Scalping could be somewhat solved by auctioning off the high value spots (not the auction would be universally known and there wouldn’t be any resales) so that you don’t sell below fair value. Anyway the much simpler solution is to charge for parking. 3 million parking spots for 60/month on average gets you there and is incredibly cheap parking
Solid thought experiment. The spreadsheet approach to quantifying naming inventory is clever, but the enforcement nightmare you flag is the real issue. I used to work near a park with sponsored benches and even thos modest plaques drew occasional vandalism or disputes. Scaling to 1.5 million nameable objects turns the city into an admistrative black hole. The scalping risk is wild too becuse it basically recreates landlordism for street furniture.
That is super interesting! Was the vandalism mostly random, or did you have personal disputes overflow into bench competition? I can imagine it getting nasty if two people both really want to adopt the same bench.
> "Only about 70% of Central Park’s benches have been adopted, and that’s the highest value location in the whole city."
That does suggest that increasing the salience of the good, existing opportunities left unfilled could at least make a dent. Get Mamdani to say he'll get brunch with a random person who sponsors a bench in Q1 '26, get the Humans of New York guy to do a series on past bench honorees, and you can at least expand that market a bit.
That’s such a great point - New York has a ton of cultural capital, the naming rights can be secondary to a cultural and sweepstake-ization effect. Could the Humans of New York guy get a tax writeoff if he’s able to move some of the less desireable benches?
Scalping could be somewhat solved by auctioning off the high value spots (not the auction would be universally known and there wouldn’t be any resales) so that you don’t sell below fair value. Anyway the much simpler solution is to charge for parking. 3 million parking spots for 60/month on average gets you there and is incredibly cheap parking
The high cost of free parking indeed - the hard part as always is administering it for less than a billion dollars 😅
Solid thought experiment. The spreadsheet approach to quantifying naming inventory is clever, but the enforcement nightmare you flag is the real issue. I used to work near a park with sponsored benches and even thos modest plaques drew occasional vandalism or disputes. Scaling to 1.5 million nameable objects turns the city into an admistrative black hole. The scalping risk is wild too becuse it basically recreates landlordism for street furniture.
That is super interesting! Was the vandalism mostly random, or did you have personal disputes overflow into bench competition? I can imagine it getting nasty if two people both really want to adopt the same bench.
> "Only about 70% of Central Park’s benches have been adopted, and that’s the highest value location in the whole city."
That does suggest that increasing the salience of the good, existing opportunities left unfilled could at least make a dent. Get Mamdani to say he'll get brunch with a random person who sponsors a bench in Q1 '26, get the Humans of New York guy to do a series on past bench honorees, and you can at least expand that market a bit.
That’s such a great point - New York has a ton of cultural capital, the naming rights can be secondary to a cultural and sweepstake-ization effect. Could the Humans of New York guy get a tax writeoff if he’s able to move some of the less desireable benches?
Don’t forget that the city would somehow pay ~$2.4Bn for contractors to review, flag, approve, and monitor all these plaques…
Naming everything in NYC: the ultimate jobs program?