Sadly, I saw this view first hand when flying into Phoenix from Salt Lake. I grew up in Arizona and had heard about these ghost neighborhoods and empty streets, but had no idea how bad it really was.
HN's algorithm is interesting lately. My posting had more upvotes, I have better karma than this poster, it was on the day it appeared on the Big Picture, and linked to the original, not to some blogspammer.
Headlines are everything. "The Big Picture: Human Landscapes in SW Florida" is a lot more cryptic and boring than "Aerial Footage: Portrait of a Housing Bust".
Also, I suspect that on weekdays, submissions and voting traffic are higher. That means more votes are required to reach the front page, and less time is spent on page one of 'new' to earn those votes.
Your second point is valid, and even your first point, but I do try to be honest in the choosing the headline. It's the original headline, with "The Big Picture:" added at the beginning and in this case there's plenty of pictures on the Big Picture page that don't necessarily represent a "bust."
It seems that, if I accept your first point, I also have to accept that HN is becoming more sensationalistic, and I (and I suspect, others), are unhappy about that.
Not only do they do represent the previous land bust of 1970's rather than the more recent one, but many of the lots became undevelopable due to the Statewide mandatory Comprehensive Planning for local governments; participation of local governments in the Federal Flood Insurance program; and environmental laws regulating wetlands and protecting endangered species (e.g. gopher tortoises and raptors such as bald eagles).
In the large undeveloped tracts from the 1960's like those depicted, lots were often available for the cost of delinquent property taxes even at the peak of the last bubble due to the lack of development potential.
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[ 42.7 ms ] story [ 68.8 ms ] threadhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743918
HN's algorithm is interesting lately. My posting had more upvotes, I have better karma than this poster, it was on the day it appeared on the Big Picture, and linked to the original, not to some blogspammer.
Mine never got above the second page.
Also, I suspect that on weekdays, submissions and voting traffic are higher. That means more votes are required to reach the front page, and less time is spent on page one of 'new' to earn those votes.
It seems that, if I accept your first point, I also have to accept that HN is becoming more sensationalistic, and I (and I suspect, others), are unhappy about that.
Not only do they do represent the previous land bust of 1970's rather than the more recent one, but many of the lots became undevelopable due to the Statewide mandatory Comprehensive Planning for local governments; participation of local governments in the Federal Flood Insurance program; and environmental laws regulating wetlands and protecting endangered species (e.g. gopher tortoises and raptors such as bald eagles).
In the large undeveloped tracts from the 1960's like those depicted, lots were often available for the cost of delinquent property taxes even at the peak of the last bubble due to the lack of development potential.