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Remote work’s toll on cities

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Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#191

Post by jen20 »

parineum wrote: post #33
pjlegato wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. US zoning laws have banned the construction of dense urban neighborhoods and required car-centric suburban neighborhood plans since about World War II. Mandatory density limits and setbacks and numbers of parking spaces and square feet per occupant and other zoning regulations make it illegal to build anything other than low density suburbs. Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighbor…

> US zoning laws... That's an incredibly broad statement since most zoning is handled on the state, county or city level. There are plenty of places in the US where someone could build an equivalent SF or NYC and yet they don't. > The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. You seem to be drawing a causal link here, walkable leads to desirable…

> there are plenty of other walkable cities that aren't expensive or desirable.

Can you name some of them?

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#192

Post by cscurmudgeon »

dublinben wrote: post #188
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities may have a soul but they lack a heart (and a brain too). From 2018 through 2020, the NCVS found that the violent-crime rate in urban areas was between 29 percent and 42 percent higher than the rate in rural areas The property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households) https://www.city-journal.org/violent-crime-in-cities-on…

Crime is just one of many quality of life factors. Mortality rates are significantly worse in rural areas than urban areas, and the gap is widening. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-in-rural-a...

There is a difference between rural areas and suburbs.

I don’t see whether the study you linked counts suburbs as urban or as rural.

Most studies do urban, suburban or rural.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...

Without that split, claims about suburban communities are hard to separate out.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#193

Post by autodev1 »

dougmwne wrote: post #90

Boo hoo. US cities are abysmal. Chronic underfunding of public transit and bad zoning policies that make it illegal to build dense means that we have some of the most unlivable and exclusive cities in the developed world. People are speaking with their actions. No one wants to deal with commuting downtown anymore. The expense, the time, the stress, just to further line the pockets of a small number of already incredi…

I think you hit the nail on the head with "rich rent seekers" -- Who else owns the downtowns of most big cities? Wealthy people, whose interests are served by keeping the pre-pandemic status quo of "Rent our offices. Pay our parking meters & public parking lots"

No thanks. I'll take my remote job and live an hour outside of a city, to enjoy silence, wildlife, bonfires, and saving my hard-earned income in nature.

Large scale rent seeking behavior is not positive for economies. Just ask the Saudis.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#194

Post by jackcviers3 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #100
danielrpa wrote: post #18

Cities exist to serve people's needs. The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation. Instead, we need self-sufficient neighborhoods catering to different lifestyles and needs (some higher density and walkable, others still car-centric but encourag…

I'm a life-long New Yorker, born and raised. Even I gave up on the city and moved out, despite all the desire to live with low carbon-impact and live a moderate lifestyle w/o cars. At some point, the pain factor becomes too much. I'll give you some examples - Approximately 5-6yrs ago the transit quality in the outer-boroughs (not Manhattan) became so bad that you could spend 2hrs hours switching multiple trains if yo…

This all sounds incredibly dysfunctional. With remote work the new normal, I wonder if a new great migration will occur soon.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#195

Post by wott »

Swizec wrote: post #48
danielrpa wrote: post #18

Cities exist to serve people's needs. The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation. Instead, we need self-sufficient neighborhoods catering to different lifestyles and needs (some higher density and walkable, others still car-centric but encourag…

> The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation I’ve been traveling Europe this month and visited several towns and cities both large and small. From tiny villages of a few hundred to 4,000,000+ people monsters. One thing that struck me as vastly…

> Every city, no matter the size, feels alive. People live there. They don’t sleep in one area then go live in another.

Average commute time is the same in France as it is in the USA. (Of course, in both cases, it varies a lot depending on the area.)

I lived a short while in a suburb of Paris; that municipality had 1 bar/café/pub for 50,000 inhabitants...

I worked in a suburb of Toulouse in a public service. I was walking 1/2 or 3/4 of a mile to have lunch in 2 different schools depending on the day, that's about 30-40 minutes there and back; I basically never walked across any fellow pedestrian, even though most of the time I was walking along main streets and crossing part of the 'centre'. The whole place was covered in private housing developments, same as neighbouring suburbs. Everyone drives to the central area or to other suburbs specialized in offices, industries or retail where they have their job.

I worked in another suburb, just next to the border of the city. I was the only one in the whole building (shared by several small companies) who lived in the city, all other people lived in suburbs, often remote ones.

I am now back in the countryside. There are still a few shops where I am, but their disappearance (started looooon ago) hasn't completely stopped. People don't walk or ride to the shop 1/4 mile away from their home, they rather drive 2 times 10 miles to get to large supermarkets. The population slowly changes, many newcomers never walk out of their house, they only drive out of it. Recently a few shops/services have even closed doors in the centre, and reopened out of the village, on the side of the main road, with parking lots. Elders cannot get there by foot easily any more; one of those place even only planned an entrance for cars, not for pedestrians. Despite all the nice discourses, in the 2020s it keeps on evolving as it did in the 1970s.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#196

Post by rsj_hn »

autodev1 wrote: post #193
dougmwne wrote: post #90

Boo hoo. US cities are abysmal. Chronic underfunding of public transit and bad zoning policies that make it illegal to build dense means that we have some of the most unlivable and exclusive cities in the developed world. People are speaking with their actions. No one wants to deal with commuting downtown anymore. The expense, the time, the stress, just to further line the pockets of a small number of already incredi…

I think you hit the nail on the head with "rich rent seekers" -- Who else owns the downtowns of most big cities? Wealthy people, whose interests are served by keeping the pre-pandemic status quo of "Rent our offices. Pay our parking meters & public parking lots" No thanks. I'll take my remote job and live an hour outside of a city, to enjoy silence, wildlife, bonfires, and saving my hard-earned income in nature. Larg…

Bingo. I look at these issues as a war between location and transportation.

Those who monopolize location are the landlords. Their value comes from location. Transportation and communication makes location less valuable. It allows people to escape from under the thumb of landlords and get their own little plot of land so that they don't need to pay rent to anyone else. Imagine a world in which you can snap your fingers and instantly be transported anywhere. What would be the value of living close to your job? Or in a specific location? There would be no premium at all. All improvements to transportation, whether it becomes cheaper, or faster, or more comfortable, is a small punch at landlords. The same for any increase or improvement in communication. The internet, VPN, portable computers -- these are all little punches at those who sell location.

Moreover while location is not produced, transportation and communication are produced goods. It does not matter whether you are talking about planes, cars, buses, trains, motorcycles, phones, cell towers, they are all made in factories by workers, whereas location is not. So tilting the scales in favor of communication and transportation takes the value that was captured by landlords, and shifts it towards productive industry. It's really a win-win.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#197

Post by wott »

selectodude wrote: post #169
talideon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even those bedroom communities are a lot more livable than their US equivalents, because they have local amenities, meaning you're not forced to go to some big-box store or strip mall for stuff like you do in the US. They function as small towns, not just vast swathes of houses, which makes them more sustainable.

Carrefour is one of the largest retailers on earth utilizing a big box model. They’re all over bedroom communities in suburban Paris.

> Carrefour is one of the largest retailers on earth utilizing a big box model.

In the 70s already, the one near Toulouse was for some time perhaps the largest superstore in the world (at least the largest in Europe).

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#199

Post by wott »

candiodari wrote: post #181
courgette wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find suburbs boring. I find them soul-less. I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things. Suburbs would be fine in my own personal book if they were offering basic services and a sense of comunauty.( not in warehouse operated by large chain, but by people living there and earning a live…

> I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things. Ah, comparing France of 30 years ago with US today. Reality: France has changed. I mean, this model hasn't totally died, but it's in it's last spasms.

Even back then, I guarantee that small villages like where I grew up didn't have any shop. Some never did, actually. The 'centre village' of the neighbouring municipality valiantly sported: one church, its presbytery, the town hall if we may call so, one house, and that was it. They were coming to school in my village, because we had no shop but we had a 2-room school.

But they closed the school a few years ago, and everyone has to drive to a big burg.

Of course I get what he meant, and everyone has a different definition of 'small' and of 'village'. Personally, I'd says shops start from 'big village' and post-offices from 'small burgs'. But you can have quite many neighbouring country municipalities in a row which do not have any shop.

-----

Yeah, in the last 30 years, the spread has been terrible, and it is not contained to suburbs of cities and big towns, but it also affects remote areas, around small burgs and even many villages. What we have then is suburbs without the 'urb'; perhaps even more depressing to witness than actual suburbs.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#200

Post by dsfyu404ed »

rsj_hn wrote: post #196
autodev1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you hit the nail on the head with "rich rent seekers" -- Who else owns the downtowns of most big cities? Wealthy people, whose interests are served by keeping the pre-pandemic status quo of "Rent our offices. Pay our parking meters & public parking lots" No thanks. I'll take my remote job and live an hour outside of a city, to enjoy silence, wildlife, bonfires, and saving my hard-earned income in nature. Larg…

Bingo. I look at these issues as a war between location and transportation. Those who monopolize location are the landlords. Their value comes from location. Transportation and communication makes location less valuable. It allows people to escape from under the thumb of landlords and get their own little plot of land so that they don't need to pay rent to anyone else. Imagine a world in which you can snap your finge…

> Transportation and communication makes location less valuable. It allows people to escape from under the thumb of landlords and get their own little plot of land so that they don't need to pay rent to anyone else. Imagine a world in which you can snap your fingers and instantly be transported anywhere. What would be the value of living close to your job? Or in a specific location? There would be no premium at all. All improvements to transportation, whether it becomes cheaper, or faster, or more comfortable, is a small punch at landlords.

This. So much this. Reducing the "cost" in time and/or money of physical distance results in huge compounding improvements to people's lives. People can work more lucrative jobs. They can shop at the the value-priced big box store than the overpriced bodega that has to pass on its crushing rent. They can more easily justify seeing friends and family. The list goes on.

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