Murders And Shootings At Record Lows In NYC

New York City recorded the lowest number of shootings and homicides in its history in the first five months of 2025. From January to May 2025, there were 264 shootings and 112 homicides, the lowest since crime data tracking began.

Urban Density Is Green

 This is the biggest apartment building in the world.

The colossal Regent International apartment building in Hangzhou, China, is is the largest residential building globally and hosts over 20,000 residents! Initially designed as a hotel, this 36-story architectural marvel was transformed into a self-sufficient community, boasting high-end residential apartments, a vast food court, swimming pools, salons, supermarkets, and more. 

Designed by Alicia Loo, the chief architect behind the world's second seven-star hotel, the Singapore Sands Hotel, this S-shaped giant stands 206 meters tall. He has dominated Hangzhou's central business district since its inauguration in 2013. 

Home to a diverse community, from young professionals to influencers and small businesses, the Regent International building spans over 260,000 square meters, reshaping the skyline and redefining urban living in China.

Rent ranges from about $200 a month for an interior windowless apartment to $550 a month for apartments with a balcony. 

I posted this meme on Facebook and a friend of mine left the comment: "To me it is a symbol of the overpopulation that is killing the planet."

I responded (with minor editing for a blog format):

It shouldn't be. 

First of all, global population is nearing a peak and leveling off - the places that are still seeing surging population, especially sub-Saharan African and Afghanistan, have profoundly lower population density. 

China, in particular, has plummeting fertility rates and is far below the replacement level. It is at 1.4 billion people now, but actually lost population in the last year or two and will continue to. China has a fertility rate about half of the replacement rate, so its population will probably fall by close to 400 million people in thirty years and that's at current rates which are still plummeting. 

High density urban environments have the lowest total fertility rate. 

Second, the environmental impact of people in extremely high density environments is much lower per person than if they are spread out - they use less heating/cooling energy (especially in multifamily housing like this since there is less surface area to lose/gain heat per capita due to shared walls, and shared ceiling-floors), produce far less global warming air pollution, use much less transportation energy, build fewer cars per capita, use less water, destroy less land/sensitive animal habits than lower density development, etc. 

I'm sure it has lots of elevators, which are one of the single most energy efficient means of transportation other than bicycles, almost all power used to go up is recovered going down. And, people in densely populated areas can also use more efficient intercity transportation - this part of China has high speed electric rail that is faster and has less environmental impact than intercity transportation by cars or airplanes for short to medium distance intercity trips (admittedly China's electrical grid has way too much dirty coal, but that isn't an urban density related issue). 

Manhattan, for example, has better energy efficiency and overall less waste production and pollution per capita than any other place in the U.S. 

There is also an iron rule in economics that the bigger and more dense a city is the greater its per capita GDP in a very systemic, cross-cultural, cross-time period way. It is a power law relationship, so more dense urban areas are exponentially more productive per capita with no upper limit observed to date. So dense cities also greatly reduce environmental impact per $1 of GDP by both being more productive and less polluting per capita. 

More density means a smaller human footprint on the Earth. Put 20,000 people in suburban tract homes and you'd eat up 3+ square miles of land instead of one city block of maybe 1% of a square mile (6.4 acres), so that's a 99% reduction in habit destruction that can be left for open space, parks, and farming. 

Sure, the 6.4 acres for this high rise produces way more waste, energy consumption, and water consumption than my urban residential neighborhood would with 180 or so people in the same area of land, rather than 20,000 people, and far more than a suburban neighborhood with maybe 20 people in that land area, or an exurban neighborhood with 4 people in a mini-mansion on a single 6.4 acre lot. But per capita, it is much, much better for the planet.

The Big Apple Has Never Been Safer

Just days from the end of 2017, New York City is set to tally a record low number of murders for the year and serious crime, more generally, will have declined for the 27th straight year. As of Wednesday, 286 murders had been committed in the city, putting New York on pace to dip below its previous homicide low of 333 in 2014. To give some perspective to how far the murder rate has dropped in the city over the past several decades, the New York Times notes this year’s murder rate is on the verge of being “the lowest since reliable records have been kept,” an unthinkable turnaround from 1990 when there were 2,245 killings in New York City. 

Other types of major felony crimes — manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and car thefts — have fallen since last year and, put together, are also likely to close out the year at historic lows. The nearly 95,000 major felony crimes committed so far this year is on pace to best last year’s record low of 101,716. In 1990, by contrast, there were 527,000 major felony crimes recorded in New York City.

From here.

NYC In The Summer

I am in New York City most of this week taking depositions* in a trademark infringement lawsuit. My hotel is in Times Square (7th Avenue and West 51st Street).  The depositions are being held at the offices of a law firm at Park Avenue and East 40th Street.  I took a cab there this morning since time considerations were key and I had a large suitcase full of exhibits (including numerous samples of the disputed goods) that I needed for the depositions.  But, since I was able to leave my exhibits and their suitcase at the law firm overnight, and I was in no rush to get back to my hotel, I walked back.

This fifteen block walk (1.1 miles) was a manageable distance to walk unburdened by things to carry; a healthy walk with a little sightseeing thrown in, after a day spent working since early in the morning to make final preparations for, and then take, today's deposition.  But, what I did not foresee was just how hot it is to walk the streets of New York City on a summer afternoon, with temperatures of a reasonably humid ninety-something degrees, in a full suit and tie.  It had been so much cooler in the morning when I left that I hadn't expected it to be an issue.

By the time I finished my walk and arrived in my hotel room, my dress shirt was so drenched with sweat that I might as well have just pulled it out of a bathtub, or walked through a rainstorm.

* A deposition involves taking the testimony of a witness under oath in the presence of a court reporter, much like you might at a trial, usually in a law office or hotel conference room, outside the presence of a judge or jury, and with fewer permissible objections to questions asked that are allowed. Depositions are usually taken in non-criminal lawsuits in order to obtain information from opposing parties and third party witnesses in order to prepare for trial.  This testimony is also not infrequently used in a pre-trial motion for summary judgment to establish that one or more key facts necessary for the court to make a ruling are undisputed, when this is the case.  Less frequently, depositions are used to preserve the testimony of someone who may not be available to testify at trial for some reason, in which case the testimony is read aloud to the jury in lieu of live witness testimony, unless the deposition was videotaped, in which case the jury watches selected portions of the video. In modern civil litigation, in which the lion's share of lawsuits are resolved by settlement or motions practice prior to trial, and "no surprises" in the mantra in cases that do go to trial, a civil litigator typically spends far more days taking and defending depositions, than actually litigating cases in trials.

Sympathies To Marty

Marty at the Trademark blog had a day that was just a bit too exciting yesterday when an old steam pipe blew up right next to his NYC office. I send my congratulations that he escaped the situation unscathed and my sympathies to similarly situated New Yorkers.