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The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

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

#271

Post by rhinoceraptor »

gph wrote: post #249
djrogers wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people do that type of thing here too, but un-permitted. If you wanted to be really particular, you could probably get a permit for the work itself (plumbing, kitchen, etc) as long as it wasn't specified as residential. This is what we've come to though - the government has taken away our rights and sell them back to us with permits.

>This is what we've come to though - the government has taken away our rights and sell them back to us with permits. Ah yes, my inalienable right to zone property as I see fit because I want to redevelop it. So often forgotten. /s Yea most local governments are slow and obtuse with zoning, but it's not as if the concept of zoning is a violation of your rights, or even that bad of a thing. Criticism is fine, but using…

The government is telling you that you cannot use your own property as you see fit (with the threat of being kidnapped or stolen from).

Zoning is to prevent a paper factory from opening up shop next to an elementary school, not to give themselves a job by creating arbitrary rules.

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

#272

Post by s73v3r »

marincounty wrote: post #257
djrogers wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people do that type of thing here too, but un-permitted. If you wanted to be really particular, you could probably get a permit for the work itself (plumbing, kitchen, etc) as long as it wasn't specified as residential. This is what we've come to though - the government has taken away our rights and sell them back to us with permits.

It's called a Variance, and in my county(Marin county) they are never issued anymore. They used to be issued to "good ole boys", but those days are even over.(I'm glad that's the case. Why should just rich boys, or networked boys get what they want?) If you are living a commercial zoned space; realize that the government can come into your building(at anytime), slap a red tag on it, and the tenant is out. (My father…

"He got all the permits. He spend $850,000 building the place. It was ready to rent! His first renter told him he would gladly move his family in, but there's rent control in detached homes. He could only rent to people at or below the federal poverty level, and rent was tied to this metric in some way? Instead of getting $5000/month---he could only rent it out for around $800."

Sounds like, with spending all that money on the building, he could have taken 10 minutes to call a real estate lawyer and find that out.

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

#273

Post by rhinoceraptor »

sosuke wrote: post #175
enjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that for most, living in a suburb is in fact the worst of both worlds. You are neither rural nor city. You have none of the benefits and many of the drawbacks. For me my decision to live in the city is one of safety (driving cars is dangerous) and time. When I lived in the burbs I spent something like 30-40 full days a year sitting in my car. That's 10% of each year in my car. That's just not a trade I'm wi…

Funny you mention safety in the city, I often hear about moving to the burbs for safe neighborhoods with sidewalks.

Try going to the grocery store in the suburbs on a bike. Sidewalks are great for walking your dog. But in the suburbs, you are trapped to your car.

You can't walk, take the bus, or ride a bike anywhere. Not only because it's 10 miles away, but because there simply is no safe way to get there without a car.

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

#274

Post by nmrm2 »

tsotha wrote: post #259
nilkn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families, so they move to the trendier areas and spend all their money instead of living in a cheaper area, commuting, and saving for a situation that would be good for raising children. I think it might be simpler than this. They just can't afford to raise a family as easily as their parents and grandparents could, so many ch…

>They just can't afford to raise a family as easily as their parents and grandparents could, so many choose not to, not because they legitimately have no interest but because they don't see the numbers adding up. That's the conventional wisdom, but I don't buy it. Raising a family was always tough - when I was young my parents scrimped and saved in a way that I've never seen among millennials. Everybody did, and it w…

>...in a way that it isn't today.

I submit that you're comparing unmarried and childless people of today with married and child-bearing people of yesteryear.

Do the other comparisons and you'll find that you are off base -- people today do make enormous sacrifices to start families at a young age, and people in the 50s to 80s who were single with no children did live lavish lifestyles.

To the extent that there are differences between the primary peer comparison -- married couples raising children -- it's mostly a byproduct of the fact that people wait longer and have smaller families.

Waiting longer is some combination of less social pressure to pop out kids (a good thing! Having kids because of an obnoxious parent's pestering is how you end up with broken families, divorced or otherwise) and a better understanding of fertility/access to medical care (also a good thing).

Smaller family sizes are, IMO and as someone who grew up in a large family, a good thing as well. Keeping the size of one's family manageable means having the time to both build up a career and also heavily invest in the upbringing of each child.

I think that's far more commendable than the "pop 'em out, pay for shit, parent on the weekends and leave wifey in the kitchen the rest of the time" mentality of a huge portion of the baby boom generation. And also more commendable than leaving yourself penniless and jobless in old age for your children to take care of you.

It's possible to raise one or two or maybe three kids well. Doing a good job at raising five or six means someone has to give up a career, and even then you're probably just barely keeping up (i.e., not doing the best possible job at fostering intellectual and emotional health.)

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

#275

Post by throwaway999666 »

biomcgary wrote: post #117
fixxer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live an hour outside of Chicago and mostly work from home; I'm in the city maybe 1 day per week. I fought moving out of the city for a while, but I have really come to love it, especially when it comes to raising kids. When I have to head into Chicago, I take the train. It is weird how quickly you can go from yuppie to suburbanite. My property taxes are high, but my overall cost (and quality) of living is better th…

I think changes in reproduction (and expectations to reproduce) may be driving a lot of the shift. Millenials have a relatively low birth rate compared to the Gen Xers at the same age, due, perhaps, to the economic situation. If you are not raising kids, you have a lot more free time and energy to pour into other things.

> Millenials have a relatively low birth rate compared to the Gen Xers at the same age, due, perhaps, to the economic situation. If you are not raising kids, you have a lot more free time and energy to pour into other things.

So many activities to do in this day and age and in this economy. You can surf the Web so much..!

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

#276

Post by dripton »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #273
sosuke wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention safety in the city, I often hear about moving to the burbs for safe neighborhoods with sidewalks.

Try going to the grocery store in the suburbs on a bike. Sidewalks are great for walking your dog. But in the suburbs, you are trapped to your car. You can't walk, take the bus, or ride a bike anywhere. Not only because it's 10 miles away, but because there simply is no safe way to get there without a car.

I live in the suburbs. I ride my bike to work. It's safe enough. People are just scared.

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

#277

Post by knowaveragejoe »

macNchz wrote: post #23

My 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…

> 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 feel like you didn't actually explore much of the region, then... there are some fantastic natural areas here.

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

#278

Post by turar »

tsotha wrote: post #267
pjlegato wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Young people never wanted to spend their lives in cars. Actually, many of them did. Talk to some old people in the US suburbs about what life was like when they were young in the '50s and '60s. Most grew up in a dense city and then voluntarily left it for the suburbs. Most of them thought spending their life in a car was great -- certainly way better than having to take the bus or the train. It was a sign of succes…

>Most of them thought spending their life in a car was great -- certainly way better than having to take the bus or the train. It was a sign of success. You're overstating that quite a bit. Sure, driving for twenty minutes beats taking public transportation. But sitting in stop and go traffic for a couple hours every day is awful and people always realized it.

How much stop and go traffic was there in the 50s?

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

#279

Post by gph »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #271
gph wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is what we've come to though - the government has taken away our rights and sell them back to us with permits. Ah yes, my inalienable right to zone property as I see fit because I want to redevelop it. So often forgotten. /s Yea most local governments are slow and obtuse with zoning, but it's not as if the concept of zoning is a violation of your rights, or even that bad of a thing. Criticism is fine, but using…

The government is telling you that you cannot use your own property as you see fit (with the threat of being kidnapped or stolen from). Zoning is to prevent a paper factory from opening up shop next to an elementary school, not to give themselves a job by creating arbitrary rules.

So what is it; Can I build whatever I want on any property I own, or can the government stop me from building a paper factory next to an elementary school?

You've thrown out two contradictory statements. If you agree with zoning in certain circumstances then you can't hold that property is a right for use by owner as they see fit(without the threat of being kidnapped or stolen from). Just because the current zoning system in most locales is overly bureaucratic, or even corrupt, doesn't mean the idea of zoning should be done away, or that property is a right the government can't interfere with.

Criticism is one thing, but framing this as an issue about the government taking away our rights is not productive.

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

#280

Post by tsotha »

turar wrote: post #278
tsotha wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of them thought spending their life in a car was great -- certainly way better than having to take the bus or the train. It was a sign of success. You're overstating that quite a bit. Sure, driving for twenty minutes beats taking public transportation. But sitting in stop and go traffic for a couple hours every day is awful and people always realized it.

How much stop and go traffic was there in the 50s?

I don't know about the 50s, but by the sixties traffic was as bad in some places as it is today. Traffic in Southern California, where I grew up, is actually better today than it was in the 70s.
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