91–100 of 230 posts
Fuck man. Another ‘08 situation is building up.
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It's the opposite. Urban planners have a vested interest in zoning because their career relies on it. Also, the existence of Kowloon is a good thing. The people who live there would have worse lives if Kowloon was never allowed to build like that. They would be forced to live further away from their work, subjecting them to an hour a day on a cramped train, for example. The wrong question: "Is X bad?". The right ques…
This can result in a race to the bottom, is the argument against it. If we allowed people to live in "capsule hotels" for example.
So as a society we've skipped right past bad to horrid while clapping ourselves on the back as if we're doing the 'undesirables' a favor. Abhorrent.
> The plunging US values are being felt around the world because properties in top-tier American cities were once magnets for global investment. Offices were seen as super safe bets backed by high-quality assets with long-term leases and rising rents. Here we go again.
The invisible hands pulling the strings behind these MBA flunkies installed at many companies are whispering in their ears. “We need to offload bad debt. Help us keep the con going just a bit longer so we can offload the toxic assets from the books to another firm or government”
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> It's still possible to convert to houses, but that makes for ridiculously small liveable areas compared to the whole floor surface. This is only a problem if it's prohibited by zoning. Otherwise it just gets reflected in the price. Houses in the suburbs often contain a large amount of space with no windows, i.e. a basement the size of the entire first floor, and no one objects because it can be used for storage or…
> Otherwise it just gets reflected in the price This is one of my nightmares. What if we allowed people to live in basically confinment cells and they have no choice as they're broke af or the gov or their companies assigns them one in a relocation program. My gut feeling is that the social consequences would be subtle and easily overlooked by officials but widespread and long lasting. > Houses in the suburbs often c…
"Welcome. Welcome, to City 17. You have chosen--or been chosen--to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers. I thought so much of City 17, that I elected to establish my administration, here, in the citadel, so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I am proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through to parts unknown, welcome, to City 17. It's safer here."
'Course, that particular dystopia was terrible for a whole bunch of reasons where population density was not one of them.
Only speaking from my personal travel experiences, not any hard data, but: I feel like this issue is nearly non-existent in places with mixed use zoning. If the office values go down in a place with equal amounts of housing, they are repurposed as new apartments. The problem is when the office architecture isn’t interchangeable with apartment architecture, which usually happens because certain areas are zoned as offi…
I don't think it has anything to do with either that or with WFH. Rather, the increase in interest rates necessitate a general reduction in price on both commercial and other property. WFH means that commercial property will be affected more, but it's something general. Interest rates have gone from <1% to 5.5%, and if that's sustained there must either be such an increase in rents, which people would not be able to…
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Big office buildings have very deep plates which make them very difficult to convert to sensible apartment layouts. You can have windowless conference rooms but you can't have windowless apartments.
I’m probably a weirdo, but a bedroom without windows feels like a great way to get the best sleep in an urban environment. Low noise, no light pollution. Kinda a dream really.
Also, outside curtains are pretty good at blocking light. To the point I had to hack mine to open on sunset to ensure I wake up.
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I'm probably wrong, but I feel like in the style of city that urban advocates like "No Just Bikes" advocate for, there would be lots more "ancillary business owners such as meal providers" because the cities would be designed to be walkable and so instead of driving 3-4 miles to the nearest big box car lot you'd walk 1/2 a mile to your local "pedestrian and bicycle only shopping street" with a bunch of small shops, r…
This reads like designing a city for 20-something singles whose highest priorities are nightlife and dining. What about the rest of us?
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Big office buildings have very deep plates which make them very difficult to convert to sensible apartment layouts. You can have windowless conference rooms but you can't have windowless apartments.
I’m probably a weirdo, but a bedroom without windows feels like a great way to get the best sleep in an urban environment. Low noise, no light pollution. Kinda a dream really.
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This can result in a race to the bottom, is the argument against it. If we allowed people to live in "capsule hotels" for example.
The problem with the argument is that capsule apartments aren't the bottom - living on the street is. So as a society we've skipped right past bad to horrid while clapping ourselves on the back as if we're doing the 'undesirables' a favor. Abhorrent.
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There might be many issues with the gap in construction standards for offices and housings. A very dumb one: windows are required for houses, where offices can get away with huge open spaces holding a central hub of indoor areas. It's still possible to convert to houses, but that makes for ridiculously small liveable areas compared to the whole floor surface. Then plumbing, evacuation paths etc. can all be solved by…
> It's still possible to convert to houses, but that makes for ridiculously small liveable areas compared to the whole floor surface. This is only a problem if it's prohibited by zoning. Otherwise it just gets reflected in the price. Houses in the suburbs often contain a large amount of space with no windows, i.e. a basement the size of the entire first floor, and no one objects because it can be used for storage or…
Depending on HOW the building was constructed (read: a large majority of office space), you will be unable to deal with the plumbing issues.
Total volume of water to every floor + distribution of the bathrooms (where they need to be moved in an updated floor plan) makes these sorts of change overs prohibitively expensive.
We have seen these sorts of transitions before! Large industrial spaces became "artists lofts". These were large spaces with single bathrooms (repurposed from the original plumbing installs). When these neighborhoods gentrified the very expensive conversions came in and made them into more "acceptable" living spaces. There was profit associated with that cost.
Rezoning wont result in gentrified apartments, or affordable housing any time soon!