
Suburban Office Parks Increasingly Obsolete; Businesses Choose Walkable Areas - jseliger
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/12/10/real-estate-giant-suburban-office-parks-increasingly-obsolete/#.Vnhp_CD-0bs.twitter
======
Johnny555
I don't understand why they make office parks so overtly pedestrian unfriendly
-- I worked in an office park for a while, there were sidewalks along the
front of our building, which ended abruptly just after the driveways. The
building next door had the same thing - sidewalks to nowhere that never
connected to anything.

There was a pretty decent deli in the building behind ours, but rather than
having a convenient walkway, there was a fence between the two properties, so
reaching it meant taking the long way around 2 parking lots. The building
across the street had a downstairs area that used to be another deli/coffee
shop, but at one point but when rents went up, the owner couldn't afford rent
and closed, but it had been sitting vacant for around 3+ years by the time I
worked there.

The roads in the office park had relatively narrow lanes with wide 20 foot
green medians - I suppose the green grass in the medians looked nice, but the
narrow lanes meant that bike riding was pretty dicey, there was not really
enough room for cars to pass cyclists, and the 40mph speed limit meant that
cars traveled at 45 - 50mph, making biking much more dangerous than it needed
to be.

They had a shuttle to the nearest train station, but it ran on a fixed
schedule that didn't even try to sync up with the train schedule, which led to
20 - 40 minute delays while waiting for the shuttle on the way to work or
waiting for the train home. I suspect that the management was either required
to run the shuttle or got a grant for it, and only ran it because they had to,
not to provide a service to workers.

My company moved out of the office park as soon as they had enough money to
rent space downtown.

It wouldn't take too many changes to make office parks more "livable" \- add
sidewalks, bike lanes, encourage retail/restaurants with lower rents.

~~~
bbarn
You've just nearly described my exact working environment. Only, on one side I
have a highway. I have a friend who works across the road from me. If we met
up for lunch on foot one of us is taking a 30 minute walk because it's
impassible on foot. I'm stuck driving for the bulk of the winter because it's
just unsafe (after biking to work year round in Chicago for the last ten
years, this commute broke me).

Fortunately (for them and me) the company is moving downtown this spring, or I
wouldn't have taken an otherwise great job.

~~~
DrJokepu
Every time I visit America I'm surprised by how unwalkable most of
metropolitan America is. I always wondered if roads are unwalkable because
most Americans wouldn't walk anyway or if Americans don't walk, because roads
are unwalkable.

Probably it has something to do with the long walking distances; even if the
roads were walkable with proper sidewalks and pedestrian crossings installed,
it would take half an hour just to walk to the nearest corner store.

~~~
l1ambda
Basically in the 50's, we started building cities at automobile scale, instead
of at human scale like we used to, and the design goal for roads was simply to
move as many cars through as quickly as possible. Things like 12' wide travel
lanes instead of 10', ridiculously huge building setbacks, right turn arcs,
140' wide lots instead of 70', wide neighborhood roads (encourages speeding),
no street parking (drivers slow down on roads with parked cars and on roads
with no marked centerline), etc. Also, everybody wants to live in a cul-de-
sac, which greatly limits how far you can walk
([https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-
neighborhoods.shtml](https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-neighborhoods.shtml))
versus a standard grid layout. (But if you look at real estate pricing, the
data show people want to live in walkable areas; a home in a walkable area
will often command a 1.5x to 2x price premium over a similar home in a typical
car-centric suburb.)

All those details add up to create a poor and dangerous pedestrian experience.
Now, most towns in America have realized that was extremely bone-headed,
possibly unsustainable (it costs a lot of money to run all those electrical
wires, plumbing, and roads), and we are trying to undo the past 70 years of
engineering. Oh, and this was all mandated by building codes (law) so even if
one wanted to build a walkable suburban business park, it was not possible.

There is a entertaining talk about all this by James Kuntsler at
[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?language=en#t-43078)

~~~
learc83
>a home in a walkable area will often command a 1.5x to 2x price premium over
a similar home in a typical car-centric suburb.

I suspect this has more to do with fact that walkable areas are much more
likely to be located in city centers with higher overall real estate prices
than with the desirability of walkable neighborhoods.

~~~
nitrogen
_I suspect this has more to do with fact that walkable areas are much more
likely to be located in city centers with higher overall real estate prices
than with the desirability of walkable neighborhoods._

One also has to consider that new families with young children are high on the
list of demographics looking for suburban homes, and are likely to have less
money, so suburban homes are cheaper by necessity.

Cul-de-sacs wouldn't be so bad if they had well-maintained pedestrian lanes
that cut between them and neighborhood shops instead of big box stores.

~~~
marcoperaza
What's so great about "neighborhood shops" over big box stores? Higher prices
and smaller selection?

~~~
nitrogen
We need both, but by neighborhood shops I mean little cafes, restaurants,
galleries, markets, etc. that you can walk to for day to day needs, while
still leaving the big box store for long-term and bulk purchases. The reduced
density of suburbs wouldn't support very many of these shops, but if they're
spaced well, they could serve as walkable gathering points for the community.

~~~
douche
If you're counting _little cafes, restaurants, galleries and markets_ among
your day-to-day needs, you've already gentrified yourself out of the range of
90% of the population.

~~~
Symbiote
No, he hasn't, except for the galleries.

In England at least, a poor area still has little cafés [1]. The menu is
similar enough — fried breakfast etc — but it will be served on an actual
plate, rather than a chopping board or slate. The choice of restaurant might
be a larger pub, or a place that also/only offers take-away (McDonalds or a
small Cantonese place, for example). The market probably has less promotion of
organic produce, and will sell produce as well as cheap clothes and household
goods.

I used to live in a poor area of London, which I think was built in the 1960s.
There were cul-de-sac roads, but most of them continued with footpaths so
journeys wouldn't take too long. On the main road there was a school, church,
doctor's office, dentist, library, small grocery store, beer/wine shop,
bakery, cheap café, pizza take-away, Chinese take-away, Indian take-away, fish
and chip shop, pharmacy, newsagent, youth club and 'village' green including
play equipment. The pub-with-dining had recently closed, I'm not sure if
that's still the case. All of this is within 5-10 minutes walk of most people,
beyond that distance and they are close to the next cluster of shops.

There wasn't a market, but there was a market selling fruit and veg in the
nearest 'town', which was about 5-10 minutes by bicycle, or 10-20 by walk+bus.

[1]
[http://www.constructionphotography.com/Details.aspx?ID=11957...](http://www.constructionphotography.com/Details.aspx?ID=11957&TypeID=1)
— "builder's caf" or just "caf" is a slang term for them.

~~~
to3m
Yes, this has been my experience in the UK too (and probably everybody's). It
may be a cultural difference but rows of local shops are not the preserve of
gentrified areas. Anywhere people live, you will find these sorts of shops,
because people will buy stuff from shops that are within walking distance. If
anything, they seem to be slightly more likely in the poorer areas, presumably
because there are more people who will want shops within walking distance.

------
mmanfrin
Office parks just feel like monotony to me; everything is the same, same
cafeteria, same surroundings, no chance to do anything other than what is
given. I love working in downtown SF -- it's easily commutable, I have
hundreds of choices for lunch, I can meet up with a huge number of friends who
work at different companies for lunch or drinks or coffee. An office park just
feels like the end of the line.

~~~
eric_the_read
Different strokes, I guess. I hate commuting into the city; I can't afford to
eat out every day; none of my friends work anywhere near me, and the commute
takes about three times as long as the office park I'm at right now. An office
park that has nice walking paths means I can get in and out relatively quickly
and still see my family at the end of the day.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Some easy math will demonstrate that many more people live within walking
distance of big city office towers than live within the same distance of
exurban office parks.

~~~
rm999
Not to defend suburbs, but a well-designed suburb/exurb let's you access quite
a bit in a reasonable amount of time. My old commute from the East Village to
Tribeca, both in downtown Manhattan, was about 25-30 minutes by subway with a
transfer. In the same time I could walk about half-way to work. This is a
pretty normal commute in the densest part of the USA.

In the same time, I could get to a 20-30 mile radius around my parents house
in suburban maryland (if my math is correct, this is 1200-2800 square miles).
I could drive to downtown Baltimore, or downtown Annapolis, or close to DC.

~~~
thrownaway2424
If your _average_ driving speed from home to work is 60MPH you don't even live
in the suburbs. You live in the country. For me, 1800 square miles of country
through which one can drive at 60MPH (implying that it's totally depopulated)
would not compare favorably with the amenities within half an hour of the East
Village.

------
hippich
Looking at comments, am I the only one being surprised, when getting email
from recruiters with one of the perk "office in downtown"? For me it means -
constant fight for parking, lines in restaurants, loud? Granted I live in
suburbs (and love it)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Depends on your temperament, city, and age. I remember working at places like
Initech in my twenties and hating it. Unfortunately I didn't know why. Trips
to NYC and EU made it more clear.

If you are fighting for parking downtown you're doing it wrong. Instead take
the train/metro.

~~~
eric_the_read
Like most things in life, it's a tradeoff. My best drive time to downtown is
about 35 minutes. My best travel time by train/metro is about an hour. I did
that for about a year and a half, and it wasn't awful, but due to transit
times, I barely saw my kids.

~~~
mixmastamyk
You have options: move. I was once burdened with traffic on the 405 every day
and it was a nightmare. Had to pay an extra hundred or two in rent to live on
the west side (of LA). Freeing up three hours a day of commuting (to walk in
the sunshine) was definitely worth it.

~~~
hippich
or better office parks can be built in less congested areas instead. Like this
one - [http://domainofficesaustin.com/](http://domainofficesaustin.com/) \-
where you can work/rent/shop/eat/starbucking/buytesla. Instead of trying to
squeeze one more soul into densely packed city.

------
zinssmeister
Office Parks are dying because the way our careers are going has changed. Many
people change jobs every 2-3 years rather than dedicate their life at a single
Big Employer. Living in the Suburbs and working at an office park is a very
inflexible setup. Working in SF and commuting in from Oakland for example will
enable you to change jobs more frequently without uprooting your life.

~~~
ghaff
>Working in SF and commuting in from Oakland for example will enable you to
change jobs more frequently without uprooting your life.

So, in that example, anywhere outside of SF in the South Bay isn't an option.
Beyond highly concentrated cities like Manhattan where there's a huge
confluence of jobs in a particular industry, job mobility causes issues in any
case (especially once the jobs of partners and kids' schools are involved) in
any case. It's rare industries and location where you can generally change
jobs without commute being a factor.

~~~
mjevans
zinssmeister is viewing the /approximate/ duration of a commute as a 'sunk
cost' (in time) for the worker. If the jobs are all centrally located even
insane real-estate and urban development practices that drive the workers out
to suburbs can make economic sense once the workers are conditioned to put up
with that abuse.

They are saying that many, in fact most, 'local' jobs exist with relatively
little opportunity cost for change.

Contrast this with a hypothetical future of (E.G) New York, where in 30-50
years they've gone full caves of steel: banishing cars to the edge and having
a multi-layer dense mesh of rapid electric motor powered transit and living
which intermingles living, working, recreational and (deep underground)
industrial productivity. There the opportunity costs might also be the same,
but the cost (in time) of migrating might be less, and favor walking on moving
belts for a combination of speed and exercise.

------
bbarn
In ten years, we'll be seeing the same articles about the sprawling hi-rises
in downtown areas, as more industry realizes how much cheaper remote work can
be.

There are certainly jobs that won't work remotely, but there's not a lot of
manufacturing and hands-on work going on in high rises.

~~~
tim333
There doesn't seem much of a trend in that direction. Most city office jobs
could be done remotely but there are advantages to being central. You can meet
people, go to conferences, chat over coffee and the like. It's kind of ironic
in a way - you might have thought being able to work form a laptop would lead
to people spreading out but it seems to lead more to people thinking they may
as well bring the laptop to a cafe or office in central SF, London, NYC or the
like.

------
colindean
I couldn't ever work in an office park. When the startup I worked for was
acquired, there was discussion of moving our office to an office park about 30
minutes north or south of the city. More than half of the employees threatened
to quit, even though maybe only 25% would have seen a materially longer
commute. We like having choice come lunch time and being able to do some
shopping before, during, and after work.

~~~
kspaans
Yup, saw the same thing happening at an infosec company in Toronto. Office at
University & Adelaide, bought by BigCo AV Vendor, moving out to 404 & Steeles:
20% of workforce quits in the year between the announcement and the actual
move (at least I remember it being the move, less so the new owners).

------
firebird84
In defense of office parks, I did enjoy living in lower rent/property price
areas in the suburbs near an office park. Downtown living (where I am now) is
expensive as hell. However, my employer has plopped their new office right in
the middle of the most expensive real estate, and next door to the "Mecca" (as
my real estate agent called it) of expensive condos. Great! So it's either
hellish commute or expensive rent. I opted for expensive rent. :-\

------
ChuckMcM
Of late I've been thinking about the relationships between offices and
productivity.

Right at the turn of the century people were thinking about "revenue per
employee" as a metric for how efficient a business was. That was silly off the
charts when you get to some software startups where a group of 15 or 20 people
are generating 20 - 30M$ a year in revenue.

The thing that stuck out for me is the cost of offices as a cost of doing
business. For years folks have been working to fit more and more people into
fewer and fewer square feet because the office expense was a serious
impediment to profitability, it added to the "loaded cost" of your employees,
and that combined with salary was your biggest cost.

But here is the thing, if your employees are generating these huge revenue per
employee numbers, what that means is that small percentage changes in their
productivity has a huge impact on your company's revenue and profitability.

Employers need to look at what would be the impact if your employee was 10%
more productive, which means your revenue per employee number went up 10%. How
much cost would you be willing invest to make that happen? Even at crazy SF
levels of $100/sq ft / year, that is $10,000 for an additional 100 square feet
for an engineer. $10,000 represents perhaps a 5% increase in the loaded cost
of that employee. But if they boost their productivity by 10% they return 200
- 300% on that investment annually.

Bottom line, build environments that maximize the productivity of your
employees, not ones that minimize your real estate costs. Its a better
investment than hiring more people.

------
rdl
My dream office would be wfh as desired (with a physical-separated-from-my-
house shed/outbuilding, ideally), and then a choice of physical offices: a
downtown SF/Seattle/NYC/Berlin type place, and some kind of lab facility which
is essentially a military base layout (gated, guarded, buildings onsite).

Second best: living eastside seattle (i.e. Redmond) or SF Peninsula, and an
easy (off-peak, or viable mass transit, so basically off-peak) commute in,
with flexible wfh. I generally prefer entire-building-for-company vs. shared
spaces, but not necessarily at the scale of the googleplex. However, minimum
of 200 sf/person and ideally private offices or shared offices per small team,
not open plan hell.

Suburban office building would be fine (the old vmware/fb/etc. buildings, or
current googleplex/apple/etc.), and would be better than the super crowded
cobbled together multiple offices of old Facebook or Palantir in downtown Palo
Alto).

If suburban office parks in good locations (anywhere north of Mountain View)
become substantially cheaper than DTPA or SOMA, I'd be happier with 500
ft/person there for $18-24 vs. 100/ft/person for $60-100. The trick would be
having Facebook (or, it appears as is better today, Dropbox) quality catering
and other amenities onsite, and a $25-50 pax/day shuttle system.

------
timdeneau
James Howard Kunstler has some pretty good talks/books about suburban
obsolescence.

Here’s his TED talk from years ago:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia)

~~~
JabavuAdams
That was great!

------
Apocryphon
Tell it to San Jose:

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/20/boston-
pr...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/20/boston-properties-
bulks-up-north-san-jose-biz-park.html)
[http://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/14/apple-buys-old-
semicondu...](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/14/apple-buys-old-
semiconductor-plant-for-18m/)

~~~
city41
It boggles my mind how many buildings Apple has. Altogether their office space
in Silicon Valley probably approaches the size of Microsoft's Redmond campus,
yet they make a mere fraction as many products as MS.

~~~
Johnny555
Apple has around 3.3M square feet of office space now, and their new spaceship
HQ will contain around 2.8M sq ft:

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Campus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Campus)

Microsoft's Redmond campus occupies around 11M sq feet, with another 1.6M sq
feet in Bellvue.

> [http://thinkspace.com/office-space-bellevue-how-much-
> office-...](http://thinkspace.com/office-space-bellevue-how-much-office-
> space-does-microsoft-occupy/)

------
camikazeg
I can't help but think that there is opportunity here. It seems like most
cities have gone through a cycle where industry moved out of cities, a lot of
those parts of town got converted in to very affordable housing, industrial
lofts, etc. Then because of the cheap rents, artists and young people flocked
to these areas and they became the hip parts of town.

Shouldn't office parks be easier to convert than industrial buildings?

~~~
ocschwar
In the Boston area, there is no more industrial space left for illegal lofts.

I fully expect bohemians to start illegal squats in unused office parks in the
coming years.

~~~
JabavuAdams
That would be amazing! I've always wanted an office building to myself.

------
davidw
Interestingly, a couple of companies I worked for in Italy grew, and moved
into office parks that were pretty difficult to reach without a car. Here in
Bend, Oregon, I'm now at a company with offices downtown, in easy
biking/walking distance from where I live. It's kind of ironic as Italy is,
generally, a more walkable place than the US. I'm very happy, though, in any
event.

~~~
Brakenshire
I'm not sure that Europe is actually much better than the US in terms of
attitudes towards suburban/car-centric design, I think the reason why we have
mostly avoided it is down simply to the historic patterns of development.
Certainly in Britain, anywhere outside the major cities, most of the
development seems to be extremely suburban - estates of tiny detached houses
with tiny private gardens/yards, often just off a roundabout on a main road,
tacked on to the edge of an existing town or village, without any idea about
creating new public spaces, or walkability. Often these estates are mandated
to have only one exit or entrance, in order to discourage crime (this is
called 'security by design', and naturally kills any sense of a continuous
settlement). This is still going full throttle even now.

~~~
syntheticnature
I have heard that in Europe, taxation on property is based solely on the area,
encouraging upward growth, while in the US the value of what you build on it
also factors in. Therefore, in the US, a flat parking lot is not as
expensive/wasteful as it would be in Europe. I can't speak to it generally,
but it did seem my experiences of European downtown areas did not include
private parking lots, but rather more parking garages.

------
ghaff
One should note that what the article is discussing is things like access to
public transportation and in-house cafeterias, not urban locations. Which
makes sense.

There is certainly some percentage of younger employees who prefer true urban
locations but this often won't be economically viable for companies nor is it
preferred or perhaps even tolerable for those many people who live outside a
city and have to commute in.

Furthermore, the data in the US around increased urbanization mostly points to
a preference for certain very specific urban locations by an educated young
demographic.

Having said that, office park locations without convenient lunchtime and other
amenities in that vein are a pain.

------
nirmel
Related: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-old-
subur...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-old-suburban-
office-park-is-the-new-american-ghost-
town/2015/07/20/b8e7653a-1f6e-11e5-bf41-c23f5d3face1_story.html)

------
brudgers
If the development pattern is typical, office buildings near Denver's light
rail station are likely to be newer. It is typically significantly more
expensive to develop infrastructure among existing high level uses such as an
office park. In addition there are typically density incentives for locating
near mass transit that attract new development which existing automobile
centric development cannot utilize without buying out existing leases, i.e.
when the new rail station comes existing parking adjacent to buildings cannot
be converted because it is already under lease agreement with existing
tenants.

To go further, low occupancy rates of offices further from mass transit [and
that's not quite the same thing as being walkable] may be a sign of impending
redevelopment as leases are not renewed and older properties undergo less
maintenance in preparation for redevelopment. Given the 30 year cycle that
mortgages, depreciation schedules and institutional real-estate investors
often operate on, things may not be as cut and dry as the article makes out. I
wouldn't discount recent zero interest rates and the bottom falling out of the
economy as factors either. [1]

Then again, in the big money long time horizon world of real-estate that's
usually the case. Stable internal rates of return are the name of the game.

[1]: That transportation infrastructure was a major source of "shovel ready
stimulus" projects is less direct but plausibly related to the public
investment.

------
jmspring
Between high school, college, and professional life I've worked in cities,
rural areas, suburban wastelands, and urban areas like SF. The majority of the
time, most of my colleagues were concerned more with commute than "what's
around where I work". SF was a bit different, but parking and commute (late
90s early 2000s) were still top of list.

When I worked in SF, my getaway area was Grace Cathedral and the park near by.
Uphill, no people, no trash, quiet overall.

But some office parks have walkable spaces, places to eat, etc. Some are
easier to reach commute-wise than others.

Suburban does not rule out walkable. Walnut Creek is completely suburban, but
the office complexes there have become (or been developed for) being walkable
over the years -- one of the places I reference above was part of this.

And honestly, depending on the definition of "walkable" many suburban places
are more "walkable" than big cities -- traffic, sidewalks, bums spread on the
sidewalk etc.

Is the end goal a live/work situation where you don't have to commute a long
way, have reasonable rent/mortgage, and a good quality of life? Honestly, pick
two of three, if you want to be in the bay area.

Born here in South San Jose. Grew up/still live in in San Jose, Sacramento,
the east bay, and Santa Cruz. Seen a whole bunch of things.

------
stuart78
The total impermanence of so much of our architecture is depressing. While I'm
glad people are moving to more walking-friendly locations, this is just more
detritus to be demolished or forgotten.

~~~
l1ambda
James Kuntsler talks about this very thing--the places we are building he
describes as "places not worth caring about."
[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?language=en)

------
adoming3
I agree but other than in major central business districts there's only so
many places to house thousands of employees such as Google, Facebook, etc. For
that reason, I don't think suburban corporate campuses will entirely
disappear. Attracting tenants sub 30K square feet (guessing here) I can see
this obviously being a big problem.

~~~
avelis
In the case of Google & Facebook, those employers have adapted and built
office campuses to provide all the amenities the article suggested to stay
competitive in a suburban setting.

I do agree with your statement but it is also complementing what the article
is also suggesting should happen to office parks.

~~~
ghaff
This isn't really a new thing though. The company I worked for in the late
80s/90s had a suburban campus and it had multiple cafeterias as well as other
things that matter less today (cleaner, ATM, travel agent, insurance office,
etc.). If a company in an isolated suburban office park doesn't provide
services needed on a typical day, bad on them. But the basic idea isn't
especially new.

------
ptaipale
Reading the comments here, a major part of the problem seems to be that some
people move to suburbs because that is the only way to get their kids to a
decent school.

Myself, I like living in a suburban area (though here in North Europe it's
definitely walkable, and cyclable) but people here don't really choose between
city core and suburban lower-density houses because of schools. Some love the
city core, others prefer suburban areas.

(With the recent immigration and development of urban-but-not-nice satellite
cities, there are a few areas that people like to avoid if they can afford it,
including for reasons of school, but that's not a problem of city cores).

So, it looks like a major step in American urban planning would be to fix
failing schools.

------
icanhackit
There's a neat trick for making spaces more user friendly, more traversed and
more desired: Grids.

When a space doesn't intuitively tell you which way is North, what is behind
the building in front of you, whether the road to the left or right will
continue straight or curve and meander, how to find the main road etc, you
create a fairly user-hostile space. Cities and even suburbs (usually inner
city suburbs) with grid-like layouts tend to have more foot, bicycle and car
traffic whereas most other layouts favor only one of those modes.

Grids are easier to intuitively interact with than shotgun-spaghetti layouts,
removing the primary barrier to increased usage.

------
jarjoura
I remember as a child thinking 1 Infinite Loop would be a dream place to spend
my long working days. When I finally got to work there, it originally was.
Plenty of parking and Caffe Mac's was pretty premium lunch for what I was used
to. Then the company exploded and parking was a nightmare. (They added a valet
to cope with the problem.)

To eat lunch required standing in long lines no matter what time you went. San
Jose/Cupertino had pretty ridiculous rules about buildings being set back from
the highways, so the nearest sushi place required quite a hike across several
parking lots and a highway to get to.

Also friends that got moved around would be shuffled to remote campuses that
seemed so far away with disconnected transportation.

Not saying any of this would be better in a denser city like SF, but I am
saying there were definitely tradeoffs to working in what was basically just
another office park. As traffic in the bay has gotten worse, it makes them
seem less appealing for sure unless you're okay with moving every time you get
a new job.

Right now I work and live in the city, so I just walk to work and it's been a
dream come true. When friends leave to other city jobs, its easy to meet back
up for lunch and coworkers and I can hop on Muni when want to try a new place
for lunch. Not perfect by any means, but right now it's way more of an
appealing working environment.

------
rwhitman
One problem we face right now is that America was built on this "urban" vs
"suburban" planning mindset. In the 60's to the 90's the city equated
overcrowding and crime, the suburbs equaled privacy and freedom. Today we see
things quite a bit differently, but it's still city vs suburbs - you walk,
bike to work and see your neighbors regularly - or - live your life in the
self-imposed isolation of cars and spaced out tract homes.

I wish we could get over this idea that it has to be one way or the other.
Cities don't have to be densely stuffed with a grid of monstrous mixed use
high rises to be a city. Suburbs don't have to zone stores a million miles
from housing to be a suburb. Both places can share development patterns and
still give people what they want. There's a middle ground that can be found
here, but municipal planners and real estate developers seem to be fixated on
these narrow visions of growth.

What's wrong with tearing up a few office parking lots to add a few shops and
houses? What's wrong with building a few 4 floor walk-up apartment buildings
instead of yet another block-sized, doorman-guarded fortress?

Hopefully the next century of urban development in America is spent at least
partly figuring out how to blend these environments together better.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I think typifying cities as nothing but block-sized high-rises is completely
wrong. Even large parts of Manhattan are full of 4-6 story buildings.

~~~
rwhitman
I guess singling out 4 floor walk-ups as something we need more of kind of
muddles the point. The scale of the current crop of new apartment buildings is
often measured horizontally.. The trend in development these days, in my
neighborhood at least, is for developers to scoop up as large a parcel as they
can get their hands on, demolish it and build a very large mixed-use complex.
Most of them span at least a quarter of a block. Newly constructed smaller
buildings get built only when the lot size doesn't fit much else.

Increasing density around transit accessible hub areas is a strategy
championed by city planners these days, with somewhat good intentions. I just
don't think anyone has really thought through what happens when entire
neighborhoods are dominated by massive mixed-use condo buildings. What happens
if these areas lose property value? What form does a contemporary condo
complex take when blight sets in 20 years from now?

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rubiquity
But office parks are a great place for breweries!

~~~
robotresearcher
Not unless well-served by public transit.

~~~
rubiquity
Or patronized by adults that know their safe drinking limits? Novel idea, I
know.

~~~
robotresearcher
Where I live the legal drink driving limit is one beer. I can safely enjoy
rather more than that if I take the bus.

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totally
David Byrne has a book where he rides a bicycle around cities around the world
and makes similar observations.

[http://www.davidbyrne.com/archive/art/books/bicycle_diaries/](http://www.davidbyrne.com/archive/art/books/bicycle_diaries/)

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bane
One of the problems that happens is that businesses who choose city centers in
cities without good public transport end up excluding more experienced
employees with families from working there. Those people will more likely live
outside of the city in a house and will need to drive in and park, but parking
usually isn't available in necessary quantities in city centers.

The solution of course is to build more robust mass transport systems, but
that seems to be getting harder and harder.

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hitekker
The last time I worked in an office park I didn't have a car.

So walking through the giant parking lots meant that my otherwise thirty
minute commute, became 40 minutes.

I wasn't happy.

