3 ms·

> Why not to open many small offices _outside_ major cities so that people could A/ afford real estate B/ enjoy outdoor space C/ minimize their commute time? W

• pharmakom 4y ago
  The mistake there was making it car centric. Fundamentally it wasn’t such a bad idea.
  • notacoward 4y ago
    The problem is that making it anything else in the (US) suburbs is damn near impossible. So you have your nice little suburban office park ... and what else? If you want to replicate the feel of a city, even at small scale, you're reliant on restaurants and other kinds of stores and entertainment venues being nearby. Unfortunately, they won't see your office park as a draw. They'll still cluster near the big roads. Your choice in the suburbs is to be in Car Hell or to be isolated. The closest compromise I've seen is the area around a local mall. There are tons of restaurants - everything from brewpubs to fast food to a Brazilian steakhouse to coffee shops and my favorite bubble-tea shop. Groceries of all kinds and levels, all sorts of clothing, hardware, housewares, a movie complex, you name it. And there are a couple of semi-decent-looking apartment buildings in the area. It's still very car-centric, crossing the eight-lane road between the apartments and the mall wouldn't be fun, but if I were single and worked in one of the nearby office parks I could see living there and hardly needing to drive anywhere.