Sounds great at first but....
You just know this is something the politicians and developers and the whole ecosystem of NGO's and lobbyists and other forward-looking folk will be spending large money (not their own) on.
From The Anti-Planner, December 30:
Let Cities Be What They Want to Be
An on-line site called the Dumber, er, I mean Intelligancer says that, for cities to survive, developers must be allowed to convert office buildings into housing. There are a lot of problems with this recommendation.
There are a lot of problems with this recommendation. First, both people and jobs are moving away from the cities, so who is going to want to live in former office buildings anyway? Second, office buildings are not designed for human habitation, so converting them will be expensive, probably far more expensive than the single-family homes people are moving to. Third, if cities allow such conversions, and they don’t happen, you know what the next step will be: cities will begin subsidizing such conversions....
....MUCH MORE
How to trade it: start donating cash money to city council members, especially those with planning and zoning oversight. This is classic "My little crony" territory and the action will of course be at the local level.
Read up on Tammany Hall. Here's a good start for our purposes, via the Cambridge University Press' Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era:
POLITICAL CAPITALISM IN THE GILDED AGE: THE TAMMANY BANK RUN OF 1871
Abstract
The Tweed Ring spawned a vibrant financial sector that was integral to its brief success but has never been previously examined. William “Boss” Tweed and his allies employed banks controlled or comanaged by Tammany politicians to embezzle funds, build political alliances, and invest in a wide array of business ventures. The capital of these savings and commercial banks—city money, deposits from Catholic charities, and the savings of immigrant laborers—was accumulated through political channels. During their operation between 1867 and 1871, politician-bankers engaged in a mix of patronage deals and profit-driven financial speculation. In effect, Tammany banks were ground zero for the Ring's conversion of political hegemony into a windfall of economic capital that fueled party activities and buoyed personal fortunes. Importantly, the anti-Ring mobilization by upper-class reformers was more than a revolt of wealthy taxpayers concerned with abstract goals of good government or rescuing city credit; it was also a reaction by old-line bankers in direct competition with Tammany upstarts. A dramatic bank run catalyzed by reformers in November 1871 drove them into bankruptcy, bringing this novel experiment in political capitalism to an end.
Be aware of both the opportunity and the risks of this sort of venture, especially the potential for winds of change to spring up before you have a chance to establish/exit positions (see above on so-called reformers).
Heed the words of our first inductee into the Climateer Hall of Fame. The 26th Secretary of War, the Democrat and Republican (!) Senator from Pennsylvania Simon
Cameron:
Our Hero
