Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Why do they always locate in places that have these screwed-up housing markets. There are many, many urban centres in North America with ample university grads pouring out of local institutions, a plethora of amenities, and cheap housing. Any former-industrial city fits the template just fine and would be ecstatic to have a gentrification "problem".

View on HN

Google's looking to attract top talent, talent is looking for "Quality of Life" and those driving factors correlate strongly with said "screwed-up housing markets"

arguably this was the bay area 30 years ago when all of this started, both SV and the NIMBY regime

Why do they always locate in places that have these screwed-up housing markets.

Large corporations don't care about housing market issues, and the prestige of locating in a brand-name city is worth the (slightly) higher salaries that they have to pay.

That said, I've heard good things about Boulder, and it seems like an excellent place to live, but it's not exactly a brand-name city (and I sure as hell can't see why it would be so expensive to live in a place that's not land-constrained like Manhattan.) It's not Manhattan or DC or Boston or Chicago. It's not even San Francisco (in terms of brand-name; I am sure it's a better place to live than SF).

It's land constrained on the west by the mountains. The farther east you go, the cheaper the housing is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com