The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

I work for Google in the New York office. For those of you that don't know, several years ago Google bought the former Port Authority building in Chelsea for ~$1.9B. It is I believe the second largest office building in Manhattan by square footage of usable area.

Google's presence here has steadily grown in the almost 5 years I've been here at least tripling in size. I live in the area and honestly it's amazing. Having no commute of any kind (unless you count a 5 minute walk a commute) is life-changing. Being in a dynamic, interesting area is a gift.

For those that want more suburban lifestyles, there are a plethora of options Contrast this with our headquarters in Mountain View. Actually, it's not even accurate to say that anymore as it now encompasses some of Sunnyvale and I believe we have or will have a presence in Redwood City and other places.

All of this is essentially low-to-medium density office parks surrounded by a sea of parking space.

Some commute in on Google buses. Those who want a more urban lifestyle life in SF and spend as many as 3 hours a day or more on the bus for the privilege.

Living near campus is expensive and, well, boring. There are no cheap options. Compare this to NYC where you could buy a cheap (Because there are thousands of people in the NYC office, certain things become possible. You get a wider range of cafes (there are more in MTV but they're far more spread apart). Certain social activities can thrive within the office that seem to falter in MTV due to the much lower density.

So it's actually an amazing office to work in and honestly I'd probably have to kill myself if I were forced to relocate to MTV (well OK, maybe I'd just quit...).

My point here though is that office parks are a depressing and unsatisfying experience for any company or employee. They're not desirable in any way, even the high end tech campuses of Silicon Valley are just glorified office parks when it comes down to it.

Honestly I don't know how any in the Valley does it. Maybe it's different if you get to work in SF but even then you have to contend with finding and paying for a place in SF. And if you need a bigger place (eg you have a family) then you just don't have the options you do in NYC.

As for the lower end of office parks, technology has to be a factor here. With the ever-cheapening cost of bandwidth it becomes even easier to chase ever-cheaper real estate with ever-more-mobile low-paid office jobs doesn't it?

It's very hard to get an exact 1:1 ratio, as many of us spend hundreds of dollars on cell phones that didn't exist back then, or thousands on computers, but naming two economic things that have gotten more expensive doesn't invalidate the myriad of things that have gotten commensurately cheaper.

I'm not saying it wasn't tough, but housing prices were much lower relative to incomes in the 50s and 60s, even in a place like San Francisco. Several of my relatives own million dollar homes there, and none of them are college educated or had spectacular careers or anything. Their only advantage is they were part of previous generations. Not a single one of them could hope to buy their current homes if they were starting their career from scratch today. Relative to housing costs, they enjoyed incomes that today would be in the range of a $300k+ base salary.

We look back on their lives and don't see them as particularly posh because we're blinded by the astounding pace of technological growth. You could make a million dollars a year but you couldn't have a microwave oven before it was invented.

> Yes, commuting sucks. But it sucked in the 20th century as well.

Sure it did, but it's a lot worse today because traffic congestion has progressed to unprecedented levels. It's not just about time spent commuting -- it's also about how stressful the commute itself is. Whenever my dad visits here in Houston, who used to do a big city commute in the 70s and 80s in Dallas with no problem, he freaks out because of how bad the traffic is.