The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town • Hacker News Board

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#221

Post by aswanson » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #198

sosuke wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize, Austin TX is built upon a giant rock of limestone which extremely difficult to develop into. All of our mass transit options that have come up connect to no-where.

As a former tunnel boring engineer, I can attest that mining tunnels through consistent rock is vastly easier than through mixed geologies such as Manhattan island. Also there is less stuff (utilities, metal debris, etc) underground in Austin. There are undoubtedly historical reasons why Austin lacks sane transit but technical difficulties while boring is almost certainly not one of them.

Sounds like you've identified a geological startup opportunity in Austin :)

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#222

Post by VLM » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

jobu wrote: post #70

exstudent2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).

There's also increased demand for "walkable" neighborhoods in suburban areas. Higher density housing with grocery stores, doctor's offices, restaurants, and bars all in a single development.

I know they were building that in the early 60s because that's where I grew up and where I live today. Well, I grew up in a 1930 house in a suburb, but same zoning.

Also I know there were awful exurbs built during the peak of the bubble, say a decade ago. Sometime between 1960 and "now" suburb designs went badly downhill.

I have observed over my life that suburb street layout corresponds with this zoning trend. If you live in a subdivision/burb with straight lines and many connections to the arterial road, you probably have a grocery store, dentist, bars, and restaurants within short walking distance, but if you live in "bowl of spaghetti" subdivision/burb with exactly one connection to exactly one arterial road, then you probably need to drive at least five miles to buy a gallon of milk.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#223

Post by bkjelden » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

cyco wrote: post #199

api wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mak…

Really? I've seen the opposite. The downtowns of places like Indianpolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, etc. were underinvested wastelands not too long ago. Now a lot of young people want to live in these places. Not to mention the hipster paradises of Portland, Austin, etc. SF, Seattle, NYC, DC, Boston, etc., are still the major magnets, but "hip" urban living isn't as confined to t…

Those cities are becoming great places to live, but if you work in tech the opportunities in the bay area still dwarf everything else.

Some industries are very centralized in one city - tech in the bay area, finance in NYC, entertainment in LA, etc.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#224

Post by jseliger » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:54 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #26

I 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…

Great post. Regarding the horrors of driving and especially commuting, the New Yorker's article "There and back again: Soul of a commuter" is excellent: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-....

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#225

Post by spiritplumber » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:54 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #197

Shivetya wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One common occurrence where I live is that county and cities are buying up the old office parks and even strip malls to convert them into government buildings. Most are ideally located as well as being offered up for sale cheaply. Seen even a few charitable organizations buy up parts of a strip mall for the cheap space by square foot. Besides the age a lot of REITs cashed out awhile ago and I am not sure the market i…

Unfortunately for some zoning prevents you from living in those spaces. A friend of mine tried to get a zone variance to turn an office building into essentially a multifamily dwelling and the city turned him down flat. They suggested he could buy the property, tear down the building, get it rezoned, and then build dwellings there. But not go in and convert a perfectly usable space into a livable space. Sigh.

Similar issue here. What I wanted to do was take a warehouse (zoned light industrial), essentially cut it in half, and live next to my workshop.

Explaining that this is common in my home country, it'd take at least one car off the road during commute hours (mine), etc. was in vain.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#226

Post by jseliger » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:58 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #188

anthony_romeo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is related to the increase of two-income households coupled with overall wage stagnation? I mean, if a family only has one breadwinner, and work is in the suburbs, it becomes trivial to find a location close to work. But it's harder for a family to live on one income now. If both spouses want to work or need to work to get by (and I'm not talking about a small part-time job on the side), it…

Underrated comment right here. It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports. Families didn't become "better off" when two incomes became the norm -- everything just got more expensive. I think this is one of the nasty secrets why remote work and public transit hasn't taken off like it should; who would support the c…

It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports

Sort of, but not really. The market can't provide lower-priced housing because of intensive zoning restrictions: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... or http://www.voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-land-us.... This: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... pertains specifically to San Francisco and environs.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#227

Post by michaelvkpdx » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

The Valley will be the next great ghost town. 30 years from now, most of the current offices in SJ, Mountain View, and Palo Alto will be abandoned because people will be sick of the suburban lifestyle.

Plus earthquakes.

I'm looking forward to random shots of wildlife from the marshes infesting FB's abandoned old Sun campus in 2050.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#228

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #213

will_work4tears wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, did all of your Milwaukee's Kohl's shut down? We have them here (Puget Sound area) still, and when we left Missouri in 2008 they were still there doing fine.

Kohl's Grocery Stores (defunct) is different than the department store chain, which incidentally is headquartered in the Milwaukee suburbs.

And the only reason Kohl's the department store chain still has its HQ in Wisconsin is due to extremely generous tax breaks from Scott Walker.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#229

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #187

Apocryphon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could they be converted into cheap housing?

This is not usually possible because of the cost to run plumbing. You have to gut the entire facility in order to put kitchens and bathrooms in every apartment and it just isn't (usually) cost effective.

Yes, it costs some money, but it's been done countless times in old warehouses in cities and towns around the world.

Of course, I don't think modern office buildings will have the appeal of "exposed brick" and "thick wooden support beams", but maybe the people of 100 years ago would have thought the same about those buildings.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#230

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #218

skolor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.

I've heard that my entire life. "The city is coming back". "Its not like ten years ago when the cities were dead" I'm in my 40s. Same message for the last four decades. Think about that, four times in a row, the city has always been dead a decade ago but now its returned, no really, this time its true. I'm told by elders that sloganeering about urban renewal and return began around 1955, about 5 years after the burbs…

Yep. They used to say every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex, but as I get older it seems like that applies to many, many things.