Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziszis | Hacker News Reader

Seattle* is an anomaly. Roughly the 100th city worldwide by size, yet has 2 of the 5 largest companies in the world by market cap.

* Technically Seattle metro area

View on HN

Incredibly, Seattle gets only 2.61% of all venture investment. #8 in the US, behind San Diego [1].

[1]: http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/02/the-spiky-geography-of-v...

I think that's the point....for all the hype SV gets, Seattle should get some too....

Judging by rental and house prices in my neighbor I think we get plenty of hype.

Turns out reality is more evenly distributed than HN.

Houses are going for 500k+, please, less hype actually. All we want to do is build cool product and enjoy our life. I don't think anyone in Seattle wants the SV arrogance and lifestyle.

Heh, this is the Seattleite party line. Don't kid yourself into thinking people in Seattle are more humble than the people in SV. They're just not as overt about it. I agree with you that the flashy culture of SV doesn't exist as much here, and that's a good thing, but I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met anywhere in the world.

see: Frasier.

   I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, 
   standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met 
   anywhere in the world.

Could you perhaps expand on this observation? I genuinely find it interesting. This is the sort of thing you don't see measured in those "most-livable cities" indices you see from time to time [1]. Tricky to capture I agree, but doable. It would greatly simplify one's choice when deciding where to build a career.

[1]The 10 most livable cities in the world http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-10-most-livable-cities-...

>>Could you perhaps expand on this observation? I genuinely find it interesting.

Look up "Seattle freeze". It's a real phenomenon sociologists have studied.

Essentially, it's easy to make acquiantences in Seattle, but extremely difficult to make friends. Everyone is polite and friendly on the surface, but any attempt to get to know someone is met with (polite) stonewalling.

Could you list a few other cities which are known for such peculiar mannerisms? I was told Boston has its own stripe of the "Seattle Freeze". I find all of this incredibly interesting. If I could, I'd at least make a quick wiki of these observations. Frankly I think this is one of the elements that would figure prominently when considering places to move to, whether within the U.S. or globally. More so than weather or abundance of restaurants or even neighborhood walk scores!

edit: Earlier, HN didn't let me reply to you perhaps due to some time threshold I'm not aware of. So replied to myself. Deleted that post now.

It looks like Wikipedia beat you to it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice (and pointers within).

unlike SF, we've got land to build on, and are doing so. lots of new apartments south and east of Lake Union - aka Amazonia.

San Francisco has tons of land to build on. The density there is an absolute joke. Whenever someone proposes building something one story too high the local neighborhood groups lose their collective shit and shut it down.

Unrelated, but I wonder what the sweet spot is height/floor wisefor developing affordable units. That is, given zero pushback from local citizenry and groups, if a locality wanted dense housing due to lack of space, at what point does adding a story make average cost per unit slightly more expensive instead of slightly less expensive (assuming it actually is cheaper to add a second or third story than a single story complex).

It's really a function of land cost. A high rise unit costs about $30k more per unit according to here: http://www.humphreys.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MFT_FL-0...

There are also costs that developers do not directly pay for but a city pays for. Maintaining all of the miles and miles of road, metro, pipes, power lines, police patrols and so on is more expensive than the equivalent amount of people in a smaller space.

Thanks, that's useful information, but it looks like it's already heavy on one one of the spectrum. 40 unit and 160 unit comparisons are interesting, but I assume those are already from 6-8 floors to 30-40 floors. I'm also interested in the costs of units between 2-3 floors to 5-6 floors. As floors increase, that report shows an increase in construction costs (I assume because of the pain of building higher and the extra support needed to bear the load). If it's not always an entirely smooth curve of cost as floors increase, there may be some sweet spots (local maxima) in there were you maximize per-unit value. E.e. if an 11 floor building requires different, more costly building methods, it's entirely possible that a 10 floor building may be a better investment than 11, 12 or 13 floor building, and then at 14 floors it's a better value than 10 floors again. It would make sense to have building and ordinance codes line up with building realities, but they likely don't.

That's happening in Vancouver, New York City, hell, any place even remotely worth living.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com