15 ms·

Remote work is gutting downtowns

199 points by kungfudoi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wildrhythms 4y ago
These seeds were sowed when cities cashed in on commercial real estate, pushing residential zoning further and further out of the city. Wake up call: nobody wants to spend longer than they have to on an unpaid, unpredictable commute into the city anymore. So while these downtown businesses are getting 1/3 of the foot traffic that they used to, all the supermarkets and shops a few miles down the road are raking it in.
- reset-password 4y ago
  Right. The value has not been lost. It has been shifted. It happens.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mantas 4y ago
    It depends on how you count value. Let's say you work from home and make your lunch. Previously you'd buy ready-to-eat lunch. While you still buy ingredients and pay for energy, you don't pay for someone to prepare it and then sell to you, prepare the housing of the eatery and so on. Effectively some GDP was lost. Next, let's say you grow some of your own veggies...
- highwaylights 4y ago
  I used to get the bus to work about 10 years ago because parking in the city became so expensive (I stopped long before Covid hit). The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time. I had a commute time that ranged between one and two hours over that stretch as I'd lived in a couple of different places, but that wasn't even extreme. I knew people with 2+ hour commutes each way which they did for years on end. I understand there are a lot of people who need a place to work away from their home, but who is going to voluntarily return to an office when they don't need to just to prop up your portfolio and obsolete businesses? Why should they? It's like the argument that people should support local businesses instead of buying from Amazon. If Amazon is cheaper and more convenient, why would someone buy anything elsewhere? (It's not like those businesses are going to help with your rent or food costs).
  - MengerSponge 4y ago
    I've had funny conversations about why I still wear a good n95 on public transit (planes included). My right-leaning and remarkably well educated parents are incredulous. A few years ago I thought personal masking didn't really matter. Wow, I was wrong! And not catching bs colds from weirdos on the bus or the grocery store makes it worth it. My face isn't that pretty anyway.
    - snapplebobapple 4y ago
      They might be right about the actual plane ride because the filtration systems on modern (read 20 years old or newer) are really good. Public busses tend to be a disaster for air filtration though, especially in winter when no windows are open. I wish there was some better research/more accessible research on this.
      - jghn 4y ago
        Even if the plane's filtration is good, if the person 3 feet away from you is coughing it's not going to be that good. I'd rather rely on the combination of filtration & a mask. Defense in depth. Day to day i'm not religious about masking, but for things like public transportation, airplanes, etc I try to always have face protection on.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        Pressurized airplanes have air changes per hour in the 12-16 range. That's above the ASHRAE recommended 6-12 air changes per hour for places that may contain viruses. (Obviously, ASHRAE isn't the CDC or healthcare organization directly, but they do know a few things about standards setting for HVAC.) Excellent filtration isn't as relevant when the average air molecule is in the aircraft for only 5-10 minutes. The standard for AC/H for offices is 3-4.
        lamontcg 4y ago
        The studied COVID outbreaks on planes show that this still isn't sufficient. I'm also pretty sure I got sick from the kid sitting directly behind me on the plane when I got influenza. You can site all the statistics and propaganda in the world about plane ventilation. It clearly isn't enough to prevent viral spread (I don't care about air changes per hour or cfm or anything else, the only endpoint worth discussing is viral spread--I give precisely zero fucks about how fast the air is moving around). I'm using n95s on planes from here on out.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Yeah—the stores in our area (which is a bedroom community for Baltimore and to a lesser extent DC) are doing great.
  - jgalentine007 4y ago
    Which is funny, because after 2008 it felt like a lot of the bedroom communities / strip malls struggled and went down hill (lack of demand I guess) - and it felt like a whole wave of young people were only wanting to live in the city.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      Living in the city is great for young people who have no kids - lots of entertainment options a short walk away. It's noisier/busier/dirtier (EVs will help A LOT with noise and pollution). Living further out is much nicer when you have kids - more space, more freedom for the kids to move around, more trees for them to climb and places to explore.
      - jghn 4y ago
        Don't forget older people who have no kids. I'm part of a DINK couple and could not imagine leaving an urban area. There's so much more to do, so much easier to get around, etc.
        rbanffy 4y ago
        Sorry. Didn't mean to. I suspect we'll be in that space in about 10 years or so, when being next to a good hospital with excellent geriatric services will be more important than having trees to climb.
      - thatfrenchguy 4y ago
        And nowhere for them to go by themselves? Living in the suburbs as a tween/teenager is death.
- jksmith 4y ago
  Carr's "The Big Switch" in reverse. Technology ushering in a decentralization effect. And that's fine. Work at home. Communities buy micro reactors, Starlink ready to go. Low carbon produce that doesn't have chemical shit all over it. Maybe testosterone rates go up, maybe cancer rates go down. Probably a good idea all around.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      I guess a lot of people got triggered by the first words and never finished reading after the downvote. Such an amazing movie...
      - adolph 4y ago
        The downvoters know the truth. rbanffy, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, rbanffy, __children's_ice_cream__. You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, rbanffy. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
      - shkkmo 4y ago
        HN readers don't like low value joke / sarcastic comments.
        4y ago
- neutronicus 4y ago
  Yes - pre-pandemic, white-collar office parks and big-box retail had already dispersed to the suburbs where I live (Baltimore). Honestly, remote work allowed us to stay in the city (our preference), if I'd had to keep commuting I don't know if raising my kid would have been workable for us.
- marcyb5st 4y ago
  Europe arguably has better public transportation and shorter commutes. I am still seeing this happening (don't have any data to back my claim, just my experience). If I have to guess here is more about the housing cost being the issue. Buying is prohibitive given the average income and most new units are only for rent. In the last 6 years I spent more than 140k CHF in rent (close to Zurich). Once remote working has started we said screw that and moved further away from downtown. Now we own a nice apartment with a garden (unthinkable before) and go the city only when required.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    > Europe arguably has better public transportation and shorter commutes Mine (Dublin, Ireland) is still about an hour on the tram (for EUR 2) from where I live, so I'm not saying it's perfect, but my manager, in the Atlanta area, is a two-hour drive away from the office. That and he starting meetings at 6AM (because Dublin) makes me support remote working even more for the ATL teams. I gladly traded the rich cultural life and world-class restaurants for a walkable city and a house with a small park one gate away from the back yard. Even considering the occasional invasion of the house by a bunch of screaming little 10 yo's who are my daughter's gang (who lives mostly on the same street).
- ar_lan 4y ago
  Living in the Bay Area, I really can't afford to live close to my office. I have to drive to Palo Alto from San Jose (or take the train). Pre-pandemic, my drive averaged 1hr to the office, and 1.5hrs back. So, I'm wasting 2.5 hrs of my life every day... to do the same exact job I do from home (not to mention cost of gas/car maintenance). I also get more done at home, because I haven't reduced my hours any, but I don't waste time in the break room grabbing coffee and chatting. I don't know what the overall data is, and if I'm just a productive outlier or if that's a general trend. If I'm ever required to commute again, I 100% view it as a pay decrease.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    For a while, I used to commute from Santa Cruz to north San Jose for work. Since then, I absolutely factor my commute into my compensation, and anything more than an hour total commute per day is an additional premium. Factor in how terrible driving has become in the bay area, and I'm of half a mind to begin asking for hazard pay for commuting.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
      Especially on that Hwy17
  - cyberpunk 4y ago
    I really love it how even on days where our team is in the office, if just one person can't make it (quite likely) then almost all the meetings are virtual anyway. Sitting in a room together with headphones in zoom meetings! Brilliant. :D
    - dataexporter 4y ago
      Some conference rooms have good video conferencing facilities, so no headphones in the same room though. But I get your point, it is a pain to commute all the way to be on zoom calls.
timinou 4y ago
Title slightly misleading... The article makes the point that downtowns are turning from office to social centres and the $453B figure is more of an investment in repurposing offices and rethinking urban spaces for that purpose. I welcome these changes... Yes we'll need to rethink our urbanism, but if anything this switch feels like a coming back of what our urban centers are supposed to provide us. Imagine parking spaces becoming local artisans/food stalls, conference rooms becoming event spaces, coworking spaces adapted to people's lifestyle and living patterns (e.g. a suburban cowork with childcare and a dog park). "gutting downtown" might be true for those who are wary their office real estate investment will not have a positive ROI. But the way I see it, this change in urban patterns is a paradigm shift in wealth distribution patterns and in economic opportunities for leisure services, both locally and globally.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeryan 4y ago
  Not sure what you read there but the roughly $500B figure is a real loss in the commercial real-estate sector as leases some off the books. It’s a slow burn. There’s an additional expense to try to repurpose these building as residential but it’s a massive one that won’t come easily. You can’t just turn modern office buildings into residential building by reworking the interior. Most wouldn’t meet residential codes (like bedrooms needing windows, emergency egress, additional plumbing and waste requirements, parking etc) Commercial real estate is going to take a massive hit the next 3-4 years and that $435B number is a real estimate in the decline in commercial real-estate value. It comes from this study. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30526/w30526.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30526/w305...
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    It's easier to turn office buildings into luxury apartments than into affordable ones -- a single 3000 square foot apartment has more layout flexibility, fewer plumbing & parking requirements, fewer emergency exits than five 600 square foot ones, et cetera. Advocates aren't going to be happy about 3000 square foot luxury apartments rather than affordable ones...
Lastodon 4y ago
Good. Feel the "hand of the free market" at last throttling the antiquated obese market that is business property. As automation and communication improves, so should corporate policy restructure and reform into the most efficient system. Dragging people across the country every day and filling the air with burnt dinosaur just because the old people in power can't figure out how to adapt is pathetic. New management styles are needed that incentivise the timekeeping of results over the timekeeping of presence.
- y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
  Yeah seriously. Remote work is nothing new. It's been picking up steam, the pandemic just accelerated the shit out of it. The people/investors/whatever that bought these buildings for commercial purposes made a gamble and didn't prepare for the future. That's on them, not remote work. If I go buy a gas-guzzling Porsche today and its price depreciates to nothing because a sudden influx of more efficient and performant electric cars are released, that's on me for making a bad investment and not observing the trends. This reminds of when I worked for Hollywood Video Corporate (video rental business) in 2010 and the VP was telling us that brick and mortar video rental would eventually beat back streaming media. Every indicator was suggesting a different path and they chose to ignore it. They're gone now, streaming media is here to stay. Remote work is here to stay.
  - jmoak3 4y ago
    I remember Hollywood Video! When I was in High School my family and I subscribed to their monthly rental plan, lots of good memories there.
- fundad 4y ago
  The problem is the tax base shrinks but police budgets never do.
osigurdson 4y ago
So, what is the solution? Force everyone back into the pointless office at enormous cost to employees and employers just to keep the status quo for landlords. The bottom line is downtown is a place where people work with information. Since it is possible to work with information anywhere, this place isn't needed (and hasn't been for a long time). Downtown obsolete.
- Rovanion 4y ago
  Walkable cities with mixed use development. Change the use of downtown.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    To what?
    - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
      Walkable cities with mixed use development.
    - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
      A place where people live.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        I'm not from the US - what is downtown used for today?
        osigurdson 4y ago
        Manipulating information (i.e. editing bytes) mostly.
        uuddlrlrbaba 4y ago
        Corporate hellscape mostly
nonethewiser 4y ago
Sucks for downtown's but I'm glad to see anything that leads to a broader distribution of population.
- awesomegoat_com 4y ago
  This. And I would say the broader distribution will actually be good for the environment as whole. Or at least it could be.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    air smells cleaner too
  - brookst 4y ago
    Walk me through that thinking? Downtown residents walk and use transit. Places with broader distribution of people typically rely on roads because transit isn’t economically efficient. My intuition is that higher population densities are more environmentally efficient because more people can be served by any resource. Are you thinking otherwise?
    - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
      This debate is usually between "city people" and "McMansion suburbanites", but allow me to offer two alternatives. They are described as utopias, but they really have been realized to varying extents in various places. 1. One alternative is to revitalize the tons of walkable second-tier cities that are sitting there rotting, and to connect them with intercity transit. I love NYC, but the problem with concentrating everyone there and in SF, is that it drives up real estate prices and creates a desperate crush to acquire property. Yes, you can say "YIMBY", but even if that were politically feasible, it couldn't keep up with in-migration if there were only those few choices (NY and SF). It would badly bifurcate society, between those who had managed to secure a toehold, and those who hadn't. (In fact, it creates a culty Bitcoin-like dynamic, where those who have sunk the cost to be inducted (by buying property) are then incentivized to preach the benefits and keep the values up.) Then, because people would be so desperate for money to live in these places, they'd waste their lives on corrosive professions like surveillance advertising, instead of doing work that actually helps people. That may sound familiar. And, most importantly, geographic concentration would, arguably, go hand-in-hand with economic concentration -- with the formation of economic "chokepoints" and the concentration of monopoly power. 2. Even the medium-urbanist decentralization of (1) would however leave people dependent on monopolies for the provision of basic ecological services. What good is it to concentrate in cities, if all food is produced by one or two huge agricultural conglomerates? This is a condition of total dependence. As an alternative to urbanism, Permaculture-type people do have interesting ideas. But they require land. Their methods also -- let's be honest -- come with a dramatic reduction in what we call "living standards". But if "degrowth" can come from an increase in autonomy, then that might be a trade worth making. It's one I think young people would consider. We would probably see some amount of homophily among people, if they reorganized along these lines. There are many incompatible tribes: - The Colorado ski-bro kombucha-chick tribe. - Various Black Israelite and Egyption-religion back-to-Africa tribes. - The Kanye West cult of vaguely Trump-sympathetic heterodox permie stuff. - Indigenous revival movements. They're likely to have different language but similar interest in the environment. - Various trad-religious tribes, like the Mennonites and Amish, but you could totally see Benedict Option Catholics or even Evangelicals going this way. Again, they'd just talk a little differently. They wouldn't combine as a single "diverse" community, but you could see any and all of them borrowing permie ideas from one another. In the past I have spoken in favor of universalist ideologies (I like that they help me to get along with more people), but they might be at odds with this kind of pluralism. That would need to be worked out. 3. A natural answer is to say that there can be "gains from trade", and that not everyone needs to live in the same way. That there can be both cities and rural areas. But, a. I am doubtful of permaculture's ability to create the kind of surplus needed to sustain urban populations, and b. we would have to be very careful with the introduction of too much financial intermediation, lest we simply recreate the conditions we now have today. I'm not sure what the punchline here is, except -- - that issues of political economy need to be factored in here, because they ultimately determine how nature's resources are distributed; - that power is best when not concentrated; and - that I'm looking for ways beyond the dichotomies implied by these posts ("dense" vs. "not dense").
redandblack 4y ago
Waiting for a major strategy consulting firm to advice corporate boards on the benefits of hybrid or remote working use cases, and adoption. Firm I work with have some teams at 4 days and others at 2 days a week. It is always team meetings at the office + long lunch breaks
aborsy 4y ago
That $453B had been greedily seized by the real estate owners, often by inheritance. Good that a portion is being released to some of the workers, who no longer pay exorbitant fees.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  The fees won't be as big a change as businesses being able to pay higher salaries from the savings.
cuteboy19 4y ago
But why don't these people consider where that money is now being spent? Perhaps it should be rephrased as residents saved $453 billion due to remote work
- geodel 4y ago
  No they did not because real estate prices in suburbs went up.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tomrod 4y ago
Good. Convert the real estate to residential and other commercial, build fiber to smaller communities, let people disaggregate.
black_13 4y ago
Elidrake42 4y ago
A bit off topic; I of course understand that I'm an odd situation and not representative of the broader trend at play here... But moving into remote work inspired my partner and I to move into Manhattan from the sprawling car driven nightmare that was Phoenix. Tiny little studio, but we've never been particularly materialistic, a murphy bed massively opens up the space, and no office to go into means once the day is over we're a step or short train ride to really anything we could imagine doing without having to worry about gas/Uber pricing. Went for a lovely bike ride early in the morning, the city is practically dead at ~4:30AM. Whole Foods is just as expensive as it was in the suburbs of Phoenix, and our local Trader Joes is cheaper than the Fry's (Kroger) was out West. Then you have the street produce that absolutely slaughters any prices I've seen anywhere. It's a little bit of work to find reasonably priced restaurants, admittedly, but there still are 6-10$ plates out here if you have the patience to look. I do miss In-N-Out. Though really I think this is an indictment of the current state of Phoenix more than it is a reason to praise Manhattan... I'm sure any of the many lovely "flyover" states in-between would have much more livable pricing, and the drive cross-country showed that Arizona has some of the highest gas prices in the country. Plan to move onto Wisconsin after a couple years, another plus of working remote (with companies that are very open/willing to support us in that choice).
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  I see a LOT of people moving to NYC for this reason. Not Midtown or the Financial District, mind you - the UES, UWS, Williamsburg, etc. I did it. I don't commute but am so much happier here than with more space in suburbia.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Same perspective here. Even as a rural-boy-turned-inveterate-urbanite, I'm happy that people who don't want to live in the city are decreasingly forced to live in the city due to their jobs. There are plenty of people out there like me who were looking to escape to the city but who were stymied by all the people living in the city who wanted to escape to the country. I just prefer density and walkability/bikeability.
game_the0ry 4y ago
I was in Manhattan when the pandemic hit, now I am in suburbs and I kind of like it out here. I miss the city, but it seems rent has gone up, not down, since 2020. So I will be staying out here for a while.
- brookst 4y ago
  New York rental vacancy rate is still pretty typical, but trending up[0]. I expect it will continue as leases expire and people move to WFH elsewhere. If that happens, rents should come down, unless RealPage and similar drive price spirals of higher prices for fewer occupied units. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC
  - game_the0ry 4y ago
    Not too sure about that. I visited NYC several times after covid, and it is packed every time. The offices might not be full, but the streets and apartments def are. > Dense downtowns in Austin and New York have seen steep increases in rental demand, a sign that people continue to be willing to pay a premium to live in a social district. (^^from the article) People, especially young people, still find NYC desirable enough to pay a lot for rent.
    - brookst 4y ago
      I wonder how they square steep increase in rental demand in NYC with decreasing occupancy rates.
onphonenow 4y ago
downtowns are picking up. With remote work my wife walks downtown and gets lunch etc. Places like SF though may struggle because parts of Sf are not inviting - car gets broken into, have to lock bike going into stores etc
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Downtown SF has horrible QOL issues and will take a long time to recover. Downtown Columbus has had no problems continuing to thrive, because they don't tolerate shitting in the streets and shooting up in front of restaurants.
moloch-hai 4y ago
The headline relies on a definition of "cost" I do not accept. Cities will get less tax income, sure, but their outlay is also less. Their actual costs could be radically reduced by changing zoning laws to enable residents to live near their place of employment.
- ethagknight 4y ago
  In many cities, high-rises office towers pay multi million dollar tax bills. It's nearly free revenue that doesn't really cost the city any more effort to serve. Taxing office space is the only mechanism cities typically have to tax the business community to help pay for the services is it provides to its residents. That revenue evaporates, and will have to be balanced by increased residential assessment or fed/state government bailout.
josefresco 4y ago
City downtown or small town downtown? This sounds like city-downtown. Traditional "downtown" America was killed or mortally wounded by Walmart many years ago. In fact, the town I grew up in got a Walmart in the mid-90's and now it has a robust stretch of highway with every "big box" vendor. Guess what happened to the quant brick building downtown that used to have every store one could need? The town I would bike around every day, meet my friends and where my mom and her peers worked? Dead. It's now a mishmash of crap stores and empty storefronts despite hosting a decent college.
hobbitstan 4y ago
As a side note: the quality of life of pets has increased dramatically since the pandemic. With people working from home, they now have more company and less time spent locked in crates. That’s the reason I have for not returning to the office and will ensure I only do remote work from now on.
- roamerz 4y ago
  That's worth more than a side note. When I was non-remote I drove home 2-3 days a week (1hr round trip) when no one else was home to let them out and spend 30 minutes with them.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  This is my reason for never going non-remote again as well.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Crating dogs is unethical, it's illegal in many parts of northern Europe, and it's tolerance on spaces like HN would be a sign that the average individual here has zero compassion. "Oh it's like a den for them" Well, ancient people didn't close the damn den every night.
  - hobbitstan 4y ago
    I agree and have never crated any of my animal friends. I hate those crates. So terrible!
blockwriter 4y ago
HBO Max has a documentary about the Automat, which was once America's largest chain restaurant. You could put in coins and receive food from small automated doors and spigots at the Automat. Its downfall came with expansion of the suburbs, as there were fewer people remaining in the city center after work. The present crisis of city centers seems similar. I'm not sure if the relevance of city centers has basically been downhill since the first half of the 20th century, or if this phenomenon is cyclical. Give it a watch.
- cguess 4y ago
  I'd argue they're becoming more relevant, just less business-centric. A lot of people still like living near other people with easy access to goods, services, entertainment, etc without needing the excess of a large lawn and the isolation that comes with it. (The crowd on HN may be skewed towards the latter, but it doesn't make it wrong) Being able to walk to pick your kids up from school, stop at a coffee shop on the way home, not have to worry about car seats, or waiting in an idling car for 30 minutes for your place in line, it can be a very nice life.
- adolph 4y ago
  The term automat refers to a model of food distribution. [0] The movie [1] is about a specific firm, Horn & Hardart [2]. I don't think I'd agree with a thesis that suburbs were the direct cause of H&H's automat chain's decline. Logistically, there is a balance of preparation, freshness and transaction latency. The automat inverted freshness and transaction to prep latency from trad restaurants. The arrival of "fast food" used standardization to decrease prep and transaction latency from trad restaurant levels while maintaining freshness levels. In terms of payment tech, I'm not able to find a reference but my recollection is that automated bill accepting technology not common until the 1980s. If automats were unable to accept bills then they would be unable to offer higher value meals without human intervention (and lose their transaction latency advantage). [3] The format was threatened by the arrival of fast food, served over the counter and with more payment flexibility than traditional automats. . . . Another contributing factor to their demise was the inflation of the 1970s, increasing food prices which made the use of coins increasingly inconvenient in a time before bill acceptors commonly appeared on vending equipment. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_detector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_detector Edit: removed first sentence "It's like a failure of imagination is cyclical." which had to do with H&H and other's ability to pivot, which H&H did in spades.
rayiner 4y ago
This is great for the climate, for families, and for residential communities. I’ve commuted so much less and spent so much more time with my kids since remote work. And impromptu gatherings with neighbors seems to be up at least for us.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  But have you considered the bottom lines of landlords, real estate companies and tax-entitled cities? Surely you realise that these people are more deserving of your money than you yourself. The climate is a small price to pay for it of course
haney 4y ago
The article mentions Facebook closing two of their smaller offices without mentioning that 770 is still the same size and that they’re getting ready to move into the largest office they’re ever had in the city near Penn Station.
gregors 4y ago
Given a choice, a lot of people would rather not just fork over a large percentage of their take home pay to the landlords of downtowns. Those landlords have been driving the zoning policies for decades in their favor. Now things are just a tiny bit less in their favor. They kept the status quo for a very long time and made a lot of money doing so. Now things are changing. Good.
Certified 4y ago
I had a long talk with a Chicago born cab driver when visiting a few years back. He explained to me that Chicago used to be a conventional city where the businesses were downtown and residential was a donut around that. Traffic was congested into downtown in the mornings and out of downtown in the evenings. As the city grew and commutes into downtown from the suburbs worsened, the businesses started moving out of downtown into the suburbs to be closer to their employees. This left downtown with low occupancy. A few people eventually got wise to the situation and started turning a lot of the unused downtown commercial space into residential space. Fast forward to today and the traffic patterns have reversed, with congestion out of downtown in the morning as people commute out towards the ring of businesses and into downtown in the evening where people now live. I see this same trend happening in Houston where I live now and I suspect it is happening in other large car-centric cities as well.
- mikeryan 4y ago
  So SF is interesting, I grew up here. In the early days of the internet I always considered the oracle buildings the northern edge of SV. Took a developer job at TechTV in SF in 99 when SOMA was known as “multimedia gulch” and had a reverse commute from Portola Valley to SF. Mid 2000 SV extended into SF as more of the new Unicorns, Twitter and Zynga (who moved into the office space on Townsend where I had worked) were early ones with the rise of Social Media. That shifted the commute patterns both ways and led to the start of the Google bus. Patterns haven’t seemed to reverse really but it’s still easier these days to commute I the Bay Area then it was pre-pandemic.
- dave78 4y ago
  I live in the Chicago area and this is just not true on a large scale at all. The commute into downtown Chicago on a weekday morning is extremely busy (especially pre-COVID), whether by car or rail. The reverse direction is nearly empty. Even as I write this at 9:15am (with rush hour ebbing), you can see this for yourself on Google Maps - the inbound lanes on all the highway arteries are all orange/red, the outbound lanes are all green. For a long time, my office was always in the suburbs. Out of the 100s of people I knew in the office, I only ever heard of maybe a dozen living in the city and reverse commuting. They were always fresh out of college, and all gave up that lifestyle after a couple years because commuting out to the suburbs each day is challenging and time-consuming (no easy way to get from the rail station to the office, for instance). Our company decided to move their headquarters into the city "to attract younger talent" a few years before COVID. What actually happened is that over the course of several years, the vast majority of people assigned to the new downtown office slowly stopped coming in at all and now nearly everyone works from home, and COVID of course only accelerated that. The younger people that live in the city are almost always on Zoom when they join meetings so it doesn't seem like they're taking advantage of the office much either now. Also, there were a small number of people who lived in the suburbs but favored city life who moved back into the city when the office moved there. However, anecdotally every single one of them that I know moved back out to the suburbs in 2020/2021 because they all became trapped in their small apartments with nowhere else to go because Chicago shut everything down for an extended period of time. Now that things are open again, no one that I know has moved back, and our office downtown is still a ghost town. On the rare occasion I've gone in, it's not uncommon to be the only person present on an entire floor of the building. I don't know how long the lease is but I have to imagine we'll scale way back on the space when it expires.
liminal 4y ago
I'm continually surprised by the resiliency of the urban housing real estate market given the remote work transition. Why pay such a huge premium to sit at home? I understand wanting to be where the action is, but e.g. the New York rental market just seems insane.
- standardUser 4y ago
  People pay to live in urban centers to not sit at home. They're there for that aforementioned action! But on a more practical level, a lot of people enjoy being able to walk to the gym, supermarket, cafes, restaurants, etc and when working from home you get to utilize that luxury even more often. My days are often littered with short-to-medium walks
qwertyuiop_ 4y ago
I don't want to get back into the human cattle cars called commuter trains and buses while the "officials" are driving around in Suburbans and parking in "official spots"
badcppdev 4y ago
"Rural Flight Is Gutting Country Towns. Will Cost Local Areas $7T Over Next Century" - 1885
maayank 4y ago
“Remote work props up smaller communities, pumping in $453B”
TimPC 4y ago
It’s annoying that articles repeatedly wrongly claim that reduced real estate prices lead to reduced real estate taxes. The method of computation of real estate taxes generates a mil rate which is the percentage rate that needs to be charged to generate the current budget’s revenue. This rate is computed each assessment after the property values are adjusted. The government gets the same total amount of money if property values are high vs if they are low.
- kodyo 4y ago
  That's not true, at least not everywhere. My property taxes always go up when my property values are adjusted upwards.
  - yardie 4y ago
    It doesn't disagree with the OP. If the budget has not changed your millage rate should have gone down even if your property value goes up. Most likely your city hall did not adjust the millage rate down and used the extra assessment to pay down debt. In my own city even though my millage rate is going down because of new developments going up it's being offset by values going up.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    Usually this means your property grew in value faster than the rest of the city so you now pay for a higher total percentage of the cities budget. This has happened to me too. Roughly speaking if the mill rate falls from 1.0% to 0.9% but your property went from $1 million to $1.2 million you now pay $10,800 instead of $10,000. But the rise in property prices still caused the mill rate to go down.
mooreds 4y ago
How about an alternate headline: "remote work revitalizes small towns, allows people to spend more time with their friends and families"?
- blue039 4y ago
  If you haven't felt it already the management consultants and CEOs are doing everything they can to damage remote work. I even heard the other day from one of these types that "studies show in-office work is more productive". Its just a reminder that no matter what your pay and benefits "we are family" is always bullshit. Their goal is to simply extract maximum life from you at any cost. Despite increasing employee safety (no need to drive), reducing overall employee costs, and increasing employee health and welfare overall they will take all of this away. You can even find shills and company men here in this very forum touting the "astounding benefits" of office work. At my current gig all of our remote benefits were taken away to encourage us to come into the office but the company would not say, officially, remote work is over. Fuck these people.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  Don't forget all the money saved by reduced real estate and commuting costs.
Yorch 4y ago
I hate cities so much that I'd rather dedicate myself to taking care of a flock of sheep than set foot in a damn office in a city again.
adamnemecek 4y ago
Playing the world's saddest song on the world's smallest violin
deleted 4y ago
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SuperFine 4y ago
Good. Urban real estate is due for a correction.
jeffwask 4y ago
The wholesale abdication of cities to CRE is at an end. These useless monuments to corporate excess will eventually be turned into residential and mixed used properties that will revitalize walking cities. The blocker is again the greed of the CRE industry and corporate interests who know their overinflated property values will start to plummet once the conversions from gaudy status symbols to usable affordable city real estate begins.
timcavel 4y ago
ihaveabeardnow 4y ago
perfect setup for Sunk Cost Fallacy on a massive scale
mgrthrow 4y ago
We built downtowns like deserts, rather than mixing housing, commercial, and office space holistically. Chicken coming home to roost.
_hcuq 4y ago
No problem. Convert those commercial spaces to residential. There is a major housing shortage.
izzydata 4y ago
It doesn't "cost" them that much if they never had that money to begin with. If I give you $10 every month and then I stop for a month that doesn't mean me not giving you $10 cost you $10. People are still living they are just doing it somewhere else and the money will follow.
bearmode 4y ago
Gooood shit.
bannedbybros 4y ago
analyte123 4y ago
It was quite short-sighted for the owners of hundreds of billions in commercial real estate to sit idly while almost all work turned into sitting in front of a personal screen. You used to have drafting rooms, map rooms, operation centers, and other types of collaborative environment. Now you have your own screen. Think of the boost to their property values if there were commercially available roomscale software, or some kind of hologram table.
adam_arthur 4y ago
Cities can revive and thrive if they open up zoning to allow for mass office to residential conversion. Imagine what converting 50% of NYC offices to residential would do to foot traffic and rents. City living has the potential to be far cheaper than suburban due to economies of scale. They only weren’t prior due to the concentration of high paying jobs, which presumably are going to shift to remote/global and have far less of a concentrated impact on local economies Before people say it’s not cost viable, it is in many cases, and was already being done precovid. https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-the-way-in-office-to-apartment-conversions/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-the-w...
eweise 4y ago
Glad to hear it. Employers treated their workers like cattle, stuffing them together into ever shrinking spaces. I'll never go back to that torture.
rychco 4y ago
Good! There's finally a way to escape the awful, soul-sucking residential zoning prison that keeps people trapped in a suburban hellscape. The idea of settling into a 1+ hour daily commute for the rest of your life is genuinely depressing & terrifying. I'm thrilled that there's a chance (at the moment) to escape that nightmare. I will never willingly commute in a car ever again.
tnel77 4y ago
Gutting the downtowns of major cities perhaps. I personally think that remote work will be a bit of an equalizer that’ll allow more people to live in more affordable areas of the country. While it’s not glamorous, my hometown has 3,000 sqft lake homes for sale ranging from $350-700k. I have a few friends who have moved back home with their remote jobs and they are funneling that money into local bars and restaurants which desperately need it.
zozbot234 4y ago
Good. This is $453B that people can now put to better use, by working from their preferred location.
deskamess 4y ago
There is a big push in Ottawa, Canada to get govt workers back on the road and into buildings. Downtown businesses (restaurants, etc) are pushing for it and the govt is doing its best to cooperate with them. They are slowly moving the needle on how many days an employee needs to show up. Many are accepting it because its a low number of days per month (like 2) right now. But basically its the boil a frog strategy. There is a pro-downtown bias going on here and even if local govt does not help the Federal govt will. Zero consideration for sub-urban businesses.
paxys 4y ago
The downtown area of every major American city is an urban hellscape dominated by soulless office buildings, six lane roads, cars, parking lots and overpriced sandwich shops catering to the weekday lunch crowd. No shit no one wants to spends time over there unless forced to.
silisili 4y ago
The entire raison d'etre of cities in the first place is...jobs. When you no longer need a local job, it makes no sense to spend the extra money to get a smaller place near the city. Some people like the amenities and will prefer the city. And that's fine. But most people I've known in life tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. What's annoying to me is that this big reshuffling of people ends up putting a lot of people in areas that don't have the infra to handle it yet, and also messes up house prices and such in said areas. But that's a whole other topic.
29athrowaway 4y ago
Office districts suck. It is draining to share a space with sycophants fake-smiling and fake-laughing, and superficial people ("dress for the job you want" and similar bullshit). And the few loud people without empathy that distract others while they try to focus. Just let people be represented by what matters: their work. Do you do good work? let that be what matters. Let people work from a quiet place instead of cargo-culting the open office layout hoax. Finally, working from home, we can actually do work instead of waiting for loud people to shut up. And yes: many times, the reason I went for a coffee walk was to wait for some loud person to shut up and I know I am not the only one. If you want to meet face-to-face to read my face expressions to know if I am lying to you or I am hiding something, or you need to see me sitting in a desk, then instead of doing that, then just don't fucking hire in the first place because you don't trust me. If you have trust issues, instead of opening an office, go see a therapist. Even though I care about other people's well-being, I don't care about your appearance. And thanks to remote work now nobody gets distracted by your appearance, and that is amazing. Now that we are all interacting electronically, I cannot wait for the next generation of collaborative tools that auto-flags toxic behavior. Or a solution that does sentiment analysis on what people say in real time, such as "You sound sad as fuck, can you please cheer up a little bit?". Or "insults are not OK, please go see HR after this meeting".
deleted 4y ago
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my_city 4y ago
Always blame the workers, never blame a system that is based in the following pillars: the exploitation of said workers, unlimited growth, the plundering of developing nations and the vast ammount of profits being kept by the capitalist class.
polski-g 4y ago
Cities now compete for people, instead of corporations. This is a net positive. If cities want to do civilizational-destroying activities like not prosecuting shoplifting or eliminating cash bail, then they can suffer the consequences of not having any residential tax revenue.
- fundad 4y ago
  In-person office jobs are a product and office space and restaurant lunches are accessories to that product. Demand is trending away from those products. Cities are going to have to offer more than just expensive housing for boomers and brunchers. Cities need to be a place where anyone can afford a place to live and start a business and a family. Residential housing should not be left to the commercial sector.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453B Looked at another way: “remote work is easing competition for downtown real estate, providing an easy route for cities to deal with housing crises in urban cores.”
yurikoif 4y ago
Typical BI. Should have its title changed to: Remote work is making downtowns more affordable, will save people $blablaB
smcleod 4y ago
Good. We have people needing housing and people not needing office buildings. Something needed to change.
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
This is an American problem. Not a cities problem. There are cities with downtowns where people live in them. Not every city follows the American model of concentrating commercial activity in the center and having most people live in unsustainable suburbs. That's the problem. This is what America gets for building shit cities that no one wants to live in. This is fundamentally a problem with a lack of mixed zoning and American style suburbia.
8bitsrule 4y ago
Barcelona has undertaken a re-working of it's central district. Good idea! "Barcelona has launched an ambitious 10-year plan to reclaim the city’s streets from cars and cut down pollution with the creation of green spaces and public squares. One in three streets in the heavily polluted central Eixample district – the 20th-century grid devised by the engineer Ildefons Cerdà – will become green zones under the scheme, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists, and 21 public squares will be created at intersections...." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/barcelona-launches-10-year-plan-to-reclaim-city-streets-from-cars https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/barcelona-laun...

199 points by kungfudoi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

These seeds were sowed when cities cashed in on commercial real estate, pushing residential zoning further and further out of the city. Wake up call: nobody wants to spend longer than they have to on an unpaid, unpredictable commute into the city anymore. So while these downtown businesses are getting 1/3 of the foot traffic that they used to, all the supermarkets and shops a few miles down the road are raking it in.

reset-password 4y ago
Right. The value has not been lost. It has been shifted. It happens.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mantas 4y ago
  It depends on how you count value. Let's say you work from home and make your lunch. Previously you'd buy ready-to-eat lunch. While you still buy ingredients and pay for energy, you don't pay for someone to prepare it and then sell to you, prepare the housing of the eatery and so on. Effectively some GDP was lost. Next, let's say you grow some of your own veggies...
highwaylights 4y ago
I used to get the bus to work about 10 years ago because parking in the city became so expensive (I stopped long before Covid hit). The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time. I had a commute time that ranged between one and two hours over that stretch as I'd lived in a couple of different places, but that wasn't even extreme. I knew people with 2+ hour commutes each way which they did for years on end. I understand there are a lot of people who need a place to work away from their home, but who is going to voluntarily return to an office when they don't need to just to prop up your portfolio and obsolete businesses? Why should they? It's like the argument that people should support local businesses instead of buying from Amazon. If Amazon is cheaper and more convenient, why would someone buy anything elsewhere? (It's not like those businesses are going to help with your rent or food costs).
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  I've had funny conversations about why I still wear a good n95 on public transit (planes included). My right-leaning and remarkably well educated parents are incredulous. A few years ago I thought personal masking didn't really matter. Wow, I was wrong! And not catching bs colds from weirdos on the bus or the grocery store makes it worth it. My face isn't that pretty anyway.
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    They might be right about the actual plane ride because the filtration systems on modern (read 20 years old or newer) are really good. Public busses tend to be a disaster for air filtration though, especially in winter when no windows are open. I wish there was some better research/more accessible research on this.
    - jghn 4y ago
      Even if the plane's filtration is good, if the person 3 feet away from you is coughing it's not going to be that good. I'd rather rely on the combination of filtration & a mask. Defense in depth. Day to day i'm not religious about masking, but for things like public transportation, airplanes, etc I try to always have face protection on.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Pressurized airplanes have air changes per hour in the 12-16 range. That's above the ASHRAE recommended 6-12 air changes per hour for places that may contain viruses. (Obviously, ASHRAE isn't the CDC or healthcare organization directly, but they do know a few things about standards setting for HVAC.) Excellent filtration isn't as relevant when the average air molecule is in the aircraft for only 5-10 minutes. The standard for AC/H for offices is 3-4.
        lamontcg 4y ago
        The studied COVID outbreaks on planes show that this still isn't sufficient. I'm also pretty sure I got sick from the kid sitting directly behind me on the plane when I got influenza. You can site all the statistics and propaganda in the world about plane ventilation. It clearly isn't enough to prevent viral spread (I don't care about air changes per hour or cfm or anything else, the only endpoint worth discussing is viral spread--I give precisely zero fucks about how fast the air is moving around). I'm using n95s on planes from here on out.
rayiner 4y ago
Yeah—the stores in our area (which is a bedroom community for Baltimore and to a lesser extent DC) are doing great.
- jgalentine007 4y ago
  Which is funny, because after 2008 it felt like a lot of the bedroom communities / strip malls struggled and went down hill (lack of demand I guess) - and it felt like a whole wave of young people were only wanting to live in the city.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Living in the city is great for young people who have no kids - lots of entertainment options a short walk away. It's noisier/busier/dirtier (EVs will help A LOT with noise and pollution). Living further out is much nicer when you have kids - more space, more freedom for the kids to move around, more trees for them to climb and places to explore.
    - jghn 4y ago
      Don't forget older people who have no kids. I'm part of a DINK couple and could not imagine leaving an urban area. There's so much more to do, so much easier to get around, etc.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        Sorry. Didn't mean to. I suspect we'll be in that space in about 10 years or so, when being next to a good hospital with excellent geriatric services will be more important than having trees to climb.
    - thatfrenchguy 4y ago
      And nowhere for them to go by themselves? Living in the suburbs as a tween/teenager is death.
jksmith 4y ago
Carr's "The Big Switch" in reverse. Technology ushering in a decentralization effect. And that's fine. Work at home. Communities buy micro reactors, Starlink ready to go. Low carbon produce that doesn't have chemical shit all over it. Maybe testosterone rates go up, maybe cancer rates go down. Probably a good idea all around.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    I guess a lot of people got triggered by the first words and never finished reading after the downvote. Such an amazing movie...
    - adolph 4y ago
      The downvoters know the truth. rbanffy, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, rbanffy, __children's_ice_cream__. You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, rbanffy. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      HN readers don't like low value joke / sarcastic comments.
      - 4y ago
neutronicus 4y ago
Yes - pre-pandemic, white-collar office parks and big-box retail had already dispersed to the suburbs where I live (Baltimore). Honestly, remote work allowed us to stay in the city (our preference), if I'd had to keep commuting I don't know if raising my kid would have been workable for us.
marcyb5st 4y ago
Europe arguably has better public transportation and shorter commutes. I am still seeing this happening (don't have any data to back my claim, just my experience). If I have to guess here is more about the housing cost being the issue. Buying is prohibitive given the average income and most new units are only for rent. In the last 6 years I spent more than 140k CHF in rent (close to Zurich). Once remote working has started we said screw that and moved further away from downtown. Now we own a nice apartment with a garden (unthinkable before) and go the city only when required.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > Europe arguably has better public transportation and shorter commutes Mine (Dublin, Ireland) is still about an hour on the tram (for EUR 2) from where I live, so I'm not saying it's perfect, but my manager, in the Atlanta area, is a two-hour drive away from the office. That and he starting meetings at 6AM (because Dublin) makes me support remote working even more for the ATL teams. I gladly traded the rich cultural life and world-class restaurants for a walkable city and a house with a small park one gate away from the back yard. Even considering the occasional invasion of the house by a bunch of screaming little 10 yo's who are my daughter's gang (who lives mostly on the same street).
ar_lan 4y ago
Living in the Bay Area, I really can't afford to live close to my office. I have to drive to Palo Alto from San Jose (or take the train). Pre-pandemic, my drive averaged 1hr to the office, and 1.5hrs back. So, I'm wasting 2.5 hrs of my life every day... to do the same exact job I do from home (not to mention cost of gas/car maintenance). I also get more done at home, because I haven't reduced my hours any, but I don't waste time in the break room grabbing coffee and chatting. I don't know what the overall data is, and if I'm just a productive outlier or if that's a general trend. If I'm ever required to commute again, I 100% view it as a pay decrease.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  For a while, I used to commute from Santa Cruz to north San Jose for work. Since then, I absolutely factor my commute into my compensation, and anything more than an hour total commute per day is an additional premium. Factor in how terrible driving has become in the bay area, and I'm of half a mind to begin asking for hazard pay for commuting.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    Especially on that Hwy17
- cyberpunk 4y ago
  I really love it how even on days where our team is in the office, if just one person can't make it (quite likely) then almost all the meetings are virtual anyway. Sitting in a room together with headphones in zoom meetings! Brilliant. :D
  - dataexporter 4y ago
    Some conference rooms have good video conferencing facilities, so no headphones in the same room though. But I get your point, it is a pain to commute all the way to be on zoom calls.

timinou 4y ago

Title slightly misleading... The article makes the point that downtowns are turning from office to social centres and the $453B figure is more of an investment in repurposing offices and rethinking urban spaces for that purpose. I welcome these changes... Yes we'll need to rethink our urbanism, but if anything this switch feels like a coming back of what our urban centers are supposed to provide us. Imagine parking spaces becoming local artisans/food stalls, conference rooms becoming event spaces, coworking spaces adapted to people's lifestyle and living patterns (e.g. a suburban cowork with childcare and a dog park). "gutting downtown" might be true for those who are wary their office real estate investment will not have a positive ROI. But the way I see it, this change in urban patterns is a paradigm shift in wealth distribution patterns and in economic opportunities for leisure services, both locally and globally.

deleted 4y ago
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mikeryan 4y ago
Not sure what you read there but the roughly $500B figure is a real loss in the commercial real-estate sector as leases some off the books. It’s a slow burn. There’s an additional expense to try to repurpose these building as residential but it’s a massive one that won’t come easily. You can’t just turn modern office buildings into residential building by reworking the interior. Most wouldn’t meet residential codes (like bedrooms needing windows, emergency egress, additional plumbing and waste requirements, parking etc) Commercial real estate is going to take a massive hit the next 3-4 years and that $435B number is a real estimate in the decline in commercial real-estate value. It comes from this study. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30526/w30526.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30526/w305...
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  It's easier to turn office buildings into luxury apartments than into affordable ones -- a single 3000 square foot apartment has more layout flexibility, fewer plumbing & parking requirements, fewer emergency exits than five 600 square foot ones, et cetera. Advocates aren't going to be happy about 3000 square foot luxury apartments rather than affordable ones...

Lastodon 4y ago

Good. Feel the "hand of the free market" at last throttling the antiquated obese market that is business property. As automation and communication improves, so should corporate policy restructure and reform into the most efficient system. Dragging people across the country every day and filling the air with burnt dinosaur just because the old people in power can't figure out how to adapt is pathetic. New management styles are needed that incentivise the timekeeping of results over the timekeeping of presence.

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
Yeah seriously. Remote work is nothing new. It's been picking up steam, the pandemic just accelerated the shit out of it. The people/investors/whatever that bought these buildings for commercial purposes made a gamble and didn't prepare for the future. That's on them, not remote work. If I go buy a gas-guzzling Porsche today and its price depreciates to nothing because a sudden influx of more efficient and performant electric cars are released, that's on me for making a bad investment and not observing the trends. This reminds of when I worked for Hollywood Video Corporate (video rental business) in 2010 and the VP was telling us that brick and mortar video rental would eventually beat back streaming media. Every indicator was suggesting a different path and they chose to ignore it. They're gone now, streaming media is here to stay. Remote work is here to stay.
- jmoak3 4y ago
  I remember Hollywood Video! When I was in High School my family and I subscribed to their monthly rental plan, lots of good memories there.
fundad 4y ago
The problem is the tax base shrinks but police budgets never do.

osigurdson 4y ago

So, what is the solution? Force everyone back into the pointless office at enormous cost to employees and employers just to keep the status quo for landlords. The bottom line is downtown is a place where people work with information. Since it is possible to work with information anywhere, this place isn't needed (and hasn't been for a long time). Downtown obsolete.

Rovanion 4y ago
Walkable cities with mixed use development. Change the use of downtown.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  To what?
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    Walkable cities with mixed use development.
  - MSFT_Edging 4y ago
    A place where people live.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I'm not from the US - what is downtown used for today?
      - osigurdson 4y ago
        Manipulating information (i.e. editing bytes) mostly.
      - uuddlrlrbaba 4y ago
        Corporate hellscape mostly

nonethewiser 4y ago

Sucks for downtown's but I'm glad to see anything that leads to a broader distribution of population.

awesomegoat_com 4y ago
This. And I would say the broader distribution will actually be good for the environment as whole. Or at least it could be.
- aliqot 4y ago
  air smells cleaner too
- brookst 4y ago
  Walk me through that thinking? Downtown residents walk and use transit. Places with broader distribution of people typically rely on roads because transit isn’t economically efficient. My intuition is that higher population densities are more environmentally efficient because more people can be served by any resource. Are you thinking otherwise?
  - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    This debate is usually between "city people" and "McMansion suburbanites", but allow me to offer two alternatives. They are described as utopias, but they really have been realized to varying extents in various places. 1. One alternative is to revitalize the tons of walkable second-tier cities that are sitting there rotting, and to connect them with intercity transit. I love NYC, but the problem with concentrating everyone there and in SF, is that it drives up real estate prices and creates a desperate crush to acquire property. Yes, you can say "YIMBY", but even if that were politically feasible, it couldn't keep up with in-migration if there were only those few choices (NY and SF). It would badly bifurcate society, between those who had managed to secure a toehold, and those who hadn't. (In fact, it creates a culty Bitcoin-like dynamic, where those who have sunk the cost to be inducted (by buying property) are then incentivized to preach the benefits and keep the values up.) Then, because people would be so desperate for money to live in these places, they'd waste their lives on corrosive professions like surveillance advertising, instead of doing work that actually helps people. That may sound familiar. And, most importantly, geographic concentration would, arguably, go hand-in-hand with economic concentration -- with the formation of economic "chokepoints" and the concentration of monopoly power. 2. Even the medium-urbanist decentralization of (1) would however leave people dependent on monopolies for the provision of basic ecological services. What good is it to concentrate in cities, if all food is produced by one or two huge agricultural conglomerates? This is a condition of total dependence. As an alternative to urbanism, Permaculture-type people do have interesting ideas. But they require land. Their methods also -- let's be honest -- come with a dramatic reduction in what we call "living standards". But if "degrowth" can come from an increase in autonomy, then that might be a trade worth making. It's one I think young people would consider. We would probably see some amount of homophily among people, if they reorganized along these lines. There are many incompatible tribes: - The Colorado ski-bro kombucha-chick tribe. - Various Black Israelite and Egyption-religion back-to-Africa tribes. - The Kanye West cult of vaguely Trump-sympathetic heterodox permie stuff. - Indigenous revival movements. They're likely to have different language but similar interest in the environment. - Various trad-religious tribes, like the Mennonites and Amish, but you could totally see Benedict Option Catholics or even Evangelicals going this way. Again, they'd just talk a little differently. They wouldn't combine as a single "diverse" community, but you could see any and all of them borrowing permie ideas from one another. In the past I have spoken in favor of universalist ideologies (I like that they help me to get along with more people), but they might be at odds with this kind of pluralism. That would need to be worked out. 3. A natural answer is to say that there can be "gains from trade", and that not everyone needs to live in the same way. That there can be both cities and rural areas. But, a. I am doubtful of permaculture's ability to create the kind of surplus needed to sustain urban populations, and b. we would have to be very careful with the introduction of too much financial intermediation, lest we simply recreate the conditions we now have today. I'm not sure what the punchline here is, except -- - that issues of political economy need to be factored in here, because they ultimately determine how nature's resources are distributed; - that power is best when not concentrated; and - that I'm looking for ways beyond the dichotomies implied by these posts ("dense" vs. "not dense").

redandblack 4y ago

Waiting for a major strategy consulting firm to advice corporate boards on the benefits of hybrid or remote working use cases, and adoption. Firm I work with have some teams at 4 days and others at 2 days a week. It is always team meetings at the office + long lunch breaks

aborsy 4y ago

That $453B had been greedily seized by the real estate owners, often by inheritance. Good that a portion is being released to some of the workers, who no longer pay exorbitant fees.

robertlagrant 4y ago
The fees won't be as big a change as businesses being able to pay higher salaries from the savings.

cuteboy19 4y ago

But why don't these people consider where that money is now being spent? Perhaps it should be rephrased as residents saved $453 billion due to remote work

geodel 4y ago
No they did not because real estate prices in suburbs went up.

deleted 4y ago

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tomrod 4y ago

Good. Convert the real estate to residential and other commercial, build fiber to smaller communities, let people disaggregate.

black_13 4y ago

Elidrake42 4y ago

A bit off topic; I of course understand that I'm an odd situation and not representative of the broader trend at play here... But moving into remote work inspired my partner and I to move into Manhattan from the sprawling car driven nightmare that was Phoenix. Tiny little studio, but we've never been particularly materialistic, a murphy bed massively opens up the space, and no office to go into means once the day is over we're a step or short train ride to really anything we could imagine doing without having to worry about gas/Uber pricing. Went for a lovely bike ride early in the morning, the city is practically dead at ~4:30AM. Whole Foods is just as expensive as it was in the suburbs of Phoenix, and our local Trader Joes is cheaper than the Fry's (Kroger) was out West. Then you have the street produce that absolutely slaughters any prices I've seen anywhere. It's a little bit of work to find reasonably priced restaurants, admittedly, but there still are 6-10$ plates out here if you have the patience to look. I do miss In-N-Out. Though really I think this is an indictment of the current state of Phoenix more than it is a reason to praise Manhattan... I'm sure any of the many lovely "flyover" states in-between would have much more livable pricing, and the drive cross-country showed that Arizona has some of the highest gas prices in the country. Plan to move onto Wisconsin after a couple years, another plus of working remote (with companies that are very open/willing to support us in that choice).

throwayyy479087 4y ago
I see a LOT of people moving to NYC for this reason. Not Midtown or the Financial District, mind you - the UES, UWS, Williamsburg, etc. I did it. I don't commute but am so much happier here than with more space in suburbia.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Same perspective here. Even as a rural-boy-turned-inveterate-urbanite, I'm happy that people who don't want to live in the city are decreasingly forced to live in the city due to their jobs. There are plenty of people out there like me who were looking to escape to the city but who were stymied by all the people living in the city who wanted to escape to the country. I just prefer density and walkability/bikeability.

game_the0ry 4y ago

I was in Manhattan when the pandemic hit, now I am in suburbs and I kind of like it out here. I miss the city, but it seems rent has gone up, not down, since 2020. So I will be staying out here for a while.

brookst 4y ago
New York rental vacancy rate is still pretty typical, but trending up[0]. I expect it will continue as leases expire and people move to WFH elsewhere. If that happens, rents should come down, unless RealPage and similar drive price spirals of higher prices for fewer occupied units. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC
- game_the0ry 4y ago
  Not too sure about that. I visited NYC several times after covid, and it is packed every time. The offices might not be full, but the streets and apartments def are. > Dense downtowns in Austin and New York have seen steep increases in rental demand, a sign that people continue to be willing to pay a premium to live in a social district. (^^from the article) People, especially young people, still find NYC desirable enough to pay a lot for rent.
  - brookst 4y ago
    I wonder how they square steep increase in rental demand in NYC with decreasing occupancy rates.

onphonenow 4y ago

downtowns are picking up. With remote work my wife walks downtown and gets lunch etc. Places like SF though may struggle because parts of Sf are not inviting - car gets broken into, have to lock bike going into stores etc

throwayyy479087 4y ago
Downtown SF has horrible QOL issues and will take a long time to recover. Downtown Columbus has had no problems continuing to thrive, because they don't tolerate shitting in the streets and shooting up in front of restaurants.

moloch-hai 4y ago

The headline relies on a definition of "cost" I do not accept. Cities will get less tax income, sure, but their outlay is also less. Their actual costs could be radically reduced by changing zoning laws to enable residents to live near their place of employment.

ethagknight 4y ago
In many cities, high-rises office towers pay multi million dollar tax bills. It's nearly free revenue that doesn't really cost the city any more effort to serve. Taxing office space is the only mechanism cities typically have to tax the business community to help pay for the services is it provides to its residents. That revenue evaporates, and will have to be balanced by increased residential assessment or fed/state government bailout.

josefresco 4y ago

City downtown or small town downtown? This sounds like city-downtown. Traditional "downtown" America was killed or mortally wounded by Walmart many years ago. In fact, the town I grew up in got a Walmart in the mid-90's and now it has a robust stretch of highway with every "big box" vendor. Guess what happened to the quant brick building downtown that used to have every store one could need? The town I would bike around every day, meet my friends and where my mom and her peers worked? Dead. It's now a mishmash of crap stores and empty storefronts despite hosting a decent college.

hobbitstan 4y ago

As a side note: the quality of life of pets has increased dramatically since the pandemic. With people working from home, they now have more company and less time spent locked in crates. That’s the reason I have for not returning to the office and will ensure I only do remote work from now on.

roamerz 4y ago
That's worth more than a side note. When I was non-remote I drove home 2-3 days a week (1hr round trip) when no one else was home to let them out and spend 30 minutes with them.
Ancalagon 4y ago
This is my reason for never going non-remote again as well.
Der_Einzige 4y ago
Crating dogs is unethical, it's illegal in many parts of northern Europe, and it's tolerance on spaces like HN would be a sign that the average individual here has zero compassion. "Oh it's like a den for them" Well, ancient people didn't close the damn den every night.
- hobbitstan 4y ago
  I agree and have never crated any of my animal friends. I hate those crates. So terrible!

blockwriter 4y ago

HBO Max has a documentary about the Automat, which was once America's largest chain restaurant. You could put in coins and receive food from small automated doors and spigots at the Automat. Its downfall came with expansion of the suburbs, as there were fewer people remaining in the city center after work. The present crisis of city centers seems similar. I'm not sure if the relevance of city centers has basically been downhill since the first half of the 20th century, or if this phenomenon is cyclical. Give it a watch.

cguess 4y ago
I'd argue they're becoming more relevant, just less business-centric. A lot of people still like living near other people with easy access to goods, services, entertainment, etc without needing the excess of a large lawn and the isolation that comes with it. (The crowd on HN may be skewed towards the latter, but it doesn't make it wrong) Being able to walk to pick your kids up from school, stop at a coffee shop on the way home, not have to worry about car seats, or waiting in an idling car for 30 minutes for your place in line, it can be a very nice life.
adolph 4y ago
The term automat refers to a model of food distribution. [0] The movie [1] is about a specific firm, Horn & Hardart [2]. I don't think I'd agree with a thesis that suburbs were the direct cause of H&H's automat chain's decline. Logistically, there is a balance of preparation, freshness and transaction latency. The automat inverted freshness and transaction to prep latency from trad restaurants. The arrival of "fast food" used standardization to decrease prep and transaction latency from trad restaurant levels while maintaining freshness levels. In terms of payment tech, I'm not able to find a reference but my recollection is that automated bill accepting technology not common until the 1980s. If automats were unable to accept bills then they would be unable to offer higher value meals without human intervention (and lose their transaction latency advantage). [3] The format was threatened by the arrival of fast food, served over the counter and with more payment flexibility than traditional automats. . . . Another contributing factor to their demise was the inflation of the 1970s, increasing food prices which made the use of coins increasingly inconvenient in a time before bill acceptors commonly appeared on vending equipment. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_detector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_detector Edit: removed first sentence "It's like a failure of imagination is cyclical." which had to do with H&H and other's ability to pivot, which H&H did in spades.

rayiner 4y ago

This is great for the climate, for families, and for residential communities. I’ve commuted so much less and spent so much more time with my kids since remote work. And impromptu gatherings with neighbors seems to be up at least for us.

cuteboy19 4y ago
But have you considered the bottom lines of landlords, real estate companies and tax-entitled cities? Surely you realise that these people are more deserving of your money than you yourself. The climate is a small price to pay for it of course

haney 4y ago

The article mentions Facebook closing two of their smaller offices without mentioning that 770 is still the same size and that they’re getting ready to move into the largest office they’re ever had in the city near Penn Station.

gregors 4y ago

Given a choice, a lot of people would rather not just fork over a large percentage of their take home pay to the landlords of downtowns. Those landlords have been driving the zoning policies for decades in their favor. Now things are just a tiny bit less in their favor. They kept the status quo for a very long time and made a lot of money doing so. Now things are changing. Good.

Certified 4y ago

I had a long talk with a Chicago born cab driver when visiting a few years back. He explained to me that Chicago used to be a conventional city where the businesses were downtown and residential was a donut around that. Traffic was congested into downtown in the mornings and out of downtown in the evenings. As the city grew and commutes into downtown from the suburbs worsened, the businesses started moving out of downtown into the suburbs to be closer to their employees. This left downtown with low occupancy. A few people eventually got wise to the situation and started turning a lot of the unused downtown commercial space into residential space. Fast forward to today and the traffic patterns have reversed, with congestion out of downtown in the morning as people commute out towards the ring of businesses and into downtown in the evening where people now live. I see this same trend happening in Houston where I live now and I suspect it is happening in other large car-centric cities as well.

mikeryan 4y ago
So SF is interesting, I grew up here. In the early days of the internet I always considered the oracle buildings the northern edge of SV. Took a developer job at TechTV in SF in 99 when SOMA was known as “multimedia gulch” and had a reverse commute from Portola Valley to SF. Mid 2000 SV extended into SF as more of the new Unicorns, Twitter and Zynga (who moved into the office space on Townsend where I had worked) were early ones with the rise of Social Media. That shifted the commute patterns both ways and led to the start of the Google bus. Patterns haven’t seemed to reverse really but it’s still easier these days to commute I the Bay Area then it was pre-pandemic.
dave78 4y ago
I live in the Chicago area and this is just not true on a large scale at all. The commute into downtown Chicago on a weekday morning is extremely busy (especially pre-COVID), whether by car or rail. The reverse direction is nearly empty. Even as I write this at 9:15am (with rush hour ebbing), you can see this for yourself on Google Maps - the inbound lanes on all the highway arteries are all orange/red, the outbound lanes are all green. For a long time, my office was always in the suburbs. Out of the 100s of people I knew in the office, I only ever heard of maybe a dozen living in the city and reverse commuting. They were always fresh out of college, and all gave up that lifestyle after a couple years because commuting out to the suburbs each day is challenging and time-consuming (no easy way to get from the rail station to the office, for instance). Our company decided to move their headquarters into the city "to attract younger talent" a few years before COVID. What actually happened is that over the course of several years, the vast majority of people assigned to the new downtown office slowly stopped coming in at all and now nearly everyone works from home, and COVID of course only accelerated that. The younger people that live in the city are almost always on Zoom when they join meetings so it doesn't seem like they're taking advantage of the office much either now. Also, there were a small number of people who lived in the suburbs but favored city life who moved back into the city when the office moved there. However, anecdotally every single one of them that I know moved back out to the suburbs in 2020/2021 because they all became trapped in their small apartments with nowhere else to go because Chicago shut everything down for an extended period of time. Now that things are open again, no one that I know has moved back, and our office downtown is still a ghost town. On the rare occasion I've gone in, it's not uncommon to be the only person present on an entire floor of the building. I don't know how long the lease is but I have to imagine we'll scale way back on the space when it expires.

liminal 4y ago

I'm continually surprised by the resiliency of the urban housing real estate market given the remote work transition. Why pay such a huge premium to sit at home? I understand wanting to be where the action is, but e.g. the New York rental market just seems insane.

standardUser 4y ago
People pay to live in urban centers to not sit at home. They're there for that aforementioned action! But on a more practical level, a lot of people enjoy being able to walk to the gym, supermarket, cafes, restaurants, etc and when working from home you get to utilize that luxury even more often. My days are often littered with short-to-medium walks

qwertyuiop_ 4y ago

I don't want to get back into the human cattle cars called commuter trains and buses while the "officials" are driving around in Suburbans and parking in "official spots"

badcppdev 4y ago

"Rural Flight Is Gutting Country Towns. Will Cost Local Areas $7T Over Next Century" - 1885

maayank 4y ago

“Remote work props up smaller communities, pumping in $453B”

TimPC 4y ago

It’s annoying that articles repeatedly wrongly claim that reduced real estate prices lead to reduced real estate taxes. The method of computation of real estate taxes generates a mil rate which is the percentage rate that needs to be charged to generate the current budget’s revenue. This rate is computed each assessment after the property values are adjusted. The government gets the same total amount of money if property values are high vs if they are low.

kodyo 4y ago
That's not true, at least not everywhere. My property taxes always go up when my property values are adjusted upwards.
- yardie 4y ago
  It doesn't disagree with the OP. If the budget has not changed your millage rate should have gone down even if your property value goes up. Most likely your city hall did not adjust the millage rate down and used the extra assessment to pay down debt. In my own city even though my millage rate is going down because of new developments going up it's being offset by values going up.
- TimPC 4y ago
  Usually this means your property grew in value faster than the rest of the city so you now pay for a higher total percentage of the cities budget. This has happened to me too. Roughly speaking if the mill rate falls from 1.0% to 0.9% but your property went from $1 million to $1.2 million you now pay $10,800 instead of $10,000. But the rise in property prices still caused the mill rate to go down.

mooreds 4y ago

How about an alternate headline: "remote work revitalizes small towns, allows people to spend more time with their friends and families"?

blue039 4y ago
If you haven't felt it already the management consultants and CEOs are doing everything they can to damage remote work. I even heard the other day from one of these types that "studies show in-office work is more productive". Its just a reminder that no matter what your pay and benefits "we are family" is always bullshit. Their goal is to simply extract maximum life from you at any cost. Despite increasing employee safety (no need to drive), reducing overall employee costs, and increasing employee health and welfare overall they will take all of this away. You can even find shills and company men here in this very forum touting the "astounding benefits" of office work. At my current gig all of our remote benefits were taken away to encourage us to come into the office but the company would not say, officially, remote work is over. Fuck these people.
nitwit005 4y ago
Don't forget all the money saved by reduced real estate and commuting costs.

Yorch 4y ago

I hate cities so much that I'd rather dedicate myself to taking care of a flock of sheep than set foot in a damn office in a city again.

adamnemecek 4y ago

Playing the world's saddest song on the world's smallest violin

deleted 4y ago

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SuperFine 4y ago

Good. Urban real estate is due for a correction.

jeffwask 4y ago

The wholesale abdication of cities to CRE is at an end. These useless monuments to corporate excess will eventually be turned into residential and mixed used properties that will revitalize walking cities. The blocker is again the greed of the CRE industry and corporate interests who know their overinflated property values will start to plummet once the conversions from gaudy status symbols to usable affordable city real estate begins.

timcavel 4y ago

ihaveabeardnow 4y ago

perfect setup for Sunk Cost Fallacy on a massive scale

mgrthrow 4y ago

We built downtowns like deserts, rather than mixing housing, commercial, and office space holistically. Chicken coming home to roost.

_hcuq 4y ago

No problem. Convert those commercial spaces to residential. There is a major housing shortage.

izzydata 4y ago

It doesn't "cost" them that much if they never had that money to begin with. If I give you $10 every month and then I stop for a month that doesn't mean me not giving you $10 cost you $10. People are still living they are just doing it somewhere else and the money will follow.

bearmode 4y ago

Gooood shit.

bannedbybros 4y ago

analyte123 4y ago

It was quite short-sighted for the owners of hundreds of billions in commercial real estate to sit idly while almost all work turned into sitting in front of a personal screen. You used to have drafting rooms, map rooms, operation centers, and other types of collaborative environment. Now you have your own screen. Think of the boost to their property values if there were commercially available roomscale software, or some kind of hologram table.

adam_arthur 4y ago

Cities can revive and thrive if they open up zoning to allow for mass office to residential conversion. Imagine what converting 50% of NYC offices to residential would do to foot traffic and rents. City living has the potential to be far cheaper than suburban due to economies of scale. They only weren’t prior due to the concentration of high paying jobs, which presumably are going to shift to remote/global and have far less of a concentrated impact on local economies Before people say it’s not cost viable, it is in many cases, and was already being done precovid. https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-the-way-in-office-to-apartment-conversions/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-the-w...

eweise 4y ago

Glad to hear it. Employers treated their workers like cattle, stuffing them together into ever shrinking spaces. I'll never go back to that torture.

rychco 4y ago

Good! There's finally a way to escape the awful, soul-sucking residential zoning prison that keeps people trapped in a suburban hellscape. The idea of settling into a 1+ hour daily commute for the rest of your life is genuinely depressing & terrifying. I'm thrilled that there's a chance (at the moment) to escape that nightmare. I will never willingly commute in a car ever again.

tnel77 4y ago

Gutting the downtowns of major cities perhaps. I personally think that remote work will be a bit of an equalizer that’ll allow more people to live in more affordable areas of the country. While it’s not glamorous, my hometown has 3,000 sqft lake homes for sale ranging from $350-700k. I have a few friends who have moved back home with their remote jobs and they are funneling that money into local bars and restaurants which desperately need it.

zozbot234 4y ago

Good. This is $453B that people can now put to better use, by working from their preferred location.

deskamess 4y ago

There is a big push in Ottawa, Canada to get govt workers back on the road and into buildings. Downtown businesses (restaurants, etc) are pushing for it and the govt is doing its best to cooperate with them. They are slowly moving the needle on how many days an employee needs to show up. Many are accepting it because its a low number of days per month (like 2) right now. But basically its the boil a frog strategy. There is a pro-downtown bias going on here and even if local govt does not help the Federal govt will. Zero consideration for sub-urban businesses.

paxys 4y ago

The downtown area of every major American city is an urban hellscape dominated by soulless office buildings, six lane roads, cars, parking lots and overpriced sandwich shops catering to the weekday lunch crowd. No shit no one wants to spends time over there unless forced to.

silisili 4y ago

The entire raison d'etre of cities in the first place is...jobs. When you no longer need a local job, it makes no sense to spend the extra money to get a smaller place near the city. Some people like the amenities and will prefer the city. And that's fine. But most people I've known in life tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. What's annoying to me is that this big reshuffling of people ends up putting a lot of people in areas that don't have the infra to handle it yet, and also messes up house prices and such in said areas. But that's a whole other topic.

29athrowaway 4y ago

Office districts suck. It is draining to share a space with sycophants fake-smiling and fake-laughing, and superficial people ("dress for the job you want" and similar bullshit). And the few loud people without empathy that distract others while they try to focus. Just let people be represented by what matters: their work. Do you do good work? let that be what matters. Let people work from a quiet place instead of cargo-culting the open office layout hoax. Finally, working from home, we can actually do work instead of waiting for loud people to shut up. And yes: many times, the reason I went for a coffee walk was to wait for some loud person to shut up and I know I am not the only one. If you want to meet face-to-face to read my face expressions to know if I am lying to you or I am hiding something, or you need to see me sitting in a desk, then instead of doing that, then just don't fucking hire in the first place because you don't trust me. If you have trust issues, instead of opening an office, go see a therapist. Even though I care about other people's well-being, I don't care about your appearance. And thanks to remote work now nobody gets distracted by your appearance, and that is amazing. Now that we are all interacting electronically, I cannot wait for the next generation of collaborative tools that auto-flags toxic behavior. Or a solution that does sentiment analysis on what people say in real time, such as "You sound sad as fuck, can you please cheer up a little bit?". Or "insults are not OK, please go see HR after this meeting".

deleted 4y ago

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my_city 4y ago

Always blame the workers, never blame a system that is based in the following pillars: the exploitation of said workers, unlimited growth, the plundering of developing nations and the vast ammount of profits being kept by the capitalist class.

polski-g 4y ago

Cities now compete for people, instead of corporations. This is a net positive. If cities want to do civilizational-destroying activities like not prosecuting shoplifting or eliminating cash bail, then they can suffer the consequences of not having any residential tax revenue.

fundad 4y ago
In-person office jobs are a product and office space and restaurant lunches are accessories to that product. Demand is trending away from those products. Cities are going to have to offer more than just expensive housing for boomers and brunchers. Cities need to be a place where anyone can afford a place to live and start a business and a family. Residential housing should not be left to the commercial sector.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453B Looked at another way: “remote work is easing competition for downtown real estate, providing an easy route for cities to deal with housing crises in urban cores.”

yurikoif 4y ago

Typical BI. Should have its title changed to: Remote work is making downtowns more affordable, will save people $blablaB

smcleod 4y ago

Good. We have people needing housing and people not needing office buildings. Something needed to change.

AndyMcConachie 4y ago

This is an American problem. Not a cities problem. There are cities with downtowns where people live in them. Not every city follows the American model of concentrating commercial activity in the center and having most people live in unsustainable suburbs. That's the problem. This is what America gets for building shit cities that no one wants to live in. This is fundamentally a problem with a lack of mixed zoning and American style suburbia.

8bitsrule 4y ago

Barcelona has undertaken a re-working of it's central district. Good idea! "Barcelona has launched an ambitious 10-year plan to reclaim the city’s streets from cars and cut down pollution with the creation of green spaces and public squares. One in three streets in the heavily polluted central Eixample district – the 20th-century grid devised by the engineer Ildefons Cerdà – will become green zones under the scheme, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists, and 21 public squares will be created at intersections...." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/barcelona-launches-10-year-plan-to-reclaim-city-streets-from-cars https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/barcelona-laun...