Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Before industrialization, land that mattered was farmland. Then as industrialization took hold, urban land became more important as the grouping of people together allowed for economies of scale in manufacturing. But then the petrochemical revolution put things in reverse, as people could live anywhere and travel by car. Suddenly, open space was economically desirable, as it made more sense to build a factory in super-cheap Nowheresville, Arkansas than crowded, expensive Philadelphia.

But the rise in global supply chains - the shipping container in particular - meant that it makes more sense to build just about everything in a few massive hubs (Shenzhen as the prime example), and then ship things all around the world, at a much cheaper rate than if the widget or smartphone were made at home. Likewise for services, like IT and finance, it makes much more sense for all of these professionals to work together in the same places, which is why a handful of cities are crushing the Information Age while hundreds of other towns and cities are either dying slowly or are on life support (higher education economy, tax-break-driven manufacturing, etc)

Will we see the same resurgence of sprawl as followed the petrochemical revolution? I'm not sure. Remote work has its niches but I couldn't imagine a serious major company like Google or IBM existing without a lot of corporate real estate and proximate workers. And as I've argued elsewhere on HN, today's professionals have professional needs: doctors, lawyers, teachers, all things they expect to have within their area. Rural areas and even small to medium sized cities have trouble competing for the best-in-class services that the upper echelons of professionals demand (and given that this class is both responsible for and generally the beneficiary of globalization, that makes it very hard to say that, say, Rochester, NY could become the next great tech hub (a decent tech hub perhaps, but no Silicon Valley) without a LOT more to attract the highest end professional class.

Maybe self-driving cars (personally I predict RVs) will be able to make sprawl great again, but even then it would still be a concentration around a (albeit larger) major metropolitan area.

Urban/rural was the most important divide of the 19th-20th centuries. It looks like it will continue throughout the 21st.

Google, Amazon (for example), are building large work centers in desirable places to work, which are raising the cost of living of everyone else in the town that may not have a six figure income. Google is moving to Boulder, CO as we speak; Denver was on the shortlist for Amazon.

It's the same problem with kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals to live in lofts built on the same foundations: your renewed neighborhood loses all the reasons it was appealing. In Boulder already you cannot really afford living in town with a service industry job, but people who want to work in Google also want to go out and have a beer after work. Those service industry workers need to commute into town, which is time-consuming, adds expense, worsens traffic, and lowers their quality of life.

> kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals

So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.

Speaking as a boring professional, yes, artists may be insufferable in plenty of ways, but boring they are not and their presence is important for establishing and growing a local culture, whereas professionals are good for growing an economy and both are needed for a healthy, vibrant city.

I know some artists, and many of them are definitely boring :-) Just because someone decides to be an artist and sticks seashells on a model house doesn't make them interesting. And why would, for example, playing a trumpet well make you intrinsically more interesting than mastering complex mathematics?

I'd rather have lunch with the mathematician. In fact, Feynman is at the top of the list of people I'd like to have lunch with, and it's not about his bongo drum playing.

(P.S. I learned to play the trumpet in my youth.)

Because most people can relate to music on an emotional level better than they can relate to complex mathematics.

It sounds like you know some pretty terrible artists, though. I mean, seashells on a model house?

PS. Feynman is Feynman for a reason.

People who only relate on an emotional level and don't appreciate intellectual complexity are - wait for it - boring.

You said only, not me. Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity.

The Beatles made some of the greatest music in history, but "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" is a mite lacking in intellectual complexity.

Far from making greatest works even in modern music, but they made greatness accessible.

> accessible

I was always baffled by what that was supposed to mean.

You're going to bring up the Beatles, and not bring up Tomorrow Never Knows or Blue Jay Way or anything off of Sgt. Pepper?

And all art has a wide expanse between commercially available and popular, and the avant garde, and within that range is another range between simplicity and complexity.

Art also encompasses film, fiction, the visual arts, music. All of which have a massive range of intellectual importance and depth.

No offense, but I feel as though you're showing your ignorance much more than proving your point.

> All of which have a massive range

Of course they do. I'm merely challenging your claim "Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity." There's no doubt at all that "She Loves You" is a great song. Personally, I prefer the earlier Beatles tunes rather than Sgt Pepper. Perhaps you could quote from the latter some lyrics that have deep meaning to you?

I also greatly enjoy Led Zeppelin, have every album, even cover albums, but am under no illusions about the intellectual complexity of "squeeze my lemon".

There are great examples of lyricism in music. There are great examples of production. There are great examples of musicianship. And there are great examples of songwriting. Each has varying levels of complexity.

Nobody celebrates Led Zeppelin for their lyricism, but I think you knew that already.

This whole thread sounds like hurt feelings.

Artists generally have a pretty profound application of intellect to their work, which is usually much more conceptually interesting than building a CRUD app.

And they also work with people who don't take an intellectual approach to their production but rather follow intuition.

One thing is certain: it's a more heterogenous environment. I find that to be extremely stimulating.

> Artists generally have a pretty profound application of intellect to their work, which is usually much more conceptually interesting than building a CRUD app.

Deciding to become an artist doesn't make one profound or conceptually interesting. Rather few artists achieve that. The starving artist community generally has not, which is why they are starving.

After all, how many TV shows you watch are "pretty intellectually profound"? And those artists are good enough to get paid for their work, most aren't.

Generally speaking yes, I think artists add an element of interest and entropy in an area compared to professionals in white collar positions.

Wouldn't agree on the 'wonderful' or 'unappealing' value judgments though; I think you added them for rhetorical emphasis.

I did add "wonderful" for rhetorical emphasis, but "unappealing" came from the parent.

Hmm, yes?

There's only so much after-work talk I can tolerate about app servers. I want to go to the theater, watch plays, and see bands. The people who have those interests are not particularly enchanted by traditional professional careers.

I bet you'd get bored at watching plays 40 hrs a week, too.

> So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.

Well, this fine article is partly about Richard Florida, and that's basically what he's saying: keep the creative class around, because they are the ones that add value to a city. Boring professionals flock to neighborhoods put on the map because creative people making them destinations.

In Denver, see the River North neighborhood. What once was a very vibrant place to see DIY shows, gallerys, etc, is now just a brewery neighborhood. Some underground venues were closed by the city and the one-year anniversary of this is coming up. The city shows no interest in providing an alternative. I guess this isn't very important to most, but these spaces were a safe place for many people to go: homeless teenagers, trans-folk, etc.

http://www.westword.com/music/rhinoceropolis-diy-venue-shut-...

I always get slightly sad when I hear the complaints against Google in Boulder as I honestly believe the effect it has had on housing prices has been overstated. For some context, I'm a Boulder native, I grew up here, went to preschool through college here, and am fortunate enough to get a job that pays me enough to stay here. And for what it's worth Google has had an office in Boulder for about 10 or 11 years now. I'm more than happy to discuss this more thoroughly here, through pms, or over coffee :)

Disclaimer: I work at Google, in Boulder.

I really think it's too early to tell, but people who don't work at Google - like me, are worried. In the last two years, the number of people working Google has doubled to 650; the new campus will hold 1500 workers. That's well over 1% of the total population of Boulder, working at Google - and you must agree that this will be a new phenomenon for Boulder's housing market.

For a city that's not so into building new housing, and most especially affordable housing, the writing is on the wall about what's going to happen to current housing prices, not to mention the general cost of living, in Boulder.

The elephant in the room when it comes to any housing boom (like in Denver) in the west is water: the current supply is already strained. Do remember we pump water through massive tunnels under mountains from the western slope to feed the current demand. We need more people on the front range? I dunno.

Also I think it's safe to think that the Silicon Valley region is a pretty unlivable/undesirable place to be, and what's happened to S.F isn't something any city really wants, unless you are filthy rich. "Google Effect" and all...

Or we could just pay service-workers more. If you'd like to have a cool bar where the employees can afford to live in the neighborhood, then create one. Charge enough per drink to pay the rent and advertise why. I'm curious if it'd succeed.

I don't know if working as a bartender to owning a bar is that easy of a process.

In Boulder at least, I'm not there to drink at a cool bar, work at a cool bar, or own a cool bar. I'm there because it's a livable city. Or was a livable city.

Then it sounds like you don't care if the bartenders move elsewhere. Which is reasonable.

  kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals

I think "boring professionals" would, at least, make such spaces safe to live in.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire

I think the question to answer is this: What does Small Town, U.S.A. have to offer the world that people are willing to pay for? My sense is that until very recently, the answer was "stuff the locals want plus a few large operations that 'plugged into' the national economy like farms and factories."

Now, as you point out, the barriers to consolidating industry into mega-hubs like Shenzhen are dissolving.

The only reasons to start or keep a business somewhere now are 3: 1. Physical resource dependence (ex. mining operations need to be where the mine is), 2. Regulatory (ex. tax policies), and 3. Talent.

Small towns used to rely on #1, which is now a losing strategy since global markets have dramatically driven down the costs of extracting and moving physical resources.

Now they're trying to do more of #2, which works for a little while but there's always another government somewhere willing to cut a better deal.

The only way small towns can compete is to focus on #3: Talent. They have to develop highly skilled workforces. That's literally all they can do.

They have to develop highly skilled workforces AND keep them there. My smallish town where I grew up certainly hasn't done that. Of all of my classmates who attended college directly after high school, I can count on one hand with spare fingers the number still living in the area. I'd say well over half don't even live in the state anymore. Mind you, nobody in my high school attended any fancy private universities. We almost all went to state schools. (Big Ten, MAC, and smaller schools.) The private school attendees went to local religious affiliated colleges.

Developing talent does no good if you can't stop the brain drain.

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