Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

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> Outside of this strange vocal minority that shows up here, very few people would actually prefer to live in an urban area

If that was really true it would create a huge arbitrage opportunity for people to make billions of dollars by building their businesses out in cheaper areas.

> The high paying/skilled jobs are there

Yes, but the question is why? If most people don't want to be in cities as you say, that would also include business owners, who could save a ton of money by moving their businesses into cheaper areas and paying lower rents and wages.

But that's not happening, on net. We're seeing the reverse. Businesses that fled to the suburbs 60 years ago are steadily moving back into cities.

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-promin... http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corp...

Many of these are sober, fortune 500 companies that wouldn't be moving if they didn't see a clear economic reason to do it. It's not some "strange vocal minority" position.

We are returning to the long-term average for civilization since the first cities began 6000 years ago: cities are the centers of economic activity and power. America went through a weird inversion for two generations where that wasn't true. We're now reverting to the mean.

> If that was really true it would create a huge arbitrage opportunity for people to make billions of dollars by building their businesses out in cheaper areas.

If the desirable employees, and the capitalists who want to actively oversee their investments weren't already in the more expensive areas, or if there weren't costs to both associated with regular travel or relocation (which taken together negates the short term opportunity), or if jobs moving to the new place wouldn't actually turn it into a more expensive, denser place (removing the long-term opportunity), that would be true.

> If the desirable employees, and the capitalists who want to actively oversee their investments weren't already in the more expensive areas

Most of those people were out in cheaper areas 40 years ago, when suburbia was still ascendant. So "they just happen to already be there" doesn't explain what we observe today.

> or if there weren't costs to both associated with regular travel

That is just restating why walkable cities are nice to be in: travel has costs, being close to things means less travel.

> if jobs moving to the new place wouldn't actually turn it into a more expensive, denser place

That clearly didn't actually happen when the jobs first migrated to the suburbs. The suburbs remained suburbs. The jobs were in low density office parks.

> That clearly didn't actually happen when the jobs first migrated to the suburbs.

Yes, they did; not so much in terms of density, but the suburbs that had substsntial local quality jobs rather than being bedroom communities for more distant urban areas (or other other suburbs) did become substantially more expensive (as is expected, because convenient location to work is something people value), and, conversely, when jobs have moved away (including in the return to cities) they've gotten less expensive.

There's also the fact that major cities tend to be located in places which are geographically conducive to physically supporting largee numbers of people and large volumes of material trade, and even if an industry doesn't itself need or produce lots of physical goods directly, it often supports or is supported by others that do, and, in any case, the ability to support people effects the economics of moving jobs.

Because a certain amount of local density is needed to support any establishment's existence. The more specialized it is, the more local population is needed to sustain it. As the middle class shrinks or other economic changes happen, the margin of this can get narrower, as shops consolidate into having less locations in denser areas. There apparently used to be a lot of full time IBM positions near where I grew up, but now those buildings are mostly abandoned.

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