We profit a cool $32.4 million. I am not a developer or an expert at this, but the numbers seem to add up. It seems that creating lovable, fine-grained, human-scale places can be profitable - even around a very expensive city like New York City. I choose the upper estimates for my costs, which were often double to what some other sources said. The next logical step if we actually wanted to build something like this would be to talk to real developers and contractors and fill these estimates in with more realistic numbers.

With any venture under capitalism, you have the first few innovators willing to take a risk and try something new, and if it is successful you will open a flood gate of imitators who will build the same thing over and over again (with minor tweaks) until there is no more profit to be milked out. We see this happening with tablet computers - they were not that popular until the iPad - and ever since the iPad was a success, dozens of imitation brands emerged overnight. I feel like we are stuck in the imitation stage of suburbia - where developers are building the same old subdivision after subdivision - trying to milk every last diminishing profit they can. Building great urbanism - places people want to live, places that have been sustainable for thousands of years - is profitable, and after the first few successful attempts, we will open the flood gates of imitators that will build it throughout the country in a heartbeat anywhere there is profit to be made.