Toll? That's a wild title
Remote work’s toll on cities
111–120 of 250 posts
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you referring to where there are only two city types? I live in the Netherlands, neither of the two existing models you describe sound familiar in any countries around here, although our cities were certainly designed in a low tech past.
Are context clues no longer a thing? This is a story about American cities. Why would you assume he is also referring to all non-American cities?
People here often talk make statements expanding on the original article and I was curious, but in any case thanks for confirming this is a US-only thing. Makes sense.
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#113> cities must let developers convert office buildings into housing This is an Activist piece - not an Analysis piece. You cannot trust facts reported in an article that's advocating change. It cherry picks a number of facts in order to further the arguments.
> convert office buildings into housing Can't be done. Office buildings of significant size are not engineered for 24/7 human occupation. The sewer will be inadequate. The water will be inadequate. Retrofitting this would be spectacularly expensive, if it's even possible, as mechanical and plumbing chases are sized for the original design requirements and are difficult (if not impossible) to alter. It may be possible…
IMO, elevators are just as bad as cars (exceptions of course apply)
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building infrastructure is scoped for maximum occupancy at a point-in-time, not over time. And maximum occupancy is typically denser in an office than residential. Put another way, what matters is the maximum volume the electrical, sewer, HVAC, elevators, emergency power, etc can handle. If it is scoped to handle 1,000 people for 8 hours of a day, it will do just fine for 300 people 24 hours per day. > Also, when som…
> Building infrastructure is scoped for maximum occupancy at a point-in-time, not over time. And maximum occupancy is typically denser in an office than residential. That... depends? On one hand, an office building scoped to handle 1000 people for 8 hours a day might handle more peak toilet flushes than 300 people for 24 hours a day, but the latter might get way more peak shower/dishwasher/sink/washer use than the fo…
Converting office buildings to residential is something that already really happens, so there’s not actually a question about whether it is possible. My comment was just to summarize why.
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#115Cities exist to serve people's needs. The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation. Instead, we need self-sufficient neighborhoods catering to different lifestyles and needs (some higher density and walkable, others still car-centric but encourag…
I'm a life-long New Yorker, born and raised. Even I gave up on the city and moved out, despite all the desire to live with low carbon-impact and live a moderate lifestyle w/o cars. At some point, the pain factor becomes too much. I'll give you some examples - Approximately 5-6yrs ago the transit quality in the outer-boroughs (not Manhattan) became so bad that you could spend 2hrs hours switching multiple trains if yo…
> You could own a home but not be guaranteed a seat at your local public school. You had to use "connections" just to make it on the list, or your child would end up half way across the Borough at a different public school.
I suspect this is an attempt to distribute students between schools so you don't end up with one school made up of students all from a rich neighborhood and another with students all from a poorer neighborhood. That's how a lot of the US does things and the poorer families consistently get the short end of the stick.
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#116Cities take a huge toll on the environment. in Los Angeles the week we had basically total lockdown we had the best air quality ever here.
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#117These conversations are kind of like the airplane on the treadmill problem, where there are (approximately) two orthogonal sets of assumptions/preferences that lead to obvious but incompatible conclusions, and people end up yelling at each other over the conclusions without realizing the difference is just the underlying assumptions. Personally - I don't want to live in a city, or a town, or even a neighborhood. I do…
I don't find suburbs boring. I find them soul-less. I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things. Suburbs would be fine in my own personal book if they were offering basic services and a sense of comunauty.( not in warehouse operated by large chain, but by people living there and earning a live…
Cities may have a soul but they lack a heart (and a brain too).
From 2018 through 2020, the NCVS found that the violent-crime rate in urban areas was between 29 percent and 42 percent higher than the rate in rural areas
The property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households)
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#118> cities must let developers convert office buildings into housing This is an Activist piece - not an Analysis piece. You cannot trust facts reported in an article that's advocating change. It cherry picks a number of facts in order to further the arguments.
One of the problems with this too is that a major reason people live downtown is for the short commute to the office. If the office doesn't exist or in the suburbs, is living downtown still be attractive?
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I personally have never gotten a new job in the same city as my last. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
Not GP, but I'm 51, been working in tech since I was 21 and, though all my jobs have been within about 50 miles of each other, none has been in the same city as the previous either. The closest sequential pairing of jobs was 3.5 miles apart.
Do you move when you take different jobs, as the ggreer had asked above in the thread?
Re: Remote work’s toll on cities
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a life-long New Yorker, born and raised. Even I gave up on the city and moved out, despite all the desire to live with low carbon-impact and live a moderate lifestyle w/o cars. At some point, the pain factor becomes too much. I'll give you some examples - Approximately 5-6yrs ago the transit quality in the outer-boroughs (not Manhattan) became so bad that you could spend 2hrs hours switching multiple trains if yo…
> You could own a home but not be guaranteed a seat at your local public school. You had to use "connections" just to make it on the list, or your child would end up half way across the Borough at a different public school. I suspect this is an attempt to distribute students between schools so you don't end up with one school made up of students all from a rich neighborhood and another with students all from a poorer…
In my experience this was multi-fold (and nothing to do with helping the poor)
- Housing would be built w/o appropriate ratios of schools being built in the same zone (poor city planning, and over reliance on connections vs rule of law)
- You could use connections to get to a well-rated public school w/o living in the zone, but at the expense of a local student being pushed out of zone. Note, this usually favors the rich/connected, not the poor.
- Application acceptances were at the discretion of the school w/o bright-line criteria, making favoritism a huge issue. Note, this usually favors the rich, not the poor. White the applications are straight-forward, NYC public school registrars could and would refuse to accept an application.
Ultimately, the causes do not matter -- all that matters is that the situation isnt palatable -- if you have 2 kids in two different school in two vastly different locations, and have no car, its close to impossible to drop the kids off with public transport and get to work on time.
I rely on remote work now. I go into the city 2x/wk. The school drop-offs are simple and live in a suburban township where local public school seating is guaranteed by law based on my lease/ownership address. No school registrar can mysteriously refuse to register me (havent faced that issue since i moved out of NYC), I dont need to lobby the local congress-preson to register my kids in school, nothing.
It "took a toll on NYC" but there wasnt really any real option provided by NYC.