It’s been one year since New York enacted a law that barred most whole-apartment rentals for short-term stays on platforms like Airbnb. Since then, the number of stays under 30 days has plummeted in the city, but Airbnb is raising questions about whether the lawmakers’ stated goals—lowering rents and opening …
Read More »We Asked AI to Take Us On a Tour of Our Cities. It Was Chaos
With high hopes of finding some hidden gems in our home cities and $100 (£77) each burning a hole in our pockets, we—Natasha Bernal in London and Amanda Hoover in New York—asked AI to plan out the perfect day. We decided to use Littlefoot, an AI-powered local discovery chatbot that …
Read More »NYC’s Congestion Pricing Should Have Been the Future
On Wednesday, New York governor Kathy Hochul shocked the state and the country when she announced she would indefinitely shelve New York City’s long-in-development congestion pricing scheme. The policy, in the works since 2007 and set to begin in just three weeks, was designed to relieve car traffic, curb road …
Read More »Why the East Coast Earthquake Covered So Much Ground
Friday morning at around 10:30 local time, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake popped three miles below Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Though nowhere near the magnitude of the West Coast’s monster quakes, the seismic waves traveled hundreds of miles, jostling not just nearby New York City, but Philadelphia and Boston and Washington, …
Read More »6 Months After New York Banned Airbnb, New Jersey Is Doing Great
Six months have passed since New York City all but banned short-term rentals like those offered via Airbnb. The policy was intended to free up apartments in America’s most congested city to become homes for long-term New Yorkers, instead of housing rotating out-of-town guests that bring noise, trash, and worse. …
Read More »New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Causing a Christmas Crunch
Christmas is in full swing in New York City; lines snake through Midtown as tourists oggle department store windows and the Rockefeller Center tree, and the Union Square Holiday Market is bustling with vendors and shoppers. All the while, hotel prices are up and vacancies down compared to the 2022 …
Read More »New York Wants More Electric Ubers. Everyone Is Mad
George Saliba didn’t get it: Why were all these people from the Bronx suddenly crowding his electric vehicle dealership in Ewing, New Jersey? Why did they all want Tesla’s black-on-black Model Y? And why did they keep coming? Other electric vehicle sellers in the tri-state area were equally busy. The …
Read More »The US Has Failed to Pass AI Regulation. New York City Is Stepping Up
As the US federal government struggles to meaningfully regulate AI—or even function—New York City is stepping into the governance gap. The city introduced an AI Action Plan this week that mayor Eric Adams calls a first of its kind in the nation. The set of roughly 40 policy initiatives is …
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