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Remote work’s toll on cities

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Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#221

Post by mynameisnull »

thewebcount wrote: post #135
darth_avocado wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think while the refrain maybe tiresome for you, it is for me generally true.

Older suburbs in the US did have this, and I grew up in one, it is now empty and vacant. Many suburbs I lived in were all bedroom community types with no shops, no sidewalks, etc.

I sort of did find what you’re talking about in the US later on, a newer upscale model of mixed living, it wasn’t bad. It had a lot of chains though and it was very expensive.

So I will definitely grant you it is possible in several regions that to find this sort of lifestyle, it is not easy in some parts of the US or cheap in general (in my experience).

Living in Europe now, it’s been very easy to find these integrated neighborhoods or towns, and they come in all price points.

To be sure there are still bedroom communities, they’re just not even close to as common where we are as they were in the US.

I don’t think this is a radical statement if you just compare gas prices, it is rather organic and obvious why things are this way (and 30-40 other equally important factors contributed I am sure)

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#222

Post by decafninja »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #209
TuringNYC wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'll never understand why kids have to be brought to school. I went by myself, on foot, bicycle, or bus/subway. Nothing bad happened. Why does it seem to be mandatory in large parts of the US?

I too walked or biked to school. But that was nearly twenty years ago.

I imagine the change comes from how sensitive people have become over leaving children alone under any circumstances. I.e. I don’t have kids myself, but according to a coworker who does, kids playing alone in the neighborhood would have been absolutely normal twenty years ago, but nowadays you might have Child Protection Services unleashed upon you, get accused of child neglect, and even have your kids taken away?

I recall someone did an experiment where they let their kid play at a playground, then took a seat on a bench where he could monitor his child, but still be far enough away to seem like the kid was alone. The goal was to see how fast some “Good Samaritan” would rush to the child in fear that he was being neglected. It didn’t take long.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#223

Post by deltarholamda »

mortenjorck wrote: post #72
deltarholamda wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Can't be done. It can be done and has been done, but what the article fails to recognize is that it is spectacularly expensive—the original build-out, of course, but also the maintenance (I’ve seen this firsthand in the stratospheric HOA fees in the one class-A office-to-residence conversion I toured in my condo search). Office to residential will happen, but it will be at the top end of the market. It is fundament…

> It can be done and has been done, but what the article fails to recognize is that it is spectacularly expensive

I mean, of course it can be done. We can also solve the homeless problem by moving them all to the Moon and building Moon bases.

The point is that it is not practically possible for the reasons I stated as it is fantastically expensive. There are simply not enough rich people to buy into a converted office building. You will get a handful of them in name brand cities, but the ability to secure financing for these things will very quickly vanish.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#224

Post by deltarholamda »

snowwrestler wrote: post #55
deltarholamda wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

>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.

Almost. Use case for commercial office and residential is significantly different. In an office building, the largest electrical load will be HVAC. In a residential environment, it will be more evenly split between water heating, HVAC and appliances.

For example, in an office building, you might have one or two smallish water heaters to provide hot water for sinks, with a recirc pump to keep the water heater requirements down even further. There may not even be a dishwasher at all.

In residential, you get dishwashers, washing machines, showers and sinks that all need hot water. And they will run often, usually at fixed time points meaning you cannot diversify the electrical in the same way you would for an office building.

My point about a 50 story converted office building is the office building's elevators are sized differently for a different use case. There is a great deal of witchcraft and sorcery in how elevator companies do this calculation, but a 50 story residential has different elevator requirements than a 50 story office. It may not be much, but it is different. And you can't just add an elevator if you need to. They are integral to the structure of the building.

All this to say, yes, it can be done, but it won't be. It's fantastically expensive and there just aren't enough rich people to justify doing more than one or two.

This also does not apply to a more modest 3, 4 or 5 story office building. The requirements are much more manageable for these. I am only referencing the big buildings, maybe 10 stories or higher.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#226

Post by rayiner »

bradgessler wrote: post #206
TuringNYC wrote: post #100

Earlier 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…

This is a very accurate description of trying to live in San Francisco with kids. My family moved to a town outside of SF and all of those issues vanished. The few people I know who stayed behind are fighting are fighting fiercely to fix some of these issues. I madly respect and admire them for it, but holy cow does it take a toll. At some level I’ve accepted that cities in the US are really optimized for people who…

The city governments cater to childless people, criminals, and the homeless, not necessarily in that order. They don’t give a shit about you and your kids and it shows in everything they do.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#227

Post by fundad »

dragonwriter wrote: post #178
fundad wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can downsize to Romania if salaries sink that low.

Unless Romania decides they want the kind of control of their local culture and wat of life that os cited to motivate American immigration restrictions, which have led to the absolute (not just population proportional) rate of legal immigration peaking in 1907.

Maybe FL and TX will establish immigration restrictions from other states unless they want CA real estate valuation.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#228

Post by tim333 »

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'm a bit the other extreme and live near Oxford Circus which is fairly max city. Cities have a lot of benefits for non work stuff like events, things happening, meeting people. I haven't noticed that much emptiness in London. Less office commuters true but most other stuff continues. Each to their own I guess.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#229

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #226
bradgessler wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very accurate description of trying to live in San Francisco with kids. My family moved to a town outside of SF and all of those issues vanished. The few people I know who stayed behind are fighting are fighting fiercely to fix some of these issues. I madly respect and admire them for it, but holy cow does it take a toll. At some level I’ve accepted that cities in the US are really optimized for people who…

The city governments cater to childless people, criminals, and the homeless, not necessarily in that order. They don’t give a shit about you and your kids and it shows in everything they do.

Cities spend between 50 and 75% of their budgets on schools, and the largest line item after that tends to be policing, followed by water service.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#230

Post by fundad »

spritefs wrote: post #173
fundad wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in SF have cars, most streets are lined with garage doors. There are many without cars but the city is designed for cars. If you’re ok with car dependency then the suburbs are more comfortable. If shopping and hooking-up aren’t as important than safety you are winning.

> Most people in SF have cars, most streets are lined with garage doors. Ok. But what about cars getting broken into? Isn't that incredibly common? If I hypothetically lived in SF, I definitely wouldn't bring a car just bc I don't want my catalytic converter getting stolen or the windows getting broken

Who parks on the street? The car is for driving to Tahoe. They ride Uber within the city.
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