
Who owns our cities and why this urban takeover should concern us - scribu
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all
======
strictnein
That article needed a little bit more massaging by the editors. Lots of
sentences like this:

> " In the post-2008 period, much buying of buildings is to destroy them and
> replace them with far taller, far more corporate and luxurious types of
> buildings – basically, luxury offices and luxury apartments"

> "All of this cannot happen in a business park, regardless of its density –
> they are privately controlled spaces where low-wage workers can work, but
> not “make”. "

I mean, am I the only one reading this thing and shaking my head after each
paragraph wondering what it was that I read, exactly?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You are not alone. I bailed out after only a few graphs. I parsed "...Cities
are the spaces where those without power get to make a history and a culture,
thereby making their powerlessness complex..." a few times, then moved on,
thinking it would clear up later. It did not. I wasn't sure I agreed with the
author or not. I wasn't sure whether "complex" was being used as an adjective
or a noun. After a bit more of that nonsense, I decided it wasn't worth
figuring out.

This is really simple. Write for your grandma. It's great that you've absorbed
some rather complex ideas in your travels, and we'd love to hear about them.
But if you can't write for your grandma, you shouldn't be writing for a large
audience.

I'll go even further and say that even if you're writing for an audience who
is up to speed on whatever it is you like going on about, you should still
back-track on some of the more nuanced topics and explain it like I'm 5. Many
times a group of professionals will all think they have the same understanding
of a subject -- until they actually start expounding on it.

~~~
Pyxl101
That sentence almost sounds like a garden path sentence.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

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jamespitts
This article illustrates a key problem with our city infrastructure. The more
I think about it, the more I believe that the first few floors of buildings
should be "public infrastructure". Much in the way that farmer's markets,
sidewalks, and small streets are governed, building bases could be controlled
by local institutions.

In this approach, new construction would build a standard base structure of
several levels. This base would have an open layout and the owners would only
control enough space necessary to provide access to parking and the upper
levels.

The building base would then assume the same ecological role as a set of
small, traditional buildings having store fronts.

If this were to come into effect, community institutions could then govern how
the base of a building structurally and aesthetically interfaces with the
public. I don't think a central city government should take on this role
though. Legally, the governing institution might simply lease the space out to
management companies over very long terms, periodically upgrading or changing
the allocation of commercial and public space as the needs emerge.

Or we could just continue to leave it up to faraway owners and builders to
comply with code during construction and improvements. But it is actually
quite obtuse to let law govern issues of human use in shorter time frames.
Needs arise faster than concrete sets.

For example, in the current setup, what if a need arises that requires major
reconstruction? An example: reducing crime by adding smaller shops with later
hours to a building front that is not used at all after "work hours". That
change would require prodding the owner to modify the base of their building,
and that could take a very long time. Meanwhile, the community suffers
economic damage (and the building owner may not care because they make their
money off of tenants high up in the building).

Imagine how hard it would be to add pedestrian and bike infrastructure if
every block of street were owned by a different corporation?

Another benefit to a community-run building base is that locals can be
empowered to define the street level, mitigating the ill social and economic
effects (perceived or actual) of larger-scale building development. If the
neighborhood folks see that there will be several levels of familiar, local
shops and community space, and these amenities have traditional architecture,
they might not so strongly oppose that the upper levels are dense and modern.

~~~
imgabe
> Or we could just continue to leave it up to faraway owners and builders to
> comply with code during construction and improvements. But it is actually
> quite obtuse to let law govern issues of human use in shorter time frames.
> Needs arise faster than concrete sets.

Um, we do leave it up to them to comply with local codes. I'm not sure what
the objection is. They don't get an option to comply with codes or not. You
aren't building anything in a major downtown area without a permit, which
means complying with all local codes.

If a community wanted to mandate that x% of a building's lower level had to be
dedicated to street level retail, they could easily do that. Builders would
either decide if it were worthwhile or not. For the most part,
developers/owners do not need much encouragement to increase rentable square
footage in a building.

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Animats
Imagine a city in which five or six companies own most of the real estate.
That already happened to banking.

~~~
douche
In my experience, it is not particularly rare for 2-3 property management
companies to represent a controlling percentage of the rental properties in a
small city.

~~~
sevensor
This is the case where I live. When I asked the guy who runs one of the two
food carts in town about why he didn't take his business inside, he told me
that rent would eat him alive. All of the downtown commercial real estate is
owned by three companies, and they adjust their rents upwards in lockstep.

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bufordsharkley
This article is pretty opaquely written, but if the overall idea of the
average person being disenfranchised from ownership of his/her community is
troubling, I recommend reading up on Georgism. We've had a number of
discussions on HN about it recently.[0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929)

~~~
collyw
Probably a lot of that has to do with declining rates of home ownership. I am
40 and very few people own an appartment where I live. My parents owned a
house by their late 20's.

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checker
There's a DC startup called Fundrise that has an innovative way of tackling
the problem. Basically, the people in the community have a stake in the real
estate that is built, so Fundrise creates an investment opportunity for the
people in the community to participate in the local commercial real estate
market. This allows the average person to participate rather than larger
corporations or people with plenty of cash on hand.

I don't know if this model can scale up to a New York high rise, but they are
currently working with quite a few properties in the Northeast.

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rdlecler1
This trend seems to be a symptom of growing income inequality that
concentrates capital in a few of our most culturally rich cities.

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padobson
Corporate ownership may have it's downside, but in my hometown[1], at least we
got a Whole Foods in the bargain.

[1][http://wiki.southpark.cc.com/wiki/Historic_Shi_Tpa_Town](http://wiki.southpark.cc.com/wiki/Historic_Shi_Tpa_Town)

------
profeta
if you are a bank

    
    
       1. refinance risk houses more than once
       2. sell that for profit
       3. send dividends to head quarters overseas
       4. crash national branches, foreclose homes
       5. get money from govt to fix things
       6. buy those homes

~~~
arca_vorago
7\. Pretend to fix the issue, but instead get k-street to bribe the
politicians. 8\. Repeat

