Google Plans Large New York City Expansion • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#201

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

plumdot wrote: post #191

TulliusCicero wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are al…

Detroit?

* Almost no rail transit whatsoever, closest equivalent looks like a bus system that doesn't even have its own lanes, let alone being separated-grade.

* I see a few off-street bike paths, but at a glance, no physically protected bike lanes. Maybe there are a few I'm missing, but if so, very few. Very few bike lanes in total, too.

* Freeways cutting through the city

* City is super sprawled out, looks like most of the space is the typical American mandatory single-family home area with no retail activity, so walkability is limited even where the sidewalks are fine.

* Very wide roads all over the place

Also just in general Detroit seems like it's been historically mismanaged and has lots of problems with crime and infrastructure and corruption and poor schools, which doesn't help things.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#202

Post by throwawaymath » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

emddudley wrote: post #196

havetocharge wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've relocated to NYC area for work, from a different country. One can get depressed about jobs not being where they are, or go to where the opportunity is better. People have freedom of movement and there is incredible infrastructure supporting that. Why not take advantage instead of complaining?

To me the idea of living in NYC is depressing. I think overall the US would have a better quality of life if industry was not so concentrated in major cities. Fewer people would need to make trade-offs between their jobs and lifestyle.

I live in NYC and I’m not going to try to change your mind, but out of curiosity what don’t you like about it? Winter? The smell? Too many people?

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#203

Post by TarpitCarnivore » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #130

rayiner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burbs are wsy better too. You can still find a great family home in a good school district within a reasonable commute on NJ transit, lirr, or metro north, well under a million.

I feel like the suburbs in NJ within reasonable commuting distance (door to door in 45 min max reliably) offer all the drawbacks of the city with none of the benefits of the suburb. You get a little more space, but not enough. A little less traffic, but still a lot of traffic. No decent gyms or parks, unless you like paying out the nose. And super high and ever increasing taxes. And I think even a 45 min door to door…

There's a lot of hyperbole in here, especially about parks and gyms. There's plenty of parks all over NJ that offer different options from hiking, biking, to kayaking. Gyms are a plenty and it's weird to even say you'd pay more for them when places like Equinox or Chelsea Piers are absurd in price. And go ask any person commuting from Brooklyn right now how there commutes are going to get into Midtown Manhattan, they can be 30-45 minutes with current state of the MTA.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#204

Post by nsnick » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #142

christophilus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portland?

I wouldn't consider Portland to be a cheaper or more conservative US city, and it's still one of the better US cities at urbanism, sad as that is, but okay. * The MAX has decent reach, but it's severely handicapped in capacity and speed by running at-grade. The Portland metro cheaped out there, and the result is a train system that's only good by American standards. * Many of the MAX stops, you can go a block or thre…

MAX is not that handicapped by being at grade because it has dedicated roads/lanes everywhere it goes. Portland will eventually ban cars downtown anyway (they are close).

Zoning laws are changing and have changed to allow infill. Plus, there is an urban growth boundary which will force higher density.

The bottlenecks in Portland are the bridges and there is at least one bridge that cars can't drive on, only busses and transit and there will be more in the future.

There are entire streets where vehicle through traffic has been blocked in favor of bicycles. There are still bike lanes on the major roads a block away too which is why you probably didn't notice the dedicated streets.

Portland is being upzoned all over the place. look at any major street west of 82nd and you will see new apartment buildings on almost every block. The suburbs of Portland haven't caught up, but in 20 years if trends continue in both places I could see Portland being more dense than San Francisco and the suburban sprawl not ending till the sierras.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#205

Post by dionidium » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #178

bsbechtel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define economic winner....you mean top line income and area GDP? These places are the most expensive places in the country to live, and quality of living is considerably lower. Incomes may be lower in many areas of the country, but when you consider you can pay $2k/mo on a 5,000 sq ft mortgage instead of renting a 900 sq ft apartment, I don't view these places as economically successful as many perceive them to be.

Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cancel much of that out at the individual level though. > quality of living is considerably lower. See my other nearby comment for why this is a "it depends" thing. A lot of people would consider living in Kansas City to have lower "quality of life" than NYC even i…

> "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)."

I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people.

And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!"

I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing.

Edit to respond to one comment below:

> I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily.

On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#206

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #83

CydeWeys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about NYC in comparison to the Bay Area is that we're not afraid of building more housing here, so supply increases every year and has a dampening effect on rent increases. Also, mass transit is much better, so if you live even 30 minutes away on a subway line the rents will be much lower. If you're willing to commute an hour each way (which is still less than a lot of people who drive every day on I-1…

> and has a dampening effect on rent increase Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62% https://www.rentjungle.com/a…

One thing, not immediately clear from those averages, is that apartments in Manhattan tend to be larger than those in SF.

If you look at the breakdown by bedroom count:

1BR: SF -> $3303 | NY -> $2939

2BR: SF -> $4481 | NY -> $3752

This makes clear that NY inventory is biased towards larger units, which makes comparisons of overall averages deceptive.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#207

Post by dionidium » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #201

plumdot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detroit?

* Almost no rail transit whatsoever, closest equivalent looks like a bus system that doesn't even have its own lanes, let alone being separated-grade. * I see a few off-street bike paths, but at a glance, no physically protected bike lanes. Maybe there are a few I'm missing, but if so, very few. Very few bike lanes in total, too. * Freeways cutting through the city * City is super sprawled out, looks like most of the…

I think there's less value to this kind of experience-living-in-a-city-via-google-maps than you're implying here.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#208

Post by throwawaymath » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #171

lallysingh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. The two most common spouse occupations, of people I knew at Google in NYC, were lawyer and some sort of financier. Often (more than a few of those I knew) the spouse made more money and Google was effectively daycare for the other. And in hotbeds like NYC, with the opportunities all over town, there's little career reason to go somewhere else. If Google left NYC, they'd lose most of their eng…

The draw of NYC is also at least somewhat unique. I went to grad school with a lot of NY natives. A lot of them really cannot imagine living anyplace else. What? You can't do X at 3am? Inconceivable.

As someone who lives in New York City, that rings true to me. I remember being taken aback the first time I visited a smaller town and heard the ice cream shop was closed at 8 pm on a Sunday. It took a period of adjustment before I realized I was the odd one :)

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#209

Post by barry-cotter » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #119

choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

There is the anecdote that after WWII Bonn was favored over Frankfurt as new capital of West Germany because of its proximity to Adenauer’s home town of Cologne.

One other reason proffered for Bonn over Berlin was that Frankfurt was enough of a cultural, industrial and commercial hub that it might continue as capital after reunification. Not even seriously discussed when it unexpected happened with Bonn.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#210

Post by throwawaymath » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #132

umeshunni wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic chicken and egg problem. Companies don't want to establish new offices in cities where they cannot attract new talent or there isn't a large existing base of talent. This limits large new offices to large metro areas (5M+ people) People don't want to relocate to cities where there aren't multiple job possibilities - you lose your job/hate it and don't want to have to relocate to find a new job or you w…

>>Companies don't want to establish new offices in cities where they cannot attract new talent or there isn't a large existing base of talent. Bangalore had this problem in the 80's and 90's. The way you beat is, surprising simple. You just start building colleges and other institutions and make it cheap and easy to study there. All of a sudden you have a massive pool of young, and hungry people. Then you do things l…

I hate to be that guy, but if it’s this simple why hasn’t it been done?

And anticipating a specific class of answer: is it always political deadlock in America, or is there something more fundamental that would prevent this from working?