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

#351

Post by LordKano » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #148

raverbashing wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, fitting the amount of people you need when you're successful is a problem with town offices (especially in Europe) Suburban office parks may have a lot of issues but it's where you can have lots of space for cheap (and sometimes you need this)

I think a lot of people would rather work in a busy, noisy coffee shop than commute to or live in the suburbs to enjoy lots of cheap office space. The entire social structure that produced these towers, a well-paid, conservative, culturally unambitious middle class, is imploding. Now you have Millenials who value living and working closer to interesting coffee shops, restaurants, clubs, and bars than living in Nowher…

Now you have Millenials who value living and working closer to interesting coffee shops, restaurants, clubs, and bars than living in Nowhereville which has a Denny's, a Subway and a Dunkin Donuts as the only options.

It's cyclical. One day (sooner than you think)those millennials are going to be 30, with families and they won't care nearly so much about clubs and bars. They're going to start wanting to grow gardens and have a safe place for their children to play.

Plus they're so deep in student debt that buying a suburban house or leasing a car is not an option.

I guess that it's just a function of the local real estate market but my suburban mortgage payment is lower than the urban rent that one would pay in any decent part of this town.

The suburban office will always be in the wrong spot.

Don't be so sure about that. One day, you're not going to be the hip youngster anymore. One day, sooner than you think, you're going to be annoyed by the stupid nonsense that the kids of the day are doing. One day, you'll have a lot more fun in your house than out on the town.

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

#352

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

phatfish wrote: post #343

toomuchtodo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. We're already providing more than enough food in the US with existing farmland (although the problem is it isn't distributed properly to people who need said food). Pastureland could be reduced with meat grown in vats instead of raised on farms (or people simply shifting from a meat-heavy diet). The population trajectory appears to be ballistic, with us hitting the apex in the next 5-15 years (educated wome…

In fact everywhere of any significance except Africa is already at or bellow fertility rates of 2. As you say education and low child mortality creates smaller families. The problem is not population (or even food production) but energy consumption. But that effects our first world lifestyle so no one in the first world wants to take it seriously.

> The problem is not population (or even food production) but energy consumption. But that effects our first world lifestyle so no one in the first world wants to take it seriously.

The first world is rapidly getting more efficient with regards to energy usage, and while I can't speak to the rest of the world, the US is quickly deploying renewables. With wind generation alone, we can supply 10x our annual energy consumption.

Enough sunlight hits the earth ever 5 minutes to power the entire world for a year. Its not an energy problem, its a capture and distribution problem.

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

#353

Post by potatolicious » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #347

potatolicious wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urbanite here (Manhattan), Have turned down offers/interviews at many companies because of non-urban location. FB/GOOG at least have urban offices, Apple does not, as much as I admire their products and would like to work on them. Even when I lived in SF I'd routinely turn down interviews for peninsula/south bay companies because of the location. Fortunately there is no shortage of good quality jobs in my specialty i…

Forget the suburbs, people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute).

> "people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute)."

Sometimes, but also sometimes to avoid a double-commute.

I used to work in Brooklyn (Dumbo) while living in Manhattan, the reverse commute was actually really nice. The trains were mostly empty every single day, both going to work and leaving!

But it was also very restrictive in terms of where you can live to get a decent commute - for Dumbo you had to live along the F train, otherwise it's multiple transfers to get where you need to go. Not fun.

Coworkers from Queens had it worst - they had a regular old commute into Manhattan, and then a second commute out of it into Brooklyn.

There is an unfortunately pretty good reason for companies to stay in Manhattan, the transit infrastructure just isn't set up well for anything else.

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

#354

Post by chromium73 » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

I apologize for a bit of a rambling response here - this article struck a chord with me.

I hardly think there is a universal trend away from the suburbs. Its a matter of personal preference. Washington DC is highly unique however in the sense that one can easily commute from the suburbs into most parts of the city with a minimal drive to the Metro station. So you can have it both ways with a house/yard and an urban lifestyle when you need it. Old office parks out in MD are unnecessary, particularly because more of DC is safe than 5-10 years ago. My wife worked on U Street and I worked in Gallery Place, two areas you wouldn't be caught dead in 10-15 years ago.

But... not all cities unfortunately offer this type of luxury. Having grown up and lived in NYC for almost 30 years, I see people wrestling with the following:

1) People want to "escape" the city either because costs are prohibitively high for a reasonable amount of square footage or simply to have the chance to decompress away from the people/activity/etc. As for costs, you only really begin to save when you get further and further away from the city, and your commute becomes soul-sucking. Parents of my friends growing up spent 3 hours in a car each day to be able to provide a good day in a safe community. That is a death sentence literally and psychically. If costs are less of an issue but you don't like the city, the added commute just makes you less productive. NJ Transit/LIRR are not quite at the point where people can be fully productive and extend the workday.

2)People who love the city and never want to leave: to make this possible, you have to prioritize the energy and conveniences of the city over your own personal comfort except in a few rare circumstances.

I hope these unnecessary offices parks are replaced by more modern co-working spaces in smaller cities that provide employees optionality. NYC and SF are bursting at the seams and the sprawl will just continue.

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

#355

Post by nmrm2 » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #327

nmrm2 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quoted comment does not contain the concession you seem to think it does. On the contrary, the quoted section of my previous comment simply states that people in their 20s today have it at least as hard as their parents and grandparents. I'm silent (here) on the question of whether it's harder today. > They're simply choosing not to have families in larger numbers. This is only meaningfully entailed by the data i…

Birth control was readily available by 1970. Presumably you've heard about "free love" and all that?

> Birth control was readily available by 1970.

1. Singling out access to birth control is a red herring. Mainstream gender norms and mainstream social pressure to have a family have changed a lot since the 1970s. Especially in more conservative parts of the country.

2. Birth control was fully legalized in the US in 1964 by Supreme Court mandate; 2015 - 1964 = 51 years (barely a half century, exactly as I stated above...).

3. There's a difference between legal and available.

4. There's a difference between available and socially acceptable. Although things have gotten significantly better over time, stigma and conservative views on sex outside of marriage continues to prevent contraceptive use among significant populations (most significantly anyone under 18 with conservative parents, but IME even married people into their 20s who had a conservative upbringing). In many ways, we are STILL fighting the battle against stigma associated with use of contraceptives. See the debate surrounding contraceptives and the ACA, or sex education in public schools. Or ask a Catholic priest.

Again, things have improved significantly and continue to improve. But assuming that 1964 or the wave in the 1970s were watershed events across the country is a bit niave.

5. Again, singling out birth control is a red herring. It is no doubt an important contributing factor in both the time to first child and the size of families. But the social norms surrounding women -- especially in conservative parts of the country -- have changed significantly since the 1970s, and that's also an important contributing factor.

Concretely, I'm not sure that "subjected to coercive social pressure and not provided with a college education because they're already married and that's the point" exactly counts as "choice". That might not have been common in the Chicago suburbs in the 1970s, but it definitely was in rural Georgia...

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

#356

Post by smackfu » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 5:07 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #284

marincounty wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?) My dad was on his city's zoning board for a few years. What he learned was that a variance was only supposed to be used in cases where the intent of the zoning ordinance…

A current example is video game bars, like Barcade. There are often antiquated restrictions on video game arcades in zoning law that are aimed solely at kids, to prevent truancy. They make no sense in the modern world, in a place aimed at adults. Check out this list of variances this place needs:

"Variances to allow 50 game machines were a maximum of three are permitted, 2 game machines per 100sf of area where a maximum of 1 is permitted, no side or front clearance for game machines where 3ft and 8ft respectively are required, no attendant for 50 game machines where 4 are required and no off-street bicycle stalls where 24 stalls are required for a 100 seat Café with 50 game machines. A"

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

#357

Post by mjevans » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #96

michaelochurch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the reasons you described. First, driving itself is very expensive, especially if you include parking the damn thing. Second, the few suburbs that are desirable at all (near major cities, good public schools) are often similar in price to city housing-- and NIMBY la…

Spot on. I live in a suburban town that is unique for my metro area in that it has a nice thriving downtown, great schools, 10 minutes from the downtown exit on the freeway, and really great quality of life. I have friends who want to move here and there are developers champing at the bit right to take some polluted and therefore useless and undeveloped property and clean it up to turn it into some nice condos.. it g…

Sounds like that situation isn't going to change soon, and you should probably sell out earlier rather than later.

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

#358

Post by s73v3r » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

LordKano wrote: post #303

s73v3r wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The traffic and parking problems are there due to the lack of public transit, which is in part due to the spending of transportation funds on subsidizing you in the suburbs instead of building public transit.

The city in no way subsidizes us. Unless, of course, you mean that because we have the option of not living in the city then they don't get our property tax dollars because we chose to live somewhere else. I pay taxes to my county and my suburban municipality. The city-proper does virtually nothing for me. The city is not entitled to any of my money.

There's also the roads which allow you to get from point A to point B which are subsidizing you, and there's the federal gas subsidy which is also subsidizing your lifestyle.

And if the city proper really did nothing for you, then why would you be working there?

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

#359

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 8:18 PM UTC

LordKano wrote: post #158

mixmastamyk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traffic, the parking, That's the result of a poorly planned city, not intrinsic to cities. If you've been to Europe, or even NYC, you might have experienced the freedom of jumping on a train to downtown and back, with enough exercise to keep you healthy.

Freedom isn't the word that I would associate with being bound by train schedules and routes. Old cities, like NYC or London were established before the existence of the automobile. It makes sense that they were designed to move large numbers of people without automobiles. I don't live near such a city. The geography of my area prevents the kind of mass transit system that exists in NYC.

As I mentioned, it doesn't sound like you've been to Europe. In a larger city in Germany for example, trains are running up to every two minutes around town, while long distance trains to other cities are every hour.

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

#360

Post by tsotha » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 8:34 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #339

tsotha wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - 9…

Things like education, health care, and rent are all baked into the inflation numbers. If inflation and income growth are relatively constant (and they have been) then, yes, it is a wash. All she's proving here is people have more money to spend on the things that matter to them.