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Berlin Google Campus occupied

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Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#61

Post by blablabla123 »

driverdan wrote: post #33

> ...to fight against the skyrocketing rents and to open up the space for something better. They lost me right there. If they want to fight skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If they wanted the space to be used for something else they should have bought or rented it themselves. Protesting Google does nothing to change these.

> They lost me right there. If they want to fight

> skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If

So they aren't in your opinion?

> they wanted the space to be used for something else they

> should have bought or rented it themselves.

How?

> Protesting

> Google does nothing to change these.

Lol, this is pretty much Economics 101. When Google demands more space, so when they indeed move into the whole space, it will get more expensive.

Ok, the upcoming snowball effect is much more difficult to understand - you need at least a PhD in Math and CS for that: that extra space needs to be filled with chairs and people of whom some or many move from abroad. (Quite likely also from existing Google offices to keep the Google spirit.) These people create additional demand in the housing market. More over other startups, possibly popular and highly funded ones will follow suit and the same thing repeats, with lower magnitude though.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#62

Post by Xylakant »

ant6n wrote: post #51
driverdan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3-5 story isn't very tall. Tear them down and go taller.

Firstly, the higher you build, the more space you need between buildings, and the more space inside the buildings is used for infastructure. There are diminishing returns, and it runs out that areas with good coverage of 5 story buildings can have very high density, often more than areas with high rises. Plus, Berlin likes to protect their heritage; often tearing down and rebuilding whole neighborhoods turned out to…

> Plus, Berlin likes to protect their heritage; often tearing down and rebuilding whole neighborhoods turned out to be a very bad idea.

As I mentioned further downthread: This is especially pronounced in Kreuzberg, the whole district was supposed to be torn down and turned into a planned utopian living quarter. The Kottbuser Tor was supposed to be turned into a highway crossroad and the buildings there stem from those plans.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#63

Post by beat »

joshuakarjala wrote: post #47
beat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows how much of a bubble the protesters live in, too. Calling startups "sweatshops" is kind of absurd. To the extent that work is harder or pay is worse in startups, it's for the ownership (or at least a sense of ownership) and excitement. Most people working in startups could, if they wanted, sidestep into safe, boring corporate IT work. The protesters would be a lot more interesting if they'd start reading Mar…

The amount of free "non developer" labor being exploited by early stage startups is immense

If someone is working for free on a voluntary basis, they're probably not being "exploited". When I was trying to build a startup, I got plenty of free help from various friends and interested parties who were excited about what I was building - but nothing on the level of employee-level work. Hell, if someone was remotely useful and willing to put in real hours, I'd have called them co-founders and given them equity, happily.

This is important! If someone has enough skills/ambition to be actually useful to an early stage startup, they can make better money elsewhere. So if they're putting in their time with the startup, they're being motivated by something else. That doesn't mean they're being exploited. It means their interests can't be measured entirely in dollars.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#64

Post by awild »

kerng wrote: post #27

>>The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops (“start-ups”) promise to deliver new ideas to Google’s company business. Those are some pretty emotional words, but show how much in a bubble we tech people might live. Curious if anyone knows more about the movement behind this, I doubt it's a majority opinion of the public?

Kreuzberg is a very mixed place, poor, hip (arts, tech etc.) and far-left all intermingle here. I'd wager that most people living here are at least mildly skeptical of gentrification attempts like this, there has been ongoing protest ever since the announcement, but I'm not much engaged with the people here to know if they have an active majority behind them.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#65

Post by titzer »

driverdan wrote: post #29
Xylakant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been in the area? There's no single family housing there at all for quite some distance (I'd say a few kilometers in each direction at least). It's mostly densely built-up with 3-5 story apartment buildings.

3-5 story isn't very tall. Tear them down and go taller.

This "tear it all down and just go higher" attitude pisses people off to an extent that is difficult to convey. People are sick of being mugged by economics and having their homes, neighborhoods, villages, streets ravaged by "more at all costs." People are sick of being priced out to the suburbs, displaced by rich corporations and all these rich young people.

Come to a European city and walk through streets with hundreds of years of history for some perspective. Then you can advocate to tear it all down and build it all up for some passing tech bubble fad straight to their faces and see what kind of response you get.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#66

Post by bogomipz »

deanCommie wrote: post #23
Xylakant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no space in that area to build more housing. Pretty much all the space is being used to build offices for tech companies. There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.

B.S. You just need to re-zone massive sprawling single-family zones into mid-rises. The "american dream" of a massive house for every couple can't survive the 21st century without triggering a revolution.

It sounds like you have never even been to Kreuzberg then.

There are no "massively sprawling single-family zones" in the area.

Maybe you could do just a modicum of research before you call "B.S." on people.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#67

Post by forgot-my-pw »

Xylakant wrote: post #2

occupation is over, the police arrested a few of the occupiers, there are reports that a person was injured in the process. Source: Our office is in the same building.

> If it comes to eviction, we’ll see each other again very soon, on the Campus or elsewhere – as we wander around together and take the city for ourselves.

>- The Council of Occupiers

We haven't heard the last of them :|

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#70

Post by arez »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #14

> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…

sure we want good jobs with high salaries, but these jobs are just for a minority and they will pump up the prices in the whole area. There're lots of unemployed and people with low paying jobs in berlin, some artists, students etc. they make the city vibrant, fun, adventurous, but they can't stay if you have to pay 1200€ a month for a decent flat.
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