Hacker News Reader

Comment by sbaoufbasfub | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if maybe there's a downside to making the housing affordable by building out. If you build out during the boom years, what happens when the boom subsides? You'll end up with a city full of run down infrastructure that the city can't support on a smaller tax base. It makes sense to me to expand housing, I'm just not sure how much.

View on HN

This isn't a situation like the North Dakota oil boom, where there's a massive spike on a small base that's clearly going to end. It would a long time to build out enough to have the potential problem, and a long time to decline enough to have it.

Detroit is overbuilt for its population now, but it got a good 50 years of use at that size.

I could get behind that position, but what factors make you think the boom is sustained? I'm not from Seattle, so I'm kind of in the peanut gallery, but if Seattle's economy is based on a few large companies or a single industry, that would be a problem. What does the economic composition of Seattle look like?

1) It's pretty diversified. Medicine, Tech, Aerospace. The area has cheap electricity thanks to the Columbia River, which is good for the last two. 2) Even if it's not, we're not talking about 10x. We're talking about maybe 1.5x or 2x at the very most extreme end. It's not like Vegas where there's endless desert to fill, it would take time to build that much around Seattle.

Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Nordstrom, umbrellas.

I'm all for build-out, but you have an interesting point here. We need some sort of elastic build-out scheme, so that if/when people move out it doesn't turn into another Detroit.

Realistically I don't think it will happen in Seattle, I don't see a lot of people moving out. Even if there is a technology bust, where would those engineers go? I doubt there will be better jobs for them anywhere else...

Amazon should look into on-demand scalable housing solutions that you can pay for on a usage basis.

You're describing trailer park rentals. I'm in!

AHS - Amazon Housing Services (like AWS).

Multi-tenancy included :)

If ol' Jeff picks up the idea, he should give me and parent commenter a cut.

Build out has happened in Vancouver, and it really needs to focus on building up instead. Pushing working people into neighbouring communities in the metro area isn't the worst, but it's drifting farther and farther out. Whereas closer cities already had their own communities, I feel like too many people are flocking to towns that have no reason to exist other than their (relative) proximity to Vancouver.

Sure thing, I'm all for building up. Buildout does not have to be bad if you have public transport. I would take 60 minutes riding on a train over 30 minutes driving in a car.

> I would take 60 minutes riding on a train over 30 minutes driving in a car.

That's not precisely the case. Did you take into account the time it takes to get to the train, the waiting time, and the time it takes to get to work after you get off the train?

I was waiting 10 minutes (nominally from the train) from work. I had to drive 7 minutes to the train, wait 5 minutes (train was 10 minutes, and I like to get to the station 5 minutes before the train shows up) and the train is generally late. And then a 20 minute walk to my job.

I see your point.

I'll tell you where I'm coming from. Walking, in a pleasing environment, is fun, excersize and mind-clearing rest. Riding a train is reading time. Driving is neither and it's an addition stress of being on the lookout for potentially fatal events around you.

In theory. In practice I still drive. :/

You can walk around during most of those in between times. Not so when just driving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Seattle_since_1940#...

This sounds similar to the current dependency on Amazon in the city.

Arguably, a city can avoid Detroit's fate by not relying too heavily on a single industry.

First step: not relying on a single company.

Would that be Boeing, Microsoft, or Amazon?

You can end up with Las Vegas perhaps. There is certainly a challenge there, and places like Detroit, where a distributed population places an undue burden on services.

Detroit died because US automanufacturing rapidly automated and stagnated at the same time, cutting a huge number of jobs. The city of Detroit had become addicted to the property taxes those jobs brought in, and never adjusted taxes to match the employment levels. People that owned their homes just picked up and left the city.

While Seattle is tech heavy, esp in Cloud Computing, it does have diversification.

What is the issue with Las Vegas? Other that it spreading out?

Las Vegas with its collection of townships, the two cities (Las Vegas and North Las Vegas), the multiple jurisdictions and overlap of agencies, it isn't "wrong" per-se, it is just inefficient.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com