Crashes Safari on my iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9.0). But have experienced it on more site recently. Is it all the JavaScript libraries?
Sad when I wanted to read it..
The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
41–50 of 371 posts
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people valu…
I look forward to this industry realizing everything doesn't have to happen in SF.
Network effects are powerful. Silicon Valley largely runs (today) on monetizing network effects, and network effects are also why Silicon Valley is all concentrated in the Bay Area.
The primary factor is concentration of capital: it is exponentially easier to raise money in the Bay. The second is concentration of talent and peers -- early customers, beta testers, development partners.
The Internet was supposed to make place less relevant, but as far as I can tell it's had a paradoxically opposite effect. When I was younger, I didn't have such a strong sense that you must be in one of maybe ten urban areas (but preferably SF) to do anything. Today it feels a bit like things happen in one of maybe ten cities, and everywhere else doesn't exist. Americans have always joked about the "flyover country," but I've distinctly noticed a massive increase in this effect since circa 2000.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#43I would love to see stats on where these companies are moving to. Are many of them transitioning into remote teams? Did some go out of business? Are they moving elsewhere? Does anyone have stats on this? New business formations are on the decline ( http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html ) and more businesses are closing shop each year than are forming ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/0…
You have to get there. Which means jumping in a car and driving on the freeway for a while. I really can't see myself doing that ever.
My employer ran out of space in our downtown office and we bought a building out in a suburban area and I flat out told my boss that I'll quit if forced to move there. The quality of life issue for me would've been overwhelming. An extra 2 hours of commute every day so my employer can pay 40% of the rent I cost them downtown? No! I liked my 20 minutes subway and walk commute.
In fact, the only people I work with that moved to that boring office park all lived within a 15 minutes drive of it and used to drive in to the downtown office. It's kind of a white elephant, there's room for all the Montreal employees in there but there's really like 60. Quite a few of them hired after the purchase of the building and not given the choice.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#44I would love to see stats on where these companies are moving to. Are many of them transitioning into remote teams? Did some go out of business? Are they moving elsewhere? Does anyone have stats on this? New business formations are on the decline ( http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html ) and more businesses are closing shop each year than are forming ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/0…
It's hinted at in the article: "This past quarter, Northern Virginia gained more leases than it lost for the first time since 2013, mostly because of the magnetic powers of Metro’s new Silver Line, according to realty company CBRE Group." There's much more demand for commercial properties in transit oriented developments.
Yep and this hints that a transit strategy is a good way to revitalize some of these development. Especially if the transit line will attract mixed-use and residential developments.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#45Thomas Jefferson is to blame and not one mention of taxes? I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes, or were provided incentives by neighbouring municipalities to build further out and pay lower tax. The lower cost is attractive and allows the company to operate in a big shiny building that immed…
"I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes"
If you were gonna throw out a spitball estimate for the 3 numbers:
1) Tax impact in city vs burbs
2) Cost of land / lease in city vs burbs
3) Company payroll/benefits
What would you guess the ratio of #1 to #2 + #3 is?
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#46I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success. As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs. Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people…
I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia, but once in place, car oriented development has a way of being self sustaining.
This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN
Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop.
I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#47A little more about Marriott's move:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marr...
> “I think it’s essential we be accessible to Metro and that limits the options. I think as with many other things our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will move to downtown Washington, but we will move someplace.”
Sounds like the trick is to try and get a sweetheart incentive package by a town that is close to the Metro.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#48My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 l…
> exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.
What boggles my mind is that the people here have money and choose to live this way.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#49I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are expiring and they need to be renovated for the first time since being constructed to attract new tenants. While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past…
Exactly, I see this as the same situation as shopping centers and big box retailers. The cost of renovation etc, is not low enough compared to the cost of building a new building in a better location for the current times.
On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space.
Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town
#50My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 l…
I'd argue that the "faceless office building" portion isn't really an issue. They're nice enough on the inside, and when you're deep in work you probably don't notice too often.
The worst part is probably the typical lack of anything around those office parks except for...more office parks. At least if you're downtown or in some more commercial-heavy area, there are places to go and eat! :)