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Only speaking from my personal travel experiences, not any hard data, but: I feel like this issue is nearly non-existent in places with mixed use zoning. If the
by keiferski 3y ago
Only speaking from my personal travel experiences, not any hard data, but: I feel like this issue is nearly non-existent in places with mixed use zoning. If the office values go down in a place with equal amounts of housing, they are repurposed as new apartments. The problem is when the office architecture isn’t interchangeable with apartment architecture, which usually happens because certain areas are zoned as office-only.
- zbrozek 3y agoSome local councils around here want to make it a condition of approval that the first floor of mixed-use must remain commercial. Developers want it to be flexible because they can't predict future need. Constraints cost! Euclidean zoning is an unspeakably expensive economic blunder.
- epistasis 3y agoUrban Planning has to be one of the worst professions in the existence of humanity. We were all better off without urban planners, and everything they advocate for and enforce makes the world worse.
- screye 3y agoModern urban planners oppose most of the dystopian development seen in the US. What you see here is the stakeholders getting what they want. (Which might not be what they need) Only in this case, the stakeholders are other residents in the neighborhood...not prospective buyers.
- CamperBob2 3y agoNo, modern urban planners basically want us all (except for them, of course) living in a modern Kowloon.
- epistasis 3y agoI actually want to live in a modern Kowloon, but the planners will not allow that, whatever their wishes, because they are the prison guards to a prison system. They must enforce what they are told, and at the same time wish to not take responsibility for their actions.
- adrianN 3y agoNo they don't.
- hackerlight 3y agoIt's the opposite. Urban planners have a vested interest in zoning because their career relies on it. Also, the existence of Kowloon is a good thing. The people who live there would have worse lives if Kowloon was never allowed to build like that. They would be forced to live further away from their work, subjecting them to an hour a day on a cramped train, for example. The wrong question: "Is X bad?". The right question: "Is X worse than the alternative if X wasn't allowed?".
- candiodari 3y agoThis can result in a race to the bottom, is the argument against it. If we allowed people to live in "capsule hotels" for example.
- thereisnospork 3y agoThe problem with the argument is that capsule apartments aren't the bottom - living on the street is. So as a society we've skipped right past bad to horrid while clapping ourselves on the back as if we're doing the 'undesirables' a favor. Abhorrent.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 3y ago
- epistasis 3y agoDespite what they might oppose, as part of their profession they must uphold the determinations of the stakeholders. The purpose of a system is what it does. The supposed opposition of planners, a completely ineffectual and meaningless opposition that has zero effect on any policy outcome, does not change the fact that planning as a profession ends up being this means to an end.
- chongli 3y agoUrban planners are people, not systems. Firefighters oppose fires and try to put them out, yet fires still happen. Would you say that the purpose of firefighting is to burn down houses?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- epistasis 3y agoThe proper analogy here would be that the firefighters, despite personally opposing more fires, go out and set houses on fire because their profession requires them to do so. The entire system is set up to produce worse outcomes, and the planners are the ones constructing and enabling the system.
- chongli 3y agoplanners are the ones constructing and enabling the system No, they aren't. The worst outcomes would happen regardless of whether or not planners were involved. The ones to blame are the vested stakeholders (homeowners and developers), not the planners working for the city trying to fix things. You can see the whole thing play out (comedically) on the show Parks and Rec. Real life is just a drier, more cynical version of that story.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- breather 3y agoFunny, I feel the same way about developers. Urban planners tend to hate them too.
- epistasis 3y agoDevelopers built everything, existed long before planners ever did, and despite their greed and avarice, actually produce things that people want, and live in. Planners can claim none of this. They have complete control over the developers, but tend to make the outcomes worse both for the people buying homes. No matter the intention of the developer or the planner, the planner has made things worse and the developer better.
- breather 3y ago> Developers built everything, Well, no, this is just straight-up not true, that's just a description of recent american history.
- epistasis 3y agoYou must have some weird definition of "developer" then, something that's not compatible with what I'm talking about. Who built all the brownstones in New York, for example? Today, they'd be called developers. What is your definition?
- adrianN 3y agoWho needs a canalization or public transport anyway?
- refurb 3y agoI mean go to a low income country and you can see the results. No setbacks, sidewalk encroachment (building or parking), restaurants on the ground floor of houses (i remember going into one huge restaurant and seeing the family in a separate room watching TV). Bizarre road layout, etc,etc Not all bad, but man is it chaotic.
- Animats 3y agoUsing the first floor of mixed-use buildings being commercial is a huge flop in the SF bay area. Drive down El Camino on the SF peninsula. Look at all those ground floor vacancies, low-end tenants, and oversized "leasing offices" to fill up space.
- electrondood 3y agoI think the issue there is actually the cost to lease vs the amount of traffic. On El Camino there's usually not enough foot traffic to sustain a business in one of those locations. If you go to similar shopping centers like San Antonio in MV, you can see those first floor units are pretty consistently occupied by businesses.
- Animats 3y agoThat's because those places have more parking.
- eastbound 3y agoThat’s a good point; An urban ecologist once told me the most environmental-friendly city is made of 6-floor buildings (like Paris): - Ground floor: Shops, - 1st and sometimes 2nd floor: Offices, lawyers, doctors, companies, - 3-6th: Housing. It was environmentally friendly because the density allows people to drop the car and go shopping and work with 15 minutes of their home.
- doikor 3y ago> - Ground floor: Shops, Only the street facing side. A lot of the buildings in Paris have an inner yard where the ground floor has apartments.
- thuuuomas 3y agoI love to live within smelling distance of the urban slaughterhouse. I love not knowing what chemicals may be wafting out of tanks buried, forgotten beneath my brownfield luxury condo.
- makeitdouble 3y agoThere might be many issues with the gap in construction standards for offices and housings. A very dumb one: windows are required for houses, where offices can get away with huge open spaces holding a central hub of indoor areas. It's still possible to convert to houses, but that makes for ridiculously small liveable areas compared to the whole floor surface. Then plumbing, evacuation paths etc. can all be solved by throwing money at the problem, but that significantly raises the profitability line.
- harha 3y agoOr fixing the problem of bad regulation - you can always uplift living standards when money is cheap, right now there's a chance to operate more efficiently, rather than create more debt. One idea would be to convert spaces to something competing with airbnb, with the added value of being near offices.
- ugh123 3y agoDo you mean like capsule hotels in Tokyo?
- nox101 3y agoHow about just regular apartments in Tokyo/Seoul/HK? Much much smaller than USA apartments.... Also much much cheaper, at least than NYC/SF/LA.
- andy_ppp 3y agoI think having the option of really small low quality accommodation in big cities is good, but let’s not pretend Tokyo/Seoul/HK aren’t just as expensive per sqft as NYC/SF/LA.
- keiferski 3y agoThey aren’t as expensive per square foot. Sure, Tokyo apartments tend to be smaller, but they aren’t that much smaller. It’s more an efficient use of space than anything. Hong Kong also isn’t comparable to Tokyo, and is much more expensive. I can’t comment on Seoul.
- esoterica 3y agoBig office buildings have very deep plates which make them very difficult to convert to sensible apartment layouts. You can have windowless conference rooms but you can't have windowless apartments.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI’m probably a weirdo, but a bedroom without windows feels like a great way to get the best sleep in an urban environment. Low noise, no light pollution. Kinda a dream really.
- suzzer99 3y agoThat's not bad. I do everything I can to darken my room while I sleep. Just need an automatic light set to sunlight temperature that comes on when I want to get up.
- liampulles 3y agoI grew up in a converted office-to-house in a bedroom with no windows. The one wall had a number of glass bricks put in to give some light. A partially troglodyte nerd emerged, it worked out okay.
- fmobus 3y agoSoundproof windows are the norm in Germany for modern buildings and are a ducking godsend. Mine are so good I can't even hear the rain unless it's a full-on storm. Also, outside curtains are pretty good at blocking light. To the point I had to hack mine to open on sunset to ensure I wake up.
- Scoundreller 3y agoMy beef is that windows are usually pretty good, but sliding doors to a balcony are garbage.
- ginko 3y agoMain concern would be ventilation, but that's usually oversized in office buildings anyways.
- impossiblefork 3y agoI don't think it has anything to do with either that or with WFH. Rather, the increase in interest rates necessitate a general reduction in price on both commercial and other property. WFH means that commercial property will be affected more, but it's something general. Interest rates have gone from <1% to 5.5%, and if that's sustained there must either be such an increase in rents, which people would not be able to pay, or there must be a reduction in the price of commercial and rental property corresponding to the remainder.
- j7ake 3y agoIn this case, are deep discounts in residential property next?
- impossiblefork 3y agoI assume apartment buildings first. The people who actually own their homes aren't constrained in how irrational they can be.
- chollida1 3y agoTHis is a nice thought but rarely happens regardless of zoning. Office buildings floor plates and residential floor plates aren't really compatable. Office buildings have most of their floor plates not around windows, where are residential needs some light. Also water, and sewer need to be retrofitted. The one building that was a successful conversion that I know of cut out the center of the building to create a light corridor down the center of the building. The Odd lots podcast had a recent episode on this and the guest said that converting office to residential is often more expensive than rebuilding. So you've got a good though but its rarely practical in the larger city style office buildings. Perhaps smaller density 6 story buildings would be easier to do?
- danaris 3y agoThere is an actual solution, at least for buildings that are large enough: Make the whole building mixed-use. Ring the outside with apartments, and keep the inside commercial. Make the whole thing a little community in itself. Just fill the whole center of it with cafés, bodegas, computer repair shops—the kinds of small, locally-owned shops you get in a (healthy) small town or a pre-modern-zoning city area.
- lumost 3y agoActually a really interesting idea. Not sure why we don't see this in major cities. Effectively this becomes a minimally with apartments. Do residents/businesses simply dislike this arrangement due to lack of foot traffic and noise?
- packetlost 3y agoI personally would love to live somewhere like that, but I don't see it working out in practice. For starters, discoverability for those interior businesses would be poor. Where would they put their names/signs?
- Xirgil 3y agoI would look to the signage in Tokyo for an example. The buildings have columns of signs listing the floor each one is on. Definitely not what we're used to which might hurt adoption at first, but it works for them.
- infecto 3y agoI always keep hearing this but I have rarely seen it in practice. Yes I have seen a handful of examples where a mall was transformed into apartments on the second floor. Or maybe a historic building was turned into luxury lofts but I suspect for the vast majority of buildings, its cheaper to tear it down and repurpose it. Now, I do have an appreciation for Japan's mixed use zoning but I suspect that has as much to do with the culture of honor/not being a dick as it does with mixed use zoning. I do think things can be relaxed in the US.
- gedy 3y ago> I suspect that has as much to do with the culture of honor/not being a dick as it does with mixed use zoning. Yes true, and many people gloss over the issue of lawsuits - the US has a "lawsuit happy" culture that make many things very expensive.
- infecto 3y agoI think that takes too negative of a approach. It is simply a cultural difference. I think about China, most of the cities have pretty lax zoning...to be fair I don't know their exact regulations but its quite normal to have business in the first floor, your home above it. But people there do not generally care about personal space, same with Vietnam, nobody cares there is a welding shop right next to their house. In the US there is generally a large desire to have a garage and some space away from your neighbors. On top of cultural differences, I think itsj ust really hard to change existing cities without massive forces pushing it. You almost have to start fresh and even then you need a level of collaboration that is hard to get. I do think there is some change happening, I have seen new communities in Texas being build where there is central playgrounds and coffee shops being built as part of the development.
- digdugdirk 3y agoIn that case, I'd like to introduce you to Houston, Texas. The only city in the US without zoning laws, and historically known as a bastion of livability. ... If you're a car. https://www.econlib.org/the-city-without-zoning-ready/ https://www.econlib.org/the-city-without-zoning-ready/
- xenadu02 3y agoConversions are only possible one way and tend to be permanent. Industrial -> Commercial -> Residential. Industrial equipment is heavy and needs much more reinforcement of the floor plates and columns. You can convert an old factory to lofts but not the other way around (lofts to factory is basically rebuilding the building inside the existing shell... much cheaper to knock it down and start over). Commercial has vastly different plumbing, electrical, and ventilation requirements. Residential wants more natural light so you tend not to get the kind of profitable open floor plates you need in commercial. And generally commercial is over-supplied with electric but vastly under-supplied with water/sewer for residential needs. Once a commercial building is converted to apartments it doesn't go back - with the exception of very small commercial like a doctor's office taking over a house or similar.