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Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

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Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#111

I live in Orlando. I have lived in Florida for all of my life (47 years) and I also wonder how we are going to adapt. I don't see any long term planning. A few years ago I was looking for a new office building. Considering the parking situations, I asked each developer what they were planning for electric cars, Ubers, and autonomous cars. None of them had a plan. They all said such changes were 20 years or more away.…

>>I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the entire real estate industry in Florida is not capable of long term thinking.

They aren't incentivized to think long-term, because they are making money hand-over-fist. Whatever they build gets sold at very high margins because consumers aren't educated (thanks to things like Florida banning the term "climate change" from school textbooks) and don't have modern expectations.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although Miami can do what synctext mentioned, just like in the Netherlands; raise money, appoint responsible bodies and do something about it.

If your city is built on a sponge and in the flattest state to boot your solutions look like seasteading, not dams and pumps. From an engineering point of view Miami should be looking to Venice, not Amsterdam. You can’t save Florida land by pumping so the only way to go is to make your own taller land or to build what amount to boats or oil rigs.

I don't think seasteading would be an easy sell in an area susceptible to powerful hurricanes. Though, I do think seasteading is an underrated idea. I think the best place in the US for it is the western part of the SF peninsula

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#113
post #24

As often seems to be the case in many parts of the US, the city of Miami is unlikely to muster the political will to do anything about this existential threat until after the city's businesses and residents have suffered serious, irreversible consequences. Think permanent loss. Few things can create as much political will as an irreversible crisis. By then, of course, it will likely be too late for prevention, so the…

from a long distance away, and a few news articles, it appears that the politicians in Venice actually do generate quite a bit of money, and plans, and proceed to hoard it and play favorites and invite others to try to get it from them (wink wink) .. meanwhile, storm days in Venice can get rather exciting, in a negative way.. so that leads to more money, again.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all agree that some investors won’t spend capital until it is too late. The thing that interests me is that there is apparently no incentive for real estate investors to plan for the long term.

If I were a real estate investor, I'd be wondering about all sorts of variables. How cheap will car batteries get? How will that impact the range that EVs will have? What charge standard will people prefer? What rapid charging infrastructure will exist? It could be that nearly every EV will have plenty of range from just charging at home, and for those few who need to charge to make the trip, they will be able to get…

Disney doesn't want you coming in and taking up a premium parking space and expensive charger for a full day while you're at the park. That's a money loser for them.

As a counter on a much smaller scale, if I was setting up or redoing a midrange or better fast food place I'd absolutely be looking into the costs of having public paid charging stations in my lot. Drive in, plug in, come inside (and don't blink at the price of our current run of premium sandwich meals), order, eat, head out 20-30 minutes later having paid a few dollars for a fast charge plus $8-12 for a meal with a great profit margin. Not something you'd do every day, but I see people just sitting in their cars at the Tesla chargers in the parking lot of my local Meijer.

At least right now people with plugin EVs or hybrids are people with disposable income. If I have a business that I'd like those people to come to for 20-60 minutes a few times a week then chargers make a ton of sense.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#115
post #6

I just went to Miami for the first time. I loved Miami Beach. Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

> Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was. Compared to what? South Florida real estate is pretty expensive, compared to the rest of the US.

Most of Miami outside of the immediate vicinity of downtown Miami and Miami beach is pretty affordable as far as coastal cities go, especially compared to ones with Miami-caliber weather.

Not sure what the climate change situations are, but there are condos in an amazing location (Brickell Key) which go for like $300-400k for a 2bed.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#116
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many buildings are hostile to use of Uber in my daily experience. if there's already a taxi rank, then uber should be using that space to pick-up/drop-off. If there isn't, then the current building is _already_ unfriendly to taxis.

Except taxi ranks are a queue of fungible vehicles; uber/lyft's are "bespoke" so the exact same structure won't work quite as well. But it wouldn't be hard to make a pickup/dropoff area. I suspect there already is one at most places, it's just a pissy, petty policy that doesn't allow ridesharing (etc) to use it.

There's no reason why rideshare queues and car-rider assignments couldn't be fungible up to the point the passenger steps into the vehicle, special needs excepted.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#117
post #43

I live in Orlando. I have lived in Florida for all of my life (47 years) and I also wonder how we are going to adapt. I don't see any long term planning. A few years ago I was looking for a new office building. Considering the parking situations, I asked each developer what they were planning for electric cars, Ubers, and autonomous cars. None of them had a plan. They all said such changes were 20 years or more away.…

I’m similarly perplexed at RE. For one, I make a good living and yet I can’t find decent, affordable homes near me. They’re all dated and much too expensive/soft. Dated in that they almost never have AC despite climate change making it necessary in the area - and rampant lead paint/asbestos. Apartment buildings are similarly dated. Last I looked, in a big city apartment complexes were rare if they had one or two char…

Location / metro area?

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is getting a little off topic, but I'm as surprised as you that electric charging isn't taking on at parking lots and structures much as I expected. I mean even Disney only has like 2-6 charging spots in each of their parking lots designed to hold over 12,000 cars per lot! And then you look at other parking structures and see that they have a token charger or 2 and the few I've reached out to never have a…

qq: why is an expectation that there must be charging spots for electric cars? Dedicated parking lots for green vehicles, sure I can see some logic behind cities enforcing that. But I don't show up at your parking lot and expect a mini gas pump at my spot.

It's not an expectation in any sense of the word, but it is a "nice to have" which makes both the owner of the location and owners of electric cars happier. Dedicated parking spots for "green" vehicles are worthless, and I'd be against any city enforcing that at all. I'm not quite sure if i'm for or against mandated charging spots yet, but regardless...

I'm simply wondering why it's not taking off more. It seems to be a win-win. Places like Disney where many will drive from far away and spend whole days there seem like a perfect fit for a ton of charging spots, especially since EV owners PAY to use the electricity there. EV owners win because they can get there easier and with less range anxiety, and the business owners win because EV owners come to their location more frequently and in many cases are required to spend time there!

A response of "qq" when all I did was say i'm surprised it's not catching on more is weirdly aggressive. I don't think businesses should have to install them, just that i'm surprised that they don't have more of them, especially in new-construction where it seems like a no-brainer to increase the number by 3 times or more just seeing the increasing percentage of plug-in vehicles on the road.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#119
post #48

This article is patent nonsense. Nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen to Miami in 50 years including the author, and an anecdotal poll of front line real estate agents is mindless. Even in that context the real estate agent’s worldview seems a lot more sanguine than hers. History has shown in this country that you’re a lot more likely to be right predicting that the rich will figure out how to preserve their…

Nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen to Miami in 50 years including the author

True enough if you want detailed predictions, but the generalizations that are pretty much assured are bad enough. Will there be 3 feet of rise in that time? Unlikely. 1? Maybe, maybe not. How much rise does there actually need to be for raw sewage in the streets to be an issue any time there's a heavy rain?

The other thing is storm surge in hurricanes. Nobody can tell you now exactly how high future storm surges will be, but a foot of rise still means that the same amount of storm surge will be a foot higher than in the past - 2 feet higher than a century ago. With increasing storm intensity due to higher energy levels those surges and rainfall totals are only going to get higher.

Re: Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

#120
post #6

I just went to Miami for the first time. I loved Miami Beach. Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

It's not just the price, it's whether you can get financing for it. As noted elsewhere, there are areas where a 30 year mortgage is simply not an option.

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