Put some effort into understanding perspectives before resorting to derision. Bringing thousands of highly paid employees into a smaller city is often not good for many who already lives there unless they own property. The majority of the new jobs will not go to existing residents, rents will increase, restaurants will get more expensive, traffic will get worse, and everything will get more crowded.
For rich city-dwellers, the above might sound like nothing, but for people who seek smaller cities it will suck because it quickly erodes the character of the city.
I'm not in favor of the city subsidizing a company's growth, even if it does stimulate the economy in the long-run, but I just can't get behind any policy that would prevent a growing company due to something as nebulous as the erosion of the city's character.
That way the city can fit everyone, cheaply.
How many of these folks actually live in a densely populated city? Zoning laws in Manhattan have a different source and downstream effect than some suburb of SF or LA, or some other city with housing cost issues.
It's a huge topic of conversation, but I'll summarize it by offering a few items to ponder before we reduce the problem to "zoning restrictions" and people reply with "100X times this!".
--- Infrastructure is more than housing. And much more expensive. The subway system in NYC isn't scaling to capacity due to the speed of development. It may feel expensive to build a new rental building, but scaling public transportation, education, and more is deeply more expensive.
--- Manhattan isn't dense enough for you? You realize the parent article is about Google purchasing a huge swathe of Manhattan real estate. Are the skyscrapers not high enough? Better yet, maybe we should knock down those 19th century buildings in whatever pockets are left of low density housing in Manhattan and turn everything into a giant concrete reed jungle? Not all NIMBY is mean-spirited, and if you're the traveling type you can understand the need for preservation of architectural character.
--- I live in a part of NYC where zoning laws allow for more building. As it turns out, I even own a building where I could potentially build an additional 1500 square feet, and I could convert my building into six separate apartment buildings. This would add net 4 apartments to a city which has a housing crisis. And I'd love do. However, I'd have to comply with code, which like zoning exists to protect us from ourselves, if for different reasons. To comply with code, so my tenants don't get incinerated in a fire, I'd have to spend so much money that it's cost prohibitive.
Sorry, I'm just tired of reading the same "it's the zoning laws" reductionism by people who know only suburbs.
Manhattan is absolutely not dense enough for me. It has like a couple small areas, with 40 story buildings.
The skyscrapers are not high enough for me.
Here is how things should work. We should pick a single 1 mile square area, and in this area there are zero building height limits. Every single building in this area should be 50 stories tall or higher.
And then we should leave the surrounding area, hundreds of square miles, for the low density people to live in.
Yes, high density buildings are more expensive. But the actual cost of building the building is a small percentage of the total cost of living in an area. The REAL cost is caused by artifical land supply constraints.
You want lower density? Don't want to live in the very small, designated 50 story building area? Great! You can live in the 99% of the US landmass that is low density.
Us people who disagree, and and prefer higher density living should get at least freaking 1% of the land to do what we want with!
Have you had a chance to see the effects on massive, quick development on specifically the mass transit system in Brooklyn (downtown Brooklyn, in particular)?
Look, I'm not saying there shouldn't be density. I'm just trying to point a finger at other elements that should be thought about other than tall buildings. I don't have kids, so I won't even get started on the downstream effects density has on school crowdedness, choices and desirability of areas.
The left hand doesn't talk to the right hand in the vast bureaucracy that is NYC. If development and rezoning were done with consideration for long-term downstream factors, I wouldn't have needed to write these comments.
There is a difference between 'fitting people' somewhere and them being happy.
Living in something dense like Tokyo/NYC is not desirable to people who seek cities like Boulder.
The other option is to keep expanding outward with single family home lots, but prices in the desirable close areas still shoot way up and traffic gets miserable (see LA).
Note 2: Thousands of highly paid employees will cause real estate prices to rise, certainly. But they'll spend on more than just real estate, so the economy as a whole will grow with a lot of incoming money to be spent. As these incoming people are already working for 1 company, their demand for products/services will fall onto the local economy. Which is good for existing residents who participate in that economy. It'll also be good for anyone else who lives (after surviving applicable rent hikes) in the same districts, as the influx of tax money will help local schools, law enforcement, libraries, etc.
A bunch of rich people showing up does not really help most people.
A bunch of googlers will not support the local coop grocery store, but instead continue using amazon fresh/blue apron, etc. Not to mention the boutique stores they want to shop at probably don't exist yet (depending on the city).
When you have to twist figures so that 1.5 thousand becomes "thousands" (thereby making it sound much bigger), then it means you have no argument at all.
Boulder's population is 108,000. Adding an additional 1500 employees adds 1.5% to that population; not a huge amount.