. It did this to improve the accuracy of its tax assessments, and so every photo was taken with a sign board indicating the building’s block and lot number. The photos looked like this (taken from here):
The initiative produced over 700,000 black and white photos, all of which have been recently digitized according to the New York Times. The Times also recently published this interactive piece where they go back to these archival photos to see how the city has and hasn’t changed.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, documenting a city and its buildings was clearly a manual endeavor. Today we have Google Street View (launched in 2007), which has now photographed much of the world. Many countries, including all of North America, are reported as having “mostly full coverage.”
But already autonomous vehicles (and their supporting services) are starting to scan and map our cities in new ways. So it will be interesting to see what ends up getting built on top of this data. I am certain it will empower much more than just better tax assessments.
Happy New Year, friends. Thanks for reading over the last year.
Proposition C will be on San Francisco’s ballots this November 6th, 2018.
If approved by voters, the following additional taxes would be levied on businesses in order to create a dedicated fund to both support and prevent homelessness in the city:
For businesses that pay a gross receipts tax, an additional tax of 0.175 percent to 0.690 percent on those gross revenues in San Francisco over $50 million;
For businesses that pay the administrative office tax, an additional tax of 1.5 percent of their payroll expense in San Francisco.
Marc Benioff – the founder of Salesforce (which happens to be the city’s largest employer) – has emerged as the lead supporter of Prop C. Between personal and corporate funds, he has contributed almost $8 million to getting this passed.
But other billionaires in the Bay Area, such as Jack Dorsey of Twitter, have taken a different position, instead siding with Mayor London Breed, who does not support Prop C.
If you’re interested in this topic, the New Yorker has a piece called, The Battle of the Big-Tech Titans Over San Francisco’s Tax for the Homeless
New York City is considering a congestion charge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th street. It is part of Governor Cuomo’s Fix NYC plan. But we all know how difficult these things are to implement.
Last month, Felix Salmon wrote a piece in Wired where he argued that our cities are dying of traffic congestion and that the cause is ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. The solution: A tax on ride-hailing services.
The article elicited a few reactions, including this one by Charles Komanoff over at Streetblogs and this one by Joe Cortright over at City Observatory. Joe’s message: “The problem isn’t the ride-hailed vehicles, it’s the under-priced street.”
Precisely.
Felix later followed-up with a post on his blog where he clarified that the reason he loves this idea – of taxing ride-hailing companies, not riders – is that it’s far more politically palatable than a blanket tax on all cars. I don’t disagree.
Which is why I think my idea is something which is eminently politically possible, in contrast to congestion pricing, which has been implemented exactly nowhere in the USA.
Americans love their cars, and they love the freedom that cars represent, and they hate the idea that they should be taxed for driving their cars. Tolls on roads and bridges are bad enough, but a fee just to drive in to a city?
That said, I’m with Charles and Joe.
Last year, it was reported that roughly 25% of all Uber trips in New York City were UberPool trips. I’m not sure what the number is today, but these are people who are car pooling to get around. That’s generally considered to be a positive thing.
Are these really the trips we want to be discouraging (and singling out) with a charge simply because we don’t have the moxie to do what is right and makes rational sense?
Photo by Austin Scherbarth on Unsplash
New York City is considering a congestion charge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th street. It is part of Governor Cuomo’s Fix NYC plan. But we all know how difficult these things are to implement.
Last month, Felix Salmon wrote a piece in Wired where he argued that our cities are dying of traffic congestion and that the cause is ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. The solution: A tax on ride-hailing services.
The article elicited a few reactions, including this one by Charles Komanoff over at Streetblogs and this one by Joe Cortright over at City Observatory. Joe’s message: “The problem isn’t the ride-hailed vehicles, it’s the under-priced street.”
Precisely.
Felix later followed-up with a post on his blog where he clarified that the reason he loves this idea – of taxing ride-hailing companies, not riders – is that it’s far more politically palatable than a blanket tax on all cars. I don’t disagree.
Which is why I think my idea is something which is eminently politically possible, in contrast to congestion pricing, which has been implemented exactly nowhere in the USA.
Americans love their cars, and they love the freedom that cars represent, and they hate the idea that they should be taxed for driving their cars. Tolls on roads and bridges are bad enough, but a fee just to drive in to a city?
That said, I’m with Charles and Joe.
Last year, it was reported that roughly 25% of all Uber trips in New York City were UberPool trips. I’m not sure what the number is today, but these are people who are car pooling to get around. That’s generally considered to be a positive thing.
Are these really the trips we want to be discouraging (and singling out) with a charge simply because we don’t have the moxie to do what is right and makes rational sense?
Photo by Austin Scherbarth on Unsplash
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