Usually the Economist does better at making such articles at least appear to have a veneer of substance, even if lacking, while this piece is just bare as lacking it completely.
> Urban scholars like Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser (who spoke about the future of cities at Policy Exchange, a British think-tank, this week) are busy trying to work out whether the rise in home-working that has occurred during the covid-19 pandemic will endure when the virus ebbs. If it does, many service jobs in cities, from baristas to taxi drivers, will disappear. Public-transport systems will struggle. The value of city-centre property will tank. The shed boom makes that outcome more likely.
What a tenuous attempt at tying sheds to job loss and city center value reduction with no rationale whatsoever given. Where is the study on this topic? None is referenced or linked. The scholars referenced aren't given any context about their background, nor their current positions or research.
> This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Spread of the shed"
Perhaps they should have stuck with the print title instead of the vapid clickbait we were given. I'd say the Economist should know better, but they've been a shadow of their former selves for quite a long time now.
Found while searching one of the scholars referenced:
"It is impossible to predict in advance which changes will stick, and how much and to what extent our cities and suburbs will ultimately change. Such ventures in futurism are always a fool’s game. But it is safe to say that the changes that will persist are those that make our cities safer, healthier, and more efficient." - Richard Florida
I really enjoyed your reply, I giggled, I laughed and I agree. I wouldn't have been able to reply in such a non-sarcastic way and serious way as you did, though.
Because print magazines have a mix of content of different lengths and different purposes. A short article presenting an unusual stat providing a different perspective on a current topic doesn’t appear completely unreasonable.
Essentially, people are building sheds for offices. This discourages them from wanting to work in an office and that will destroy all the business models catering to office workers.
Yeah if you want to know why you have the insane demand that the government and businesses force parents to send their kids back to school and go back to work, that's the reason.
Thing to remember. If someone starts bagging on you for not caring about things like 'the children' or 'peoples rights' when historically they can't give a damn about either. They're gaslighting you for their own selfish reasons.
A somewhat well-known story about George Bernard Shaw's writing hut: He used to call it "London", so that when someone telephoned the house his maid would say that he had gone to London.
I think property values will go up even more in cities after the pandemic. Cities offer a lot of value to certain people (namely young unmarried people) if all the services are open.
If they can work from home, they'll still want to be in the city, but they'll want a bigger place in the city. I can see a well paid engineer opting for a two bedroom place for themself instead one, so they can have a dedicated office to work from home, and still be in the city to hit up the bar or club at 6pm.
I'll bet we see the construction of more 2 and 3 bedroom units and fewer one bedroom/studios if the WFH trend continues after the pandemic.
I dislike NIMBYs, but this is one place where they have a valid practical complaint. Most schools are funded largely by property taxes, so the "price" of public school is roughly (housing cost)/(number of school-aged children). Larger apartments are still low housing cost compared to an equivalent house, so a family renting a large apartment will contribute less per student. And apartments come in bunches, so if you change an apartment complex from 100 studios and 1BR to 60 S/1BR and 20 2BR, you might 10x the fiscal impact of the complex on the school district.
We get to pretend that there's not a per-student price for public school, while disguising the fact that there's a mostly congruent "space and quality of life" price instead. A different funding formula for schools would make a lot of practical NIMBYs stop caring.
> Larger apartments are still low housing cost compared to an equivalent house
do you have an argument or source for this? I'm having a hard time finding a good breakdown of property tax assessed per unit in an apartment building. I can look at sale prices of condos vs homes on zillow, and it looks like condos tend to be more expensive per square foot. is your statement only true under the assumption that the apartment will fit the same number of bedrooms in a smaller floorplan?
I don't have a source. But conceptually, a condo or apartment generally has fewer square feet per bedroom, and doesn't include the land. I'm not sure how to capture this for rentals, but if you find a neighborhood with both apartments and single family homes, and look on Zillow, comparably size homes will cost more. I live in a house that's part of a condo complex (association, no private yards, no garages), and the exact same structure elsewhere in our neighborhood with a small (~3K sf) lot and a garage cost $200k more.
I did find this article [0] that argues the opposite: that (high-rise) condos are indeed more expensive per square foot. the fewer square feet per bedroom could be enough to offset this. I guess it doesn't really matter what the reality is; you could still be right that people perceive apartment dwellers not to be paying their fair share of school funding.
Yes, towers cost more per sq ft, but I’m talking about local comps - a house in a neighborhood with towers would cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
In most of America, towers are rare. Think more of 3 story apartment buildings along suburban arterials - those are unquestionably less expensive than the houses between the arterials.
That applies in suburbs and single family zones, but not so much in high rises in the city center. The city center rarely has good school or NIMBYs, since most people there rent.
I can foresee a public campaign by regional urban governments against remote work, complete with an expensive PR re-branding of it as suspect, probably harming various vulnerable people, etc.
Actually, a lot of smaller market towns in the commuter belt have been doing well (But not during full lockdown) as people are shopping locally, rather than from the office site (London)
A natural development of the remote work capability sparked by Covid-19 in an accelerated way. One of the major drives for offices was the growth of manufacturing businesses that required an overlay of administrative workers to deal with orders for new goods and buying the parts being used as specialty parts makers emerged(nuts/bolts/transistors/IC etc), as well as the need to measure output, pay wages, collect invoices etc. The old business model did not trust unwatched, unmeasured workers - this has changed. All order flow, wages, parts buying etc, can now be done online, and measured online = OK to pay online. This is a new freedom for businesses as well as workers to eliminate the tedious drive to and from work, to buy lunches away from home, to buy and maintain suits of clothes - working naked is fine as far as productions is concerned, and you can even get a suited zoom avatar that takes part naked with a smart cam topping it off with a face view so non-one knows you are naked. Racial/gender bias can vanish, who knows who is behind a neutral avatar.
Cities will grit their teeth and try to outlaw/tax 'sheds'
The great human diaspora is upon us, rejoice...
As for large centers, a great levelling will occur. Rents and property values will decline. Some businesses will adapt - some not. New tenants will live in re-purposed offices - new plumbing/wiring needed. Dual use buildings will emerge, with offices on one floor, and workers living on another. Giggers with the capacity to perform 3 or more busines jobs will emerge - who cares as long as the performance metrics are met?
Old style control freaks will rage.
We live in interesting times...
The fundamental driver towards cities is a winner-take-all economy. When markets strongly favor the winners and flush out the losers, people have a strong incentive to be near the winners, in hopes that they'll be one of them (or at least able to ride their coattails). When markets are stagnant or divided into lots of local winners, it favors decentralization, suburbs, and rural areas. It was like this in the 1970s and 1930s as well, as well as the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Right now everybody who's not making stuff directly useful for the pandemic is a loser, and most of the few winners positioned their products years ago and lucked into the COVID boom. There's no incentive to be near cities, because there's not a whole lot of innovation or economic revolution happening. That'll change very quickly if the economy comes roaring back, particularly if accompanied by major technological or social changes that open up new markets.
> Urban scholars like Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser (who spoke about the future of cities at Policy Exchange, a British think-tank, this week) are busy trying to work out whether the rise in home-working that has occurred during the covid-19 pandemic will endure when the virus ebbs. If it does, many service jobs in cities, from baristas to taxi drivers, will disappear. Public-transport systems will struggle. The value of city-centre property will tank. The shed boom makes that outcome more likely.
What a tenuous attempt at tying sheds to job loss and city center value reduction with no rationale whatsoever given. Where is the study on this topic? None is referenced or linked. The scholars referenced aren't given any context about their background, nor their current positions or research.
> This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Spread of the shed"
Perhaps they should have stuck with the print title instead of the vapid clickbait we were given. I'd say the Economist should know better, but they've been a shadow of their former selves for quite a long time now.
Found while searching one of the scholars referenced:
"It is impossible to predict in advance which changes will stick, and how much and to what extent our cities and suburbs will ultimately change. Such ventures in futurism are always a fool’s game. But it is safe to say that the changes that will persist are those that make our cities safer, healthier, and more efficient." - Richard Florida