A bigger problem is the location, office building are not located in residential areas and as such lack a lot of facilities, e.g. no supermarkets and other shops in walking/cycling distance, no MD/pharmacy and other healthcare facilities, no schools or playgrounds, etc. etc.
I agree that it’s not great but it’s better than nothing. Plus some of those services could eventually appear or be setup even in the same building itself.
You want to open a entire supermarket for a single building ?
That would only work if you convert an entire commercial district, but then you still have all the other infrastructure problems. If you’re going to do that why not level the entire lot and build proper housing?
It’s very common to have grocery stores in the bottom floors of buildings that are open to everyone, not just the residents of that building. And in parts of Europe it is the norm for large commercial/residential buildings to reserve the bottom floor for small retail businesses. It would greatly improve cities to have this.
I’m in Europe and large office buildings that are empty are usually not the ones with stores on the bottom floors, those offices (and residential buildings) are older, smaller buildings in city centers and are very much in demand. The large empty office buildings are usually in commercial districts on the edge of cities with very little foot traffic. There is no market for convenience stores there if you just convert a single office building.
Say you get 100 apartments out of it, you can’t run a supermarket on 100 customers.
Say you get 100 apartments out of it, you can’t run a supermarket on 100 customers.
Why does it have to be a supermarket, though? From what I’ve heard, New York City has bodegas everywhere and those are small convenience stores that have similarly sized customer bases. If the bottom floor is a small market, they have a nearly guaranteed 100 customers. And in your hypothetical commercial district, there would be more than one unused office building so more opportunity for mixed-use space.
Because what use would a bodega be on it’s own? They aren’t large enough to have the inventory to replace a supermarket. so that still means you have no conveniently close place to get your daily groceries.
And in your hypothetical commercial district, there would be more than one unused office building so more opportunity for mixed-use space.
These kinds of commercial districts with nothing but office buildings are terrible sad places to be. I’m not sure why anyone would want to live in such a depressing place.
Because what use would a bodega be on it’s own? They aren’t large enough to have the inventory to replace a supermarket.
I didn’t mean the store would have to be a bodega; that was just an example of a small store sustaining itself with that size customer base. I meant that it could be a small grocery store, one that doesn’t qualify as a supermarket. And like I said, if we’re talking about a whole district, there are multiple buildings available so you don’t have to get everything from one store. You could have a butcher in one building, a produce shop across the street, the grocery store with just nonperishables beside that, etc.
These kinds of commercial districts with nothing but office buildings are terrible sad places to be. I’m not sure why anyone would want to live in such a depressing place.
Because they don’t have many other options. We’re talking about affordable housing, which is needed by people who are increasingly getting priced out of non-depressing areas. And areas like what I’m describing, with small, locally owned stores colocated with housing with shared ammenities can be incredibly vibrant communities. You could even close off the interior roads and make something like the superblock concept that’s been growing (I’ve heard about it the most in relation to neighborhoods in Spain).
It can be done, but it requires proper planing, fore thought, and research. I could easily see a rushed, budget conversion leading to a getto like environment.
Such changes will take time. Right now, no-one is sure if WFH will stick. The last thing they want is to initiate a change, only to find it’s far less profitable than just waiting. Local government won’t push it yet, for similar reasons.
The best thing right now would be to gather case studies and planning research into EXACTLY what is needed, both short term (1-10 years) and long (20-100 years). That can then both accelerate the process, once it gets going, as well as make it long term sustainable.
It’ll stick if we let it stick. If you don’t let your work bully you into going back to the Office and instead say “Kindly fuck off, if you want to retain me in your company, you’ll let me work from my home. If not, I can easily find a job that pays 20% more, and let’s me work from home.”
Because let’s face it. You almost certainly can find a 20% raise + WFH if you are good at your job and work in a field that has WFH as an option.
I would have agreed up until about a week ago. There was a news story a few days ago about how there are people in LA renting various vehicles parked on public streets for people to live in. Then another story about how there are actually thousands of such “rentals” in LA. I think highrise slums might be a notch or two down from the current dystopia.
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