The circle is squared by realizing what isn't sunk yet, but will be, is the tax revenues from corporate real estate and commerce lost if the city centers lack people.
Work from home decimates some of these areas if people simply aren't there any more and all the 2nd order effects of other businesses going away as well. So I think it's wrong to assume all of the pressure comes only from the corporations themselves and not also the local governments putting pressure on the corporations to to change work from home policy because otherwise their budgets are busted.
Now, this is one of those "you problems" for the local governments; workers themselves should care about their own interests and lives and none of that changes just because some city you don't want to live in is harmed by the trends. But this dynamic should be understood when discussing the issue.
I completely agree but I think there’s more to it.
Cities are concerned bc New York of the 1970’s is staring them all down bc tax revenues take a dive and the equivalent of structural unemployment is hitting city revenue models.
That said, anyone who’s lived in the main cities can likely attest to the following. These places are corporatized shells of what they once were, and what they once were is why NYC is considered cool in the first place - live music, local bars, “scenes,” that unique city approach to local community. Sometime in the 2000s, while they lost the gnarly crime, they also started to lose all that for 7/11, Chase banks, and mom and pops owned by PE. Essentially rich person playgrounds. Nyc of 2013 was a lot of fun but also more an amusement park for wealthy millennials or NYU kids cosplaying as one. Same with SF and techies.
So these cities simultaneously bemoan the loss of that character and exponential cost of living increases, but also want back all the conditions that caused both.
If Manhattan gets it’s actual artists and culture people back from outer Brooklyn or Ohio, and it takes a dive in tax revenues and a grungy NYC for a bit, that seems a good thing. NYC of the 7/11-Chase Bank height really sucked.
Respectfully, I don't really agree at all. The crime wave that these cities are willingly welcoming and not stopping, is going to create new Detroits, or St Louis, or Baltimores...but actually probably just worse.
I don't think you need to have crime, open drug use, harassment by mentally ill and homeless...all sorts of things that are pushing corporations, and workers, to simply move out of the cities, abandon projects or large retail presence (Whole Foods, Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Parc 55 etc).
I think gentrification is good, actually. Having a nice safe clean productive city with wealth and investment flowing in vs out is good actually. Having crime, degradation, and flight is bad. If law and order was established across many cities, then even in lower income neighborhoods and housing units there could be safety and stablity; it wouldn't have to come at a premium.
I mean I'm sure there is a type that likes everything you describe, but personally it just seems like nonsense to me. I'd prefer to not have harassment on public transportation or in the streets walking home at night. And if I made good money working in the city, then good for me. If the selling point going forward is, "Come to the big city..it will cost more than your smaller town, but at least we have crime and grunginess to go with it!", I think these cities and businesses and productive people that stick around there (they won't) are going to have a bad time. Part of dynamic during the era you describe is there was 0 remote work for all industries, while being centered in certain metros. Now people won't put up with that bullshit like they had to back then.
Gentrification is not the opposite of crime. If anything, it incentivizes it, because there’s a concentration of wealth surrounded by depressed, displaced and discontent people. Peak Gentrification is when only gated communities with a lot of armed guards don’t have crime, and everyone else is a hellhole. That’s how it is already in many developing countries’ rich neighborhoods.
Not really. It rapidly causes increased pressure on local LEO to increase presence while at the same time voting for policies that increase taxation and cost of living will drive the poor out of the area.
We are saying the same thing. The poor don’t dissolve in thin air. They are still there. Only with less quality of life, and with a high concentration of wealth nearby, in what used to be “their” place. Put two and two together.
For people that liked wonderland in a city vs a city, this is certainly the mindset.
That said, drugs and crime and… aren’t a forgone conclusion if NYC gets cheaper and local businesses can afford to come back and cultural folks can find places that aren’t 3k.
Both are likely to happen if nyc tanks a bit. The crime isn’t necessarily likely. A lot of other cities manage it.
Work from home decimates some of these areas if people simply aren't there any more and all the 2nd order effects of other businesses going away as well. So I think it's wrong to assume all of the pressure comes only from the corporations themselves and not also the local governments putting pressure on the corporations to to change work from home policy because otherwise their budgets are busted.
Now, this is one of those "you problems" for the local governments; workers themselves should care about their own interests and lives and none of that changes just because some city you don't want to live in is harmed by the trends. But this dynamic should be understood when discussing the issue.