Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote work’s toll on cities

nymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 250 posts

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#131

Post by delftlander »

synu wrote: post #71
danielrpa wrote: post #18

Cities 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…

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.

As someone who lived in the Netherlands until 2018, I lived a very different experience than you. While those two models aren't perfect matches, they are quite familiar—at least in North and South Holland.

Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht (ok, not Holland...) had mass amounts of people from surrounding villages (essentially suburbs) with longer commutes to work in the city (model 1). I knew several people who worked in these cities and had a daily commute of 40 to 60 minutes one way for university or work.

A lot of Amsterdam can be seen as a densely populated area facilitating moving people from residential areas to commercial for work (essentially model 2). It absolutely has a rush hour of people commuting from both the surrounding areas and different neighborhoods; this is seen in both car traffic, trams, taxis, and trains. Many other large cities in neighboring countries (e.g. Brussels) would also fit this description.

These might not be a 2-hour commutes, but it's far from living, working, and shopping in your neighborhood.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#132

Post by drivers99 »

andybak wrote: post #39
twiddling wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you run into local zoning. I for one would love more mixed zoning in neighborhoods on city boundaries, but too many entrenched interests at the moment

I live in the UK and local shops, restaurants are ubuiquitous. Is that really something that is actively legislated against in the US?

Yes. There's a recent Not Just Bikes video[1] about third places (think UK pubs) and how they are largely missing the US and Canada. For more about the reason for that (Euclidean zoning), which is touched on in that video, this City Beautiful video is good [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvdQ381K5xg&t=8s

[2] U.S. and European Zoning, Compared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNe9C866I2s

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#133

Post by davidw »

parineum wrote: post #33
pjlegato wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. US zoning laws have banned the construction of dense urban neighborhoods and required car-centric suburban neighborhood plans since about World War II. Mandatory density limits and setbacks and numbers of parking spaces and square feet per occupant and other zoning regulations make it illegal to build anything other than low density suburbs. Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighbor…

> US zoning laws... That's an incredibly broad statement since most zoning is handled on the state, county or city level. There are plenty of places in the US where someone could build an equivalent SF or NYC and yet they don't. > The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. You seem to be drawing a causal link here, walkable leads to desirable…

Most US zoning is pretty similar. There are exceptions like Houston, but by and large, zoning codes aren't that different from place to place. A lot of the model codes were derived from similar sources, IIRC

https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines has some good, if brief history of all of it.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#134

Post by oceanplexian »

ricksunny wrote: post #64

poor-man's market research: Would you (not your belief about others) be interested in co-working / co-living locales, in different countries (think Costa Rica, Tenerife, Zanzibar) with excellent maintained QoS connectivity, and (higher tier offering) where your right to work (local work visa) for your home-country employer / clients was looked after by the company hosting the network of sites? Goal: to liberate you t…

I personally would be in the target market, however I've typically rented AirBNB's in different countries and worked from there. So there would have to be some kind of upside over that for it to be worth it.

That said, biggest problem with "working from a different country" for me is self control. It's hard to actually be productive when the weather is beautiful, lots of interesting things are going on, and the beach is calling. Perhaps a co-working, or some kind of organized offsite with coworkers could change that.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#135

Post by thewebcount »

darth_avocado wrote: post #99
courgette wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The modern suburbs in the US are soulless and boring. I grew up in suburbs outside of US and they were anything but boring. The core of it is density and city planning. 1. The suburbs I grew up in had mixed zoning, you had apartments, multi family homes and single family homes in every 5x5 blocks. 2. There were smaller public spaces reasonably located to where you lived. Instead of massive parks for an entire corner…

> The modern suburbs in the US are soulless and boring.

I find this refrain tiresome. I grew up in a US suburb and had similar experiences to what you describe outside the US. I mean, yes, there are some suburbs in America that are husks of their former selves due to economics, etc. But I grew up in a small midwestern suburb of a failing city. I had the following:

1. Would regularly walk or ride my bike to the store with my friends to get things at the age of 7+.

2. A vibrant art scene.

3. A plethora of science and learning opportunities including a branch of a well-known University.

4. A walkable downtown with mom and pop stores.

5. 30 minutes from big events like concerts from our favorite rock bands. 60 minutes from famous sports franchises. 30 minutes from the symphony and art museums.

6. 5 minutes in the other direction was rural farmland where you could learn about agriculture, etc.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#136

Post by norcon4 »

Maybe I'm biased, but I think cheering on the toll of remote work on cities is being sanguine. Cities have existed for a long time for reasons beyond proximity to work. Their decline will represent a decline in wider society. We centralize people and resources to give everyone better access to resources and economize on infrastructure. This pattern is as old as civilization itself. Bully for you if you can make off with the loot to the hills. As cliche as it sounds, we live in a society. Of course there will be winners and losers. But to me, the picture of wealthy, isolated, and spread out exurbs hoarding the wealth while cities languish in poverty is an incredibly bleak picture of the future. My hot take is that remote work is unnatural and has only taken off because of how laborious commuting and unaffordable housing have become in this country. Like others have said, many remote workers will still choose cities because of what they offer, and they could be much better places to live if we re-invested in them as such.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#137

Post by bnralt »

courgette wrote: post #80
avalys wrote: post #53

These 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…

Around here at least, most of the cool local places around here are in the suburbs. That's where you find 99% of the "ethnic" supermarkets (Polish market, Japanese market, Chinese markets, Korean markets, Indian markets, etc.), where you'll find the more authentic ethnic restaurants or bakeries, where you'll find the authentic bubble tea shops, the family restaurants, etc.

Not that you can't find any of this in the city (though almost all the ethnic markets are gone now), but the rent inside the city proper has gotten so high that you're often left with large chains and places that are trying too hard to be "hip."

In general I feel like I'm more likely to find a cool hidden treasure exploring the suburbs these days than exploring the cities.

And I don't think it's just around here. For example, I've noticed that many Chinatowns around the U.S. have moved towards the suburbs over time.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#138

Post by analog31 »

DevX101 wrote: post #2

Remote work has the potential to make neighborhoods more dynamic. With more people at home, there's more demand for nearby coffee shops, entertainment, food options. I prefer the decentralized neighborhood approach to the hub and spoke model where you commute to a big city from the boring suburbs.

The pessimist in me expects more demand for food delivery services than for walkable shops.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#139

Post by woodruffw »

TuringNYC wrote: post #100
danielrpa wrote: post #18

Cities 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…

> 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 you were going into Brooklyn. Trains would mysteriously not arrive, would run express, would claim they have arrived on official apps but the station was closed, etc. Then you think -- in 2hrs I could have commuted into the suburb and lived in a beautiful home for half the price and have a huge garden. And lots of people did exactly that.

You're talking about the "summer of hell" on the subways, which was over 5 years ago at this point[1]. I grew up in Manhattan and currently live in Brooklyn (in an "average" neighborhood for transit; neither accessible nor inaccessible), and transit has been fine for at least the past 3 years.

You can see the improvement in the MTA's own statistics[2]. This year so far has been slightly lower than 2021, but the overall trend is positive.

> Schooling was increasing byzantine. 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. You could have two kids zoned to the same public school, but end up in two different public schools, making school drops impossible. Test-driven systems were changed, making things even harder. "Leadership" based public school application systems were proposed, which is a euphemism for "rich people" get accepted.

I won't claim that this has gotten better or worse, but my perspective from going to public schools is that there's always been a degree of this.

The historical testing scheme is a way to ensure that rich people get access to the better NYC public schools: the standardized tests are laughably easy to prep for, and every UWS and UES'er of means for the past three generations has thrown money at tutors and test prep for their mediocre children.

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/24/public-transit...

[2]: http://dashboard.mta.info/

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#140

Post by danielrpa »

cryptonector wrote: post #87
courgette wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for remembering about most of humanity.

It's all local. u/danielrpa was referring to local conditions, and so was u/synu.

I was referring to the United States, but you can adapt the principle to other places, but with updated descriptions.
Post reply on HN