bobbi barnett

Very excited for @NYCHousing to get to have the great @andrewbstern, and this also means Open New York is now hiring *two* important roles on our communications team, along with two summer fellows. Please share far and wide: opennewyork.org/careers

For decades, urban planners have rigorously tracked every car in New York City while completely ignoring the pedestrians. An MIT research group has finally built the first complete model of foot traffic in an American city. They took baseline counts from the Department of Transportation and mapped a routable dataset covering every pavement, crosswalk, and footpath across the five boroughs. The resulting data exposes massive flaws in how cities allocate infrastructure funding. Midtown Manhattan hits nearly 1,700 pedestrians per block per hour during peak times. Because officials see these massive raw numbers, they funnel the bulk of pedestrian safety investments directly into the city centre. The MIT model proves this bias is a mistake. Neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx routinely register hundreds of pedestrians per block per hour. People in these outer boroughs are walking in huge numbers, but they don't get the infrastructure to match. The model also rewrites the maths on urban safety. Governments typically rank dangerous intersections by tallying up total crashes. High-traffic areas like Herald Square or Times Square rack up lots of accidents. Planners look at those totals and assume the area is highly dangerous for walkers. The new system calculates risk on a per-pedestrian basis instead. When you divide the accidents by the millions of people walking through Midtown, the individual risk is actually very low. The true danger zones are around highway off-ramps and heavy car infrastructure in low-density areas like Staten Island. A pedestrian walking there faces a drastically higher statistical chance of being hit by a vehicle. This framework changes how urban development works. Los Angeles is already applying the model to prepare its public transit and mobility networks for the 2028 Olympics. The state of Maine is using it to evaluate 140 different towns to identify necessary safety upgrades. Planners finally have the hard data to prove what walkers have known for years. We spent the entire twentieth century designing our environment around the automobile. We finally have the tools to start building cities for people. Link to paper: nature.com/articles/s4428…

mamdani’s team got in touch with me this morning to float a new tax proposal: if your net worth exceeds $5 million and you dress badly, you’ll be hit with an extra 10% annual levy for “visual pollution.” i would be in charge of deciding if the outfits are bad.

Alongside @NYCMayor, NYCHDC, and @NYCHousing, we've unveiled a first-of-its-kind insurance program that will reduce the cost of housing across NYC and unlocking the ability for the City to support more affordable housing developments for all New Yorkers. edc.nyc/press-release/…

The pink (and white) carpet has rolled out across NYC for spring! Enjoy the bloom and use this guide to see what flower you're fawning over 🌸

wow - Nick reports here that the Governor may want the city to cut the CityFHEPS program as it exists right now, not just resist the expensive expansion they are fighting in court. Advocates have insisted that housing someone with a voucher is cheaper than having them in shelter

New York City to Spend $4 Billion From Pension Funds on Affordable Homes by @mihirzaveri: nytimes.com/2026/04/16/nyr…

A story about following your dreams even if they’re stupid, and believing in yourself, even if you’re stupid (which would explain the quality of the dreams): theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/…

"Housing completions climbed for the third straight year in 2025, with a record nearly 45,000 new residential units added." Mostly new construction, plus ~6,000 conversions, largely Manhattan office/industrial space. -@NYCComptroller report

7,700 NYC households are about to lose their federal rental assistance NYC doesn’t have a plan to replace the aid for all of them after the federal govt ends the Emergency Housing Voucher program But some families may be offered public housing units — if they apply by May 1

Big step for fair housing! The City Planning Commission just approved rules to implement the Affordable Housing Fast Track. This will make it easier to create affordable housing in the areas that have added the least. Eligible community districts will be determined by Oct. 1!

NEW: The Housing Authority says it will find space in senior-only buildings for 24 holdouts who refuse to be transferred out of a Chelsea building slated for demolition. Mayor Mamdani backs the plan. thecity.nyc/2026/04/13/nyc…

New state budget extender is expected to be passed as soon as *tomorrow* in Albany sources say & live through Thursday, April 16

An increasingly coherent picture of the impact of AI on jobs, by @jburnmurdoch @ft: 1. New Fed paper by Crane and Soto now confirms with official labor force survey data what private payroll analysis was showing: roughly 500,000 fewer coders are working than pre-LLM trends would predict. 2. Argues evidence consistent with my work (with Lin and Wu, link in my pinned post) on weak/strong bundles: junior developers and contractors hold "weak bundles" (their work is mostly standalone coding that AI can substitute directly), senior developers hold "tight bundles" where coding is combined with domain expertise, judgment, and cross-functional responsibilities, making substitution much harder. 3. Freund & Mann and Gans & Goldfarb add a second lens: what matters is the value of the tasks that survive automation. Remove coding from a senior role and you free up time for higher-value work; remove it from a junior role and almost nothing remains. ft.com/content/b69f85…

New: State Sen. Jack Martins will not run for reelection. Nassau County GOP Chair Joe Cairo:

Anyone out there a lover of Olmsted parks? I've got a treat for you. The Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site has digitized 215 THOUSAND maps, renderings, proposals, plans, and photos of Olmsted Parks around the world. Check it out here! flickr.com/people/olmsted…

The five boroughs are home to at least 47 varieties of cherry and cherry-esque blossoms, 15 varieties of magnolias and 26 varieties of crabapples, according to Parks Department data. Here's where you can find them: thecity.nyc/2026/04/08/spr…

News: Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes is expected to announce she won't seek reelection w/@mahoneyw subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/0…

There's nothing more American than handing a large portion of your income over to private insurance companies.

The latest on NY state budget talks: - Lawmakers returned to Albany to pass a one-week budget extender sent up by Gov. Hochul today. - They held (or in the Assembly Dems' case, are in the middle of) closed-door conferences. - They're heading home, to return to Albany on Monday.