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Heard the "but what will restaurants in the city centre do?" argument while discussing with a local politician. I argued that this way maybe restaurants, grocer
by thefz 4y ago
Heard the "but what will restaurants in the city centre do?" argument while discussing with a local politician. I argued that this way maybe restaurants, grocery shops and other activities can flourish back in small towns that are now relegated as dormitory.
Three months later, the same administration sent out a package against the depopulation of small towns (we live in the Alps so that's a real issue)
This is the short-sightedness of our administrators.
Instead of giving the people the freedom to work where they want, they spend public resources to marginally attempt to reduce a problem they refuse to acknowledge in the fist place, for the gain of temporary consensus.
Lay optic fiber everywhere and let people work from where they prefer. We would still have dense cities and alive satellite towns.
- theshrike79 4y agoAll the money I spent on lunch in the city centre restaurants I've spent on restaurants close to my home. I consider that as a win-win, supporting local businesses.
- acdha 4y agoI’ve increasingly been thinking of this similarly to technical debt where city planners made decisions for a long time which weren’t inherently bad but made things less robust against a shock. Having your downtown focused on, say, financial companies is great (tons of taxes, minimal pollution, etc.) until the office workers can stay home and there’s nobody else filling in their shopping or dining. Cities have many innate advantages so long-term I’m not expecting disaster but it’s happening almost everywhere at the same time, and we have a bigger problem looming in climate change. That’s going to be more permanently disruptive but it’ll work in favor of cities’ lower environmental footprint if the leaders don’t screw up the transition.