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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

#331

Post by morgante »

bmelton wrote: post #304
chongli wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "a wash". Housing and education are dramatically more expensive than they were a few generations ago. Gone are the days of paying for your degree waiting tables with enough left over to put a down payment on a house. Now you can look forward to a mountain of debt for an education and mortgage that you might never pay off in your life time.

It might be "a wash". Housing and education are more expensive, but food and entertainment costs are way lower. The cost of most things inside your home, like appliances and televisions is cheaper. Tools, hardware, and common home repairs are also cheaper. 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…

> Housing and education are more expensive, but food and entertainment costs are way lower.

While that's true, it's certainly not "a wash." Housing and education are probably people's two biggest lifetime expenses. Even if housing prices doubled and food prices were cut by two thirds, the outcome would be higher overall expenses.

Personally, rent in a small apartment is more than all my other expenses combined.

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

#332

Post by ghaff »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #227

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.

Where will they live? Legitimate question; there's no room in SF. Are they going to build some new mega-metropolis and get the water from... somewhere?

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

#333

Post by tsotha »

morgante wrote: post #330
tsotha wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Young people never wanted to spend their lives in cars. 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 fo…

> What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families Do you have any evidence to support that, or are you just engaged in standard Millennial-bashing? Most people in my peer group certainly plan to raise a family in the future, they're just being responsible and waiting to have kids until they are at a good place career-wise.

There are two factors that determine how much money you have. Being "at a good place career-wise" is only half the equation. Your career better be going to a really, really good place if it requires living in an area with $4500/month rent.

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

#334

Post by morgante »

tsotha wrote: post #333
morgante wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families Do you have any evidence to support that, or are you just engaged in standard Millennial-bashing? Most people in my peer group certainly plan to raise a family in the future, they're just being responsible and waiting to have kids until they are at a good place career-wise.

There are two factors that determine how much money you have. Being "at a good place career-wise" is only half the equation. Your career better be going to a really, really good place if it requires living in an area with $4500/month rent.

> Your career better be going to a really, really good place if it requires living in an area with $4500/month rent.

There's no requirement that you stay in the same place which made your career.

My personal plan is to work in NYC for the next ten years and then take the accumulated savings to buy a house outright in a nice town.

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

#335

Post by girvo »

gregpilling wrote: post #307
brudgers wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking your description literally, there is no legal way under any reasonable zoning code that a zoning department could issue a variance to allow a prohibited residential use on a property zoned and currently occupied by an office building. The variance is a mechanism for relieving a hardship that runs with the land by allowing limited non-conformity (e.g. setbacks on a non-conforming lot or the continuation of a pr…

Agreed. I spent two years getting a piece of property split in an unusual way. It was totally legal, just weird enough that it encountered friction at every imaginable level. Everyone at the city, county level, even attorneys that should have understood reacted with "whoa, wait a minute" at each stage. At the end it was worth it, a nice return for the time spent. But not easy, and certainly not clearly understood.

I'd love to know more about what you did, if you'd be willing to share the story? Sounds fascinating.

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

#336

Post by girvo »

tomohawk wrote: post #254
ken-far wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. This quote is key: “I now say that brainy youngsters are trending urban and urbane, away from your grandfather’s office parks.” Real estate analysis is showing that for the first time since it's been measuring more people are looking for housing in denser, more urban environments than in the traditional suburbs. An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending the…

A few years ago, I was quite surprised by the number of younger co-workers who lived in the city instead of the burbs. Anyway, it didn't last. In every case except one (confirmed bachelor), they moved out to the burbs as soon as they our spouse got mugged or were going to have kids and realized they needed to be in a district with decent schools.

While I don't doubt your story, here in Brisbane living in Fortitude Valley is safe, close to everything, and quite fun all things considered. Multiple new residential apartment buildings have gone up or are going up (driving my rent down, which is brilliant for me), and there are numerous families that live here too, interestingly.

Everything I just said actually agrees with your main point however, as the best schools are just up the road from here, and it's much safer than I've heard a lot of big cities in the US are. It's interesting to see so many people move into this area now, as I've been here for years and love it; it's great for me, more development of better facilities have seen this grow by leaps and bounds.

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

#337

Post by raverbashing »

decwakeboarder wrote: post #305
adrusi wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy, I don't know if any jurisdictions have this notion, but most people would agree that industrial buildings are less pleasant than commercial buildings which are less pleasant than residential. Forbid people from building factories in commercial zones, or restaurants in residential zones without permits, but don't impede the reverse. If people want to live in an industrial zone, let them. Sure there are downsides…

I'm in favor of this, but to play the devil's advocate - what happens to the 20% that remains after 80% of an industrial zone has been converted to residential?

It's going to be like when people buy houses next to the airport then complain about the noise

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

#338

Post by jpatokal »

brudgers wrote: post #294
ChuckMcM wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Taking your description literally, there is no legal way under any reasonable zoning code that a zoning department could issue a variance to allow a prohibited residential use on a property zoned and currently occupied by an office building. The variance is a mechanism for relieving a hardship that runs with the land by allowing limited non-conformity (e.g. setbacks on a non-conforming lot or the continuation of a pr…

I think you mean "any American zoning code", not "any reasonable code". In Japan, zones are additive: if commercial use is permitted, residential use is also permitted.

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/japanese-zoning.h...

That said, in Japan the idea of converting a building from one use to another is virtually unknown. Buildings aren't built to last, so it's cheaper and easier to tear them down and rebuild to your liking.

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

#339

Post by maxsilver »

tsotha wrote: post #270
Spooky23 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure. The real story is that the younger kids have lousier paying jobs and items like cars are prohibitively expensive. My dad had a loaded up Mustang that cost like $2500 in the late 60s, at 19 or 20, paid for by bartending. The equivalent car today is probably 2x-2.5x more in real terms. The city is coming back because it's the undervalued and people are priced out of the newer suburbs. People end up reproduci…

I remember paying over a dollar a minute in the '80s for a phone call to my sister in the same state. Air fare was crazy expensive compared to today, as was anything electronic. Some things have gotten more expensive, and other things have gotten cheaper. Overall it's a wash. If it seems like life is more expensive it's because people buy a lot of things today that we didn't have back then. Things you don't really ne…

The problem is that, based on the factual numbers, this isn't true -- it's not a wash.

Housing, Education, and Healthcare (things everyone bought "back then") have gotten dramatically more expensive, far more than the other categories have dropped. It's not a wash, and the numbers back that up :

"The current average family of four spends: - 21% less on clothing - 44% less on major appliances - 69% more on housing - 90% more on health care Than the average family spent in 1970's.

http://www.yale.edu/law/leo/052005/papers/Warren.pdf (these numbers are graphed on page 16)

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

#340

Post by jpatokal »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #63

I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here: How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature? Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company? Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minu…

Mountain View (Googleplex) is pretty much the only large Google office that's suburban. San Francisco, New York, Dublin, London, Zurich, Tokyo, Sydney are all urban. I gather the same is basically true for Facebook as well.
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