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Remote work is gutting downtowns

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Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#141

Post by jghn »

rbanffy wrote: post #111
jgalentine007 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny, because after 2008 it felt like a lot of the bedroom communities / strip malls struggled and went down hill (lack of demand I guess) - and it felt like a whole wave of young people were only wanting to live in the city.

Living in the city is great for young people who have no kids - lots of entertainment options a short walk away. It's noisier/busier/dirtier (EVs will help A LOT with noise and pollution). Living further out is much nicer when you have kids - more space, more freedom for the kids to move around, more trees for them to climb and places to explore.

Don't forget older people who have no kids.

I'm part of a DINK couple and could not imagine leaving an urban area. There's so much more to do, so much easier to get around, etc.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#142

Post by ericmay »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #104
ericmay wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give it a few years without exposure > we have to keep our immunity active to stay healthy, and this happens by getting sick times to times Is going to the grocery store, out to dinner, having friends/family over not enough exposure? Genuinely curious about the science if you need to be around kids (directly or indirectly via co-workers) to build or maintain a "strong immune system". If anything I'd expect the lack…

>If anything I'd expect the lack of activity to cause your immune system to be hyper-aware and you'd get less sick That's not really how it works afaik. The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. If you spend 3 years outside society and you come back, your system will be 3 years behind on disease evolution. When you finally do get exposed, you'll have a much stronger immune res…

> The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows.

Is that true? I'm not sure. Another question is what does it mean to be "known". I'd get a cold or a flu every year. At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? This is also a great point to get vaccines. Best of both worlds.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#143

Post by ryanbrunner »

tuyiown wrote: post #86
highwaylights wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to get the bus to work about 10 years ago because parking in the city became so expensive (I stopped long before Covid hit). The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time . I had a commute time that ranged between one and two hours over that stretch as I'd lived in a coup…

> The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time. Give it a few years without exposure, and you will have very hard time if you have to get exposed again. I did 2 years for remote work with a single day with long exposure each week, after a few years with low exposure. I then had…

Immune systems don't weaken from a lack of exposure. It's not a muscle that needs to be worked out. Besides which, your immune system is pretty much constantly at work with relatively benign foreign tissue regardless of whether you're wearing a mask or not.

Some things like the uptick in RSV can be explained by children being initially exposed to RSV a bit later than usual, but for your average adult that's not really relevant.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#144

Post by TwoCent »

Jiejeing wrote: post #123
tuyiown wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time. Give it a few years without exposure, and you will have very hard time if you have to get exposed again. I did 2 years for remote work with a single day with long exposure each week, after a few years with low exposure. I then had…

There is no scientific basis for this assumption (the idea that you rake in immunity "debt" by not getting sick, leading to worse symptoms /when/ you get sick).

It seems plausible that the immune system requires stressors to function well, and the absence of stressors may reduce immune system "strength". Selye's general adaptation syndrome seems applicable here as a first approximation. Muscles atrophy from disuse. Why not also immune systems?

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#145

Post by ryanbrunner »

tuyiown wrote: post #105
rendaw wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is based on a misinterpretation of the hygiene hypothesis... exposure to germs helps when you're a child yourself but not after becoming an adult (AFAIA). This is supported by https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/05/all-social-...

I understand I have no authority on the subject, but, aren't we well aware that immunity wears off at different rates depending on the strain ? A lot of sickness only affect the children, and once for their lifetime, but there is at least covid for we know the immunity wears off. Surely there are many others. edit: I suspect the article only states that life long immunity does not wears off. I don't challenge that at…

This isn't really as simple as a linear decrease in immunity though - certain tools that your immune system uses like antibodies decrease over time but other tools like T-cell responses are long lasting. Thinking of it in terms of an acute response where you're very strongly protected and a persistent response where you have a slower but still effective protection is a better model.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#147

Post by Terretta »

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #47
Elidrake42 wrote: post #18

A bit off topic; I of course understand that I'm an odd situation and not representative of the broader trend at play here... But moving into remote work inspired my partner and I to move into Manhattan from the sprawling car driven nightmare that was Phoenix. Tiny little studio, but we've never been particularly materialistic, a murphy bed massively opens up the space, and no office to go into means once the day is…

I see a LOT of people moving to NYC for this reason. Not Midtown or the Financial District, mind you - the UES, UWS, Williamsburg, etc. I did it. I don't commute but am so much happier here than with more space in suburbia.

> Not Midtown or the Financial District, mind you...

Ha!

Imagine if, as in EU cities, one could live above one's shops and workplaces, with no car needed -- and no transit as part of the daily routine!

Very few places in USA is this feasible at scale, NYC being one of the few. Even there, when I preferred to walk (no transit) to work which required me to live in Midtown, I was looked at like I was nuts -- why wouldn't you live in Brooklyn or Upper West Side or Chelsea or East Village?

Because my aim was to not spend life on a commute.

Love that you don't commute, shows it's possible. It's also possible to have one of those Midtown or Financial District jobs and not commute at all day-to-day. Then when you want a different neighborhood for variety, use transit.

PS. Side benefit in a town where square meter residential space is so limited: no home office necessary, you can just "step into your office" downstairs or across the street.

PPS. If you're one of the "avoid Midtown" folks but like to wander around and browse food, check out the pedestrian corridor called "6 1/2 Ave" very Harry Potter style. The southern end starts at ~ 50th and runs up to ~ 56th. There is an Asian street food concourse between 50th and 51st that's new, another food hall at 52nd, and an amazing French bistro up between 53rd and 54th. The food halls essentially let you try food cart experience year round or in the rain.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#148

Post by analyte123 »

It was quite short-sighted for the owners of hundreds of billions in commercial real estate to sit idly while almost all work turned into sitting in front of a personal screen. You used to have drafting rooms, map rooms, operation centers, and other types of collaborative environment. Now you have your own screen. Think of the boost to their property values if there were commercially available roomscale software, or some kind of hologram table.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#149

Post by mprovost »

TwoCent wrote: post #144
Jiejeing wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no scientific basis for this assumption (the idea that you rake in immunity "debt" by not getting sick, leading to worse symptoms /when/ you get sick).

It seems plausible that the immune system requires stressors to function well, and the absence of stressors may reduce immune system "strength". Selye's general adaptation syndrome seems applicable here as a first approximation. Muscles atrophy from disuse. Why not also immune systems?

"Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die"

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-...

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#150

Post by adam_arthur »

Cities can revive and thrive if they open up zoning to allow for mass office to residential conversion.

Imagine what converting 50% of NYC offices to residential would do to foot traffic and rents. City living has the potential to be far cheaper than suburban due to economies of scale. They only weren’t prior due to the concentration of high paying jobs, which presumably are going to shift to remote/global and have far less of a concentrated impact on local economies

Before people say it’s not cost viable, it is in many cases, and was already being done precovid.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-the-w...

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