3 ms·

Jesus dude, what?? NYC's fantastic. It's one of the safest major metropolitan areas in the world filled with a tremendous variety of culture. It's the most div

by codyb 8y ago

Jesus dude, what?? NYC's fantastic. It's one of the safest major metropolitan areas in the world filled with a tremendous variety of culture. It's the most diverse place on the planet with only London even being at a comparable level. And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get around the entire city 24 hours a day. They get people to work during odd shifts, and allow those without so much to reach the same places those with so much can. What a weird, haughty, better than thou comment.

linuxftw 8y ago
> And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. I don't have contempt for people riding the subway, I have contempt for the organization that perpetrates that fraud on society. > Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get around the entire city 24 hours a day. At what cost? As it turns out, at great cost. Misallocation of capital: making it easier to commute into downtown areas via rail only induces rail demand and increases cost of housing. If end users were forced to pay actual costs of transportation, businesses wouldn't be able to afford keeping down town offices and would move towards worker populations, otherwise they would have to pay higher wages to maintain their labor force. Subsidizing transportation is nothing but subsidizing corporate labor. If you think NYC is fantastic, that doesn't make my opinion any less valid.
- codyb 8y ago
  The fraud of the subway on society? Lol. Okay. The trains also run the other direction, you know that right? It's the same cost to commute to Far Rockaway as it is to commute to Manhattan, and there's plenty of workers out there too. Not seeing too many big office buildings there though.
- digitaltrees 8y ago
  Your analysis is exactly backwards base on history. One of the main drives to create corporate campuses outside of cities was to prevent competing firms from recruiting employees. Same goes for creating company restaurants and dry cleaning etc. keep employees on your campus and a way from competition. When they work downtown and walk out into the community they bump into people randomly and those unexpected connections can create new relationships.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    I don't think this is accurate whatsoever. I think the main driver of these decisions is real estate. It's simply much cheaper to build a low-rise complex on lots of acreage than it is to obtain the same square footage downtown. However, if a corporation can reallocate labor capital into real estate, IMO what happens in the NYC area, that's what they'll do.
- tropdrop 8y ago
  digitaltrees has it right - those unexpected connections, it turns out, not only form great new business relationships, but are a great source of revenue for local businesses. Trivially, you can think about a group of coworkers walking on a sidewalk and unexpectedly bumping into a cafe or boutique, making a "serendipitous" purchase they weren't otherwise planning to while on their way to a lunch meet. You don't go to a mall for that lunch meet. Take a look at any place in America that has higher than its surrounding average real estate price, even in less heard of towns like downtown Hunstville, Alabama or Ogden, Utah - what is true about the most consistently profitable, lucrative pieces of real estate? They're home to mixed use development [1] (One case study of this effect - [2]). It turns out, all those "new" (assumed good bc of their newness) models of urban development, with single use office OR home OR shopping zoning, with square miles on miles of tract housing, with islands of empty parking lots (for that one day a year that they're full) between huge hulking shopping centers, necessitating car use for even the smallest of toilet paper purchases... well, those ideas ran contrary to the organic structure of towns and villages for all of human history. And while those ideas were so new and fashionable, yes, places like New York suffered. But eventually the novelty wore out. The ticky-tacky houses started looking all the same (that is, depressing - but that's my opinion). New York didn't die in the '80s and certainly won't because of some subway hiccups. Dense urban models work. For all of human history they worked, in 1950s America, for a brief moment, some people thought they no longer did - but it looks like they still work, and will always work. And tunnels are a great way to keep that valuable mixed use real-estate - for commuters and city dwellers alike. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development 2 - https://www.property24.com/articles/mixed-use-developments-bucking-cape-towns-property-dip/27801 https://www.property24.com/articles/mixed-use-developments-b...

by codyb 8y ago

linuxftw 8y ago

> And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. I don't have contempt for people riding the subway, I have contempt for the organization that perpetrates that fraud on society. > Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get around the entire city 24 hours a day. At what cost? As it turns out, at great cost. Misallocation of capital: making it easier to commute into downtown areas via rail only induces rail demand and increases cost of housing. If end users were forced to pay actual costs of transportation, businesses wouldn't be able to afford keeping down town offices and would move towards worker populations, otherwise they would have to pay higher wages to maintain their labor force. Subsidizing transportation is nothing but subsidizing corporate labor. If you think NYC is fantastic, that doesn't make my opinion any less valid.

codyb 8y ago
The fraud of the subway on society? Lol. Okay. The trains also run the other direction, you know that right? It's the same cost to commute to Far Rockaway as it is to commute to Manhattan, and there's plenty of workers out there too. Not seeing too many big office buildings there though.
digitaltrees 8y ago
Your analysis is exactly backwards base on history. One of the main drives to create corporate campuses outside of cities was to prevent competing firms from recruiting employees. Same goes for creating company restaurants and dry cleaning etc. keep employees on your campus and a way from competition. When they work downtown and walk out into the community they bump into people randomly and those unexpected connections can create new relationships.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  I don't think this is accurate whatsoever. I think the main driver of these decisions is real estate. It's simply much cheaper to build a low-rise complex on lots of acreage than it is to obtain the same square footage downtown. However, if a corporation can reallocate labor capital into real estate, IMO what happens in the NYC area, that's what they'll do.
tropdrop 8y ago
digitaltrees has it right - those unexpected connections, it turns out, not only form great new business relationships, but are a great source of revenue for local businesses. Trivially, you can think about a group of coworkers walking on a sidewalk and unexpectedly bumping into a cafe or boutique, making a "serendipitous" purchase they weren't otherwise planning to while on their way to a lunch meet. You don't go to a mall for that lunch meet. Take a look at any place in America that has higher than its surrounding average real estate price, even in less heard of towns like downtown Hunstville, Alabama or Ogden, Utah - what is true about the most consistently profitable, lucrative pieces of real estate? They're home to mixed use development [1] (One case study of this effect - [2]). It turns out, all those "new" (assumed good bc of their newness) models of urban development, with single use office OR home OR shopping zoning, with square miles on miles of tract housing, with islands of empty parking lots (for that one day a year that they're full) between huge hulking shopping centers, necessitating car use for even the smallest of toilet paper purchases... well, those ideas ran contrary to the organic structure of towns and villages for all of human history. And while those ideas were so new and fashionable, yes, places like New York suffered. But eventually the novelty wore out. The ticky-tacky houses started looking all the same (that is, depressing - but that's my opinion). New York didn't die in the '80s and certainly won't because of some subway hiccups. Dense urban models work. For all of human history they worked, in 1950s America, for a brief moment, some people thought they no longer did - but it looks like they still work, and will always work. And tunnels are a great way to keep that valuable mixed use real-estate - for commuters and city dwellers alike. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development 2 - https://www.property24.com/articles/mixed-use-developments-bucking-cape-towns-property-dip/27801 https://www.property24.com/articles/mixed-use-developments-b...