The Next Crisis Will Start with Empty Office Buildings

Back in 2008, I landed a very nice fiancée who was from Catalonia, and she came out to visit me in the springtime. Now I live in a suburb/college town in a major metropolitan area, and we rented bicycles and we took buses everywhere. It was working great, she enjoyed it a lot and had no issues with my modes of transportation. We went sight-seeing, we went shopping, we went to church. People would see us on the bus holding hands, and they remarked at how cute we were together.

Then one day I took her to The Big Downtown on the way to an art museum nearby. We made a transfer at the central bus station. It was Saturday. We stood in the middle of that deserted bus station and she looked around, going "where is everyone?" I said, "this is downtown; it's a business district and nobody lives here. There's no reason to go here on weekends." She was flabbergasted.

Because in Europe, of course, the city centers are hubs of activity, having mixed-use buildings with businesses on the ground floor and lots of housing above. I witnessed this in Barcelona. People live where they work. They also populate the lovely parks and promenades on weekends, because they live nearby, with no reason to flee downtown in those times, either.

It they give a shit about the environment, companies should have people commuting on foot or bike. This would require affordable housing in the cities somewhat proximate to the offices. This would make cities in the us look a bit more European rather than “roll up the streets at 5pm” like some east coast cities. The trick will be to figure out how to turn office buildings into living space without gobs of urban renewal.

Some cities have working useable public transit. But the car feeder system from suburbia undoes much of the gain. Sprawl isn’t climate aware and it takes a lot of time and money to commute. Money people don’t want to pay anymore and time they don’t want to give away for free.

>and the consequences for landlords, banks, municipal governments,

So as expected, those are the big players in shilling and pushing for RTO.

Can’t wait for the residential housing artificial inflation to crumble too, will the government side by landlords/corps as well?

Also, most of the article is about “cities loosing traction and hurt its overall look and revenue”, a revenue and development at what expenses!? At the expense of those poor souls employees that are in this neo-slavery and rat race, the pandemic was a major reality check slap for most employees and how they are wasting their lives for someone else profits, I don’t think things will ever get back as it used to, and that’s a good thing.

Good riddance. Building a second home for everybody so that they spend half of their lives there and waste hours moving between them each day is Evil.

It's one of these things that evolve slowly into absurdity, like the nerve in giraffes that goes up and down their necks because in fish it made sense.

Ah yes, humans should suffer more so that investors continue to become rich.

I worked in an office and from home. The best results in my industry were from home. Offices are for people that need to be monitored. Weed those people out and smooth sailing. Most people can't handle the personal responsibility of working from home. They screw off. Once we got rid of them it worked out well.