Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#101

Post by elindbe2 » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

robterrin wrote: post #60

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…

I've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse. The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC. What exactly is Ch…

NYC is more the equity side of finance, Wall St. and all that. Chicago is home to the largest futures exchange in the world, the CME and the largest options exchange, the CBOE.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#102

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

robterrin wrote: post #60

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…

I've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse. The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC. What exactly is Ch…

>What exactly is Chicago good at?

Corruption.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#103

Post by mehaveaccount » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #83

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Because the real commodity being sold with the apartments and offices isn't net access or even lan…

While there's certainly some true to that statement, I think you're being overly cynical. People congregate in cities to be near _people_ . For sure with a good internet connection I could do all my work from small town america living in a mcmansion at a quarter of my rent; instead I live in nyc. Access to artistic communities, robust public transit, diverse food and culture, and a fluid job market makes the value ad…

I have to disagree strongly. I live in NYC for work. I actually hate living here and I don't like the people I'm around. I am desperately looking for a way out of this city but my family lives on Long Island, so it's hard to justify going to another city.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#104

Post by lkrubner » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #66

geff82 wrote: post #4

Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Talented people already move from one coast to the other, so they could as well move to any other p…

> Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Some of the burden is on you to prove what has failed so far. If it is possible to build a successful large scale startup in Amarillo, why hasn't it happened? I'll point out the theory of agglomerative clustering also includes the contrary point: a city that is great at something tends to exclude other activities, for any given amount o…

Why is this getting downvoted? I can not see a single sentence in this comment that is not accurate.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#105

Post by klenwell » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

supergeek133 wrote: post #21

> Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever Yes it can, College Tuition is a great example. Instead of finding the cause and treating it, we just increase the amount of aid people have access to.

I remember hearing a variation of this claim by rationalizers for the dot-com stock market bubble in the 90's and the housing bubble in the 00's.

I recognize you're not trying to rationalize this, but you've identified the common factor to each bubble: a new and unsophisticated source of investors being aided by the financial industry.

With the dot-com bubble, it was daytraders and online traders generally (including me). With housing bubble, new untraditional homebuyers who bought homes with exotic mortgages. With education, student who traditionally would not have gone to college going to college.

These could have all been positive examples of American upward mobility at work. But as was especially evident with the housing bubble, the financial industry turned people looking to improve their lives into consumers and, in many cases, exploited them.

With rents in metropolitan areas, it seems to be driven by wealthy investors (institutional investors and wealthy foreigners) pricing marginal middle class homebuyers (e.g. yuppie millennials) out of the market and then turning around to rent to them. Renters, like tech workers and young white-collar professionals generally, can stretch to afford these rents. But they definitely have a ceiling and all of this has been fueled by a growing economy. As soon as the economy falters, aid will dry up and the roof will cave in.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#106

Post by dpark » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

geff82 wrote: post #4

Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Talented people already move from one coast to the other, so they could as well move to any other p…

>Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world.

Because face to face is high bandwidth. You can have everyone work from home but it will reduce your ability to collaborate effectively. Teams worry about being in separate buildings or even just split across floors because the friction introduced reduces impromptu face to face conversations significantly.

Now, if you're asking why an entire company can't move, that's because the talent pool is where it is and many engineers will not be willing to relocate. Moving is disruptive and for married couples where both work at different locations, it may be effectively impossible.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#107

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

ntdef wrote: post #71

robterrin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse. The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC. What exactly is Ch…

I think you're a bit misinformed. Chicago has two large keystone industries that serve the global economy: (1) Industrial large scale manufacturing (Boeing, John Deere, Caterpillar), (2) Insurance (all of them); not to mention a ton of Food and Agriculture HQs are based there as well.

USAA is in San Antonio!

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#108

Post by trapperkeeper79 » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

brilliantcode wrote: post #37

The article title is spot on. Vancouver is not a megacity, therefore our rent will go up forever. It's unbelievable how relatively expensive rent is to income. I'm beginning to wonder why I'm putting up with Vancouver. I'm thinking I will take the first train out of here but that doesn't seem to be coming.

From Toronto. We have it worse. We are actually thinking of moving to Vancouver and renting :-p The rents in both places seem the same, except Toronto has shitty traffic, very limited tech opportunities, bad weather, and bugs. I looked around at jobs in Vancouver and it seemed a bit surprising how many tech employers there were.

Can you shed light on why you are fed up with V? Where else are you considering?

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#109

Post by zanny » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #33

geff82 wrote: post #4

Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Talented people already move from one coast to the other, so they could as well move to any other p…

I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…

I have to imagine I'm somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum. I could care less about attractions, since even when I lived in the city I was spending a lot of evenings just playing video games anyway.

I think the broad adoption of mobile gaming and the Millennial adoption rate on video games and the successor generation (whatever we are calling them now) basically being raised on them will break down the reliance on physically proximate entertainment for enough of a subset of these generations that businesses will have to adapt to remote more than they already are.

Plenty of people are going to be satisfied with what is available through technology, rather than just what they can commute to. This is on top of being able to do work remotely, its the value in being entertained remotely that truly separates them from the city centralization problem.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#110

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #8

geff82 wrote: post #4

Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Talented people already move from one coast to the other, so they could as well move to any other p…

There are certainly a lot of factors. People want to live in trendy cities. There's a lot to consider besides rent - culture, nightlife, etc. San Francisco sure does have some of the best food in the country (and with tech consuming most of spare time the way it is, eating out is really a huge part of culture). Rent definitely ends up being the deal breaker for many, but for others isn't. It's a lot harder for a comp…

> People want to live in trendy cities. There's a lot to consider besides rent - culture, nightlife, etc. San Francisco sure does have some of the best food in the country

We're talking about tech workers though. I don't know about you, but my whole life as a tech worker, I've gotten up at the crack of dawn, worked all day, come home late at night exhausted and passed out sleeping until the next day. I don't even know what city I live in because I NEVER SEE IT. Culture? Nightlife? What the hell are they? It doesn't make sense that tech workers would care about these things because we never get to take advantage of them.