4 ms·

People, culture, and amenities attract people. Maybe lowering prices would help too. Artists, galleries, restaurants, theaters are all attracted by dense areas

People, culture, and amenities attract people. Maybe lowering prices would help too. Artists, galleries, restaurants, theaters are all attracted by dense areas with prices that are attractive. Cities can also step up to help with incentives instead of completely leaving it up to the free market to sort out.

betwixthewires 4y ago
But those people and culture and amenities are just other people, and when the core economic engine of the city is gone, those people leave too. Imagine you're a Jamaican halal chicken shop owner and your core business is professional office workers walking by on the way home from work and stopping in for a bite. When that office worker is no longer there because he can make the same salary and cut his expenses in half by moving 1000 miles away, you're going to go out of business. Maybe you move 1000 miles away also so that you can afford your rent. This is how the cascade happens. Theaters and museums and all those aren't why cities have a lot of people, those exist in cities because that's where the people are. when people become more spread out, those things will follow suit.
- lmm 4y ago
  The economy is supposed to be about enhancing other people's lives, not vice versa. Living in a city where you can walk down the road to get a chicken sandwich is a big win over living in a suburb where you have to drive everywhere. That's still true if you're working remotely.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Right but the vast majority of folks won’t pay more to live in a similarly sized apartment as a house in suburbia to experience that. They will spend less money on a nice house in suburbia unless they had no other choice. If the big apartment were a fraction of the price of the house in suburbia, maybe. But it costs way too much to build tall buildings for that to ever be feasible. Asian and European cities work because everyone expects a smaller amount of living space. And the large houses in suburbia are simply priced out of reach for 95%+ of the population.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      This has it the wrong way around. The price of infrastructure means that dense places cost less to upkeep than sparse places. The reason that cities cost more than the suburbs is 1) that there's more demand for cities, and 2) in the US, taxes paid by city-dwellers subsidize the expensive suburban infrastructure.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        No, all in construction costs for a typical 40 story high rise divided by number of saleable square feet equate to much higher cost per square feet than the average suburban housing development. I’ve seen very credible figures that indicates it’s at least a 2x multiple even for a barebones apartment building with no amenities at all And that’s before the expensive taxes, permits, etc., that cities charge on top for downtown or high rise construction, which as you say partially subsidizes suburbia. So in reality it’s more around triple the cost per square foot in a North American city. The only reason apartments bigger than a shoebox are affordable at all is because land acquisition costs when divided by hundreds of units is obviously far lower than for even the narrowest cookie cutter tract.
        kibwen 4y ago
        A 40-story high rise isn't the density we're referring to here, in a discussion of European-style urban living. Obviously one can astronomically inflate the price of any building by stretching it preposterously upwards, thereby requiring exotic materials and building techniques to support its own weight and the increasing winds and seismic concerns. But "dense urban living" doesn't mean "skyscrapers", it can mean four-to-six-story mixed-use buildings, which are both short enough to build without difficulty or undue expense and dense enough to realize efficient infrastructure costs. To be sure, skyscrapers are a dead end that we should be building less of.
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        In that case land acquisition costs make it too pricy since attractive downtown plots in a big city like Toronto are easily hundreds of millions per acre. Because they are zoned for 40+ story buildings. And why would any land owner seek to zone for less than the maximal allowance? If you mean forced downgrading of the zoning or replacing existing suburbia with mid density developments, or subsidizing mid density as opposed to suburbia, that’s an entirely political conversation since the roadblock is zoning laws and the legislature.

betwixthewires 4y ago

But those people and culture and amenities are just other people, and when the core economic engine of the city is gone, those people leave too. Imagine you're a Jamaican halal chicken shop owner and your core business is professional office workers walking by on the way home from work and stopping in for a bite. When that office worker is no longer there because he can make the same salary and cut his expenses in half by moving 1000 miles away, you're going to go out of business. Maybe you move 1000 miles away also so that you can afford your rent. This is how the cascade happens. Theaters and museums and all those aren't why cities have a lot of people, those exist in cities because that's where the people are. when people become more spread out, those things will follow suit.

lmm 4y ago
The economy is supposed to be about enhancing other people's lives, not vice versa. Living in a city where you can walk down the road to get a chicken sandwich is a big win over living in a suburb where you have to drive everywhere. That's still true if you're working remotely.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Right but the vast majority of folks won’t pay more to live in a similarly sized apartment as a house in suburbia to experience that. They will spend less money on a nice house in suburbia unless they had no other choice. If the big apartment were a fraction of the price of the house in suburbia, maybe. But it costs way too much to build tall buildings for that to ever be feasible. Asian and European cities work because everyone expects a smaller amount of living space. And the large houses in suburbia are simply priced out of reach for 95%+ of the population.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    This has it the wrong way around. The price of infrastructure means that dense places cost less to upkeep than sparse places. The reason that cities cost more than the suburbs is 1) that there's more demand for cities, and 2) in the US, taxes paid by city-dwellers subsidize the expensive suburban infrastructure.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      No, all in construction costs for a typical 40 story high rise divided by number of saleable square feet equate to much higher cost per square feet than the average suburban housing development. I’ve seen very credible figures that indicates it’s at least a 2x multiple even for a barebones apartment building with no amenities at all And that’s before the expensive taxes, permits, etc., that cities charge on top for downtown or high rise construction, which as you say partially subsidizes suburbia. So in reality it’s more around triple the cost per square foot in a North American city. The only reason apartments bigger than a shoebox are affordable at all is because land acquisition costs when divided by hundreds of units is obviously far lower than for even the narrowest cookie cutter tract.
      - kibwen 4y ago
        A 40-story high rise isn't the density we're referring to here, in a discussion of European-style urban living. Obviously one can astronomically inflate the price of any building by stretching it preposterously upwards, thereby requiring exotic materials and building techniques to support its own weight and the increasing winds and seismic concerns. But "dense urban living" doesn't mean "skyscrapers", it can mean four-to-six-story mixed-use buildings, which are both short enough to build without difficulty or undue expense and dense enough to realize efficient infrastructure costs. To be sure, skyscrapers are a dead end that we should be building less of.
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        In that case land acquisition costs make it too pricy since attractive downtown plots in a big city like Toronto are easily hundreds of millions per acre. Because they are zoned for 40+ story buildings. And why would any land owner seek to zone for less than the maximal allowance? If you mean forced downgrading of the zoning or replacing existing suburbia with mid density developments, or subsidizing mid density as opposed to suburbia, that’s an entirely political conversation since the roadblock is zoning laws and the legislature.