Berlin Google Campus occupied
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This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high paying jobs, did we not? If the people need more housing, the solution is, shockingly enough, to build more housing.
There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.
If people here put half the energy in fighting for fairer remuneration for their work rather than whining about the raising rent and property prices that come with being a desirable city and country...
The only reason they're able to do this is because of years of fairly extreme mercantilistic policies combined with struggling economies in other parts of the EU (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and to an extent Ireland).
It works out for Germany in the short- and medium-run, but it's bad for the EU as a whole.
It's also bad for Germany in the long run, because even if extreme mercantilism were sustainable in a free market in the long run (spoiler: it's not), excess surplus means, by definition, that the government is underinvesting in public infrastructure. It takes a while for the effects of that to become evident, but Germany is starting to see hints of it already, and if these policies continue, it'll become much more pronounced.
I simply see many good and skilled workers paid way too little. How am I earning as much as a med tech with 12 years experience after being in IT proper for 2 years ? The answer lays, admitted within my limited view, in the skilled labor force simply accepting middling pays. Which is maybe harder to pull off in the IT branch it attracting more workers not ready to simply accept lower pays for their work.
In the end I have colleagues with way more experience than me earning less than me simply because they asked for less...Somehow its more a kind of established cultural thing and companies / management taking good advantage of it. Lets not pretend C levels are badly paid in Germany XD.
In recent years (decades, actually), we seem to have dropped the ball in the counter-centralisation game, maybe as a consequence of reunification.
The solution is to build more housing to alleviate the pressure. This way you can keep the rents low without pumping up just a few salaries.
And in a city like Berlin the situation is vastly different from SF. Public transport and biking work like a charm so housing doesn't have to be smack next to the headquarters.
Companies want to reap the benefits of coming to a city with a qualified workforce but the disbenefits get to be "enjoyed" by everyone else around there. Tragedy of the commons. They should be supporting the housing market if they want a good reception.
Full disclosure: I'm saying this as one of the people who enjoys such benefits while some people around me bite the bullet.
Giving people a more even chance at winning musical chairs is nice, but how about just making more chairs?
So a fundamental ability to compete is IMHO a basic requirement for building more chairs.
If salaries go up without housing being addressed directly, you get what's happened in SF: everyone middle-class and down being pushed out by high rent prices, because they're all competing for the same limited amount of space.
The "american dream" of a massive house for every couple can't survive the 21st century without triggering a revolution.
Plus, Berlin likes to protect their heritage; often tearing down and rebuilding whole neighborhoods turned out to be a very bad idea.
As I mentioned further downthread: This is especially pronounced in Kreuzberg, the whole district was supposed to be torn down and turned into a planned utopian living quarter. The Kottbuser Tor was supposed to be turned into a highway crossroad and the buildings there stem from those plans.
Reminds me of this
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like...
Come to a European city and walk through streets with hundreds of years of history for some perspective. Then you can advocate to tear it all down and build it all up for some passing tech bubble fad straight to their faces and see what kind of response you get.
"these rich young people" are people, too
If not where and how do you relocate them? Where does that money come from? How about the apartments that are privately owned? How does that work?
As it is, Kreuzberg, the district we're talking about, the population density is 15,000/sq km, about half the density of Manhattan, and about twice the density of San Francisco as a whole.
SF is home and I love it, but not all of it is as worth protecting as my nimby friends think. The Richmond, the sunset, ingleside, bayview / hunter's point, South SF .. Most of that wastes space, and could easily be rebuilt to be as dense and beautiful as Paris or Barcelona, but it would require courage and a more social government than what we actually have.
There are no "massively sprawling single-family zones" in the area.
Maybe you could do just a modicum of research before you call "B.S." on people.
If we could get SF down to 1500/month I'd be ecstatic, that's less than half the current price.
Also, it's quite possible that you widely underestimate the existing density, this is no single family sprawl we are talking about.
Why? Aesthetics? Google-type people don't want to live in high-rises?
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they aren't willing even to live near high-rises. That's a new one to me.
In many areas, single family homes on corner lots are being torn down and replaced by 3-4 story apartment buildings. Neighborhood associations are very much up in arms against these developments that alter the "character of the neighborhood". Often these new buildings are shorter than the trees around them, but still they are considered "out of place".
What I don't understand is, as the parent comment seems to suggest, that a company like Google wouldn't locate near a locale with existing high-rises? I realize I may be misunderstanding.
I fully understand that there are plenty of people who don't want development in their neighborhoods. I've just never heard the idea that some critical mass of employees would not want to live in or even work near already existing high rises such that a company would deem locating in such a place to be unacceptable.
Does that make sense? Like, would a lot of potential Google engineers not take high-pay, high-prestige jobs at a Google site that is located in the middle of a bunch of high-rise apartments in a boring city? Or are all Google engineers just really super cool and fun and adventurous while also only tolerating low-slung buildings? I'm really curious--not at all being sarcastic.
Like, the government has the power to change how something is zoned, do they not? And the government is elected by the people. And it's not like anyone thinks that no new buildings should ever go up in cities, so the clear solution here is for people to vote/apply political pressure to protect this particular area. That's the government's job.
I know this is a popular opinion, but is there empirical evidence for this? Isn't this solution based on the assumption that there was a one-time surge of people, leading to a one-time rise in demand for housing?
The article makes a fundamental error with that car market analogy, BTW. Cars are consumables that get bought to be driven by the buyer. Houses in cities are investments that are built to be rented out. Completely different market dynamics. That the author makes a grave error like this while blogging about urban planning is a bit scary.
What I meant are real longitudinal studies that track rent price development and increasing supply over time, preferably in Europe, where the rent market works quite a bit differently than in the US. The vast majority of housing in Berlin is for rent.
I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the market. It negatively affects all renters and only benefits speculators and owners in the area.
You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big companies pushing their agendas.
I'm from the bay area and pay close attention to land use/zoning issues, so yeah, I think I do. The bay area has had particularly extreme series of decades of rent increases precisely because of anti-housing policies. If the market was allowed to respond, rents would still rise, to be sure, but not nearly as much.
> Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the market.
Anchor industries succeeding in a metro also raises wages for others in that metro. But, the catch is that the wage rise may not necessarily be enough to match the increase in cost of living. The bay area (and really all coastal California) is a good example of this. Wages for a lot of random job types are higher than normal, but housing is still too expensive.
> You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big companies pushing their agendas.
Companies have a basic duty to run themselves ethically and obey laws and regulations. "You created too many high-paying jobs" is a silly thing to get upset at them for, when the problem is clearly a governmental failure. Liberal US cities are neither permitting the market to create new housing, nor are they creating large amounts of public housing themselves. Their attitude amounts to, "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!"
You want a solution? Look at Singapore or Vienna.
The point isn't that fewer restricts means housing prices won't climb at all, but that they won't climb as quickly. For the truly affordable segment, they're either served with old housing (like with cars), or with public housing.
> This isn't changing zoning a little bit.
It's true, fairly radical zoning changes are warranted. Or at least, radical by US standards. Although you probably wouldn't have to go quite as far as Singapore, since obviously US cities aren't as land restricted.
Rent has significantly increased in the Portland metro area and gentrification is in full effect. There are vacant luxury multi-tenant properties littering the city and many more in the planning stages. As more tech companies enter the Portland market, expect this trend to accelerate.
Externalities exist. Companies cannot pretend they operate independently of the communities they're based in.
They also can't shut their ears. Even if local zoning laws are at fault, these companies which spend lavishly on lobbyists at the national and provincial level, don't seem to be agitating for local change to improve housing conditions, which would better both their employees' quality of life and their own public perception.
True enough, higher wages cause prices of goods and services to rise. But again, the externality in this case is a result of workers having more money: exactly what everyone in the country, right and left, wants to see. That's why getting upset at them for that is silly.
It's like getting upset at green energy companies for making coal miners obsolete by getting cheaper and more productive. Yeah, that's an externality, and it sucks for those miners. But ultimately, that's still what society wants to have happen.
> Even if local zoning laws are at fault, these companies which spend lavishly on lobbyists at the national and provincial level, don't seem to be agitating for local change to improve housing conditions, which would better both their employees' quality of life and their own public perception.
No, they absolutely do. For example, Google is in frequent contact with the Mountain View city council over land use, for example, and has been supportive of adding housing to the north bayshore area where their HQ is.
However, many residents, especially long-term residents, are skeptical or critical of big tech companies, so they can only throw their weight around so much. Putting too much pressure on local cities would just cause a political backlash. Yes, Google is rich, but ultimately residents voting is what brings about regulatory changes. Contrary to what many Americans seem to think, companies can't just directly buy new laws.
I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, I'm just trying to point out how the same words can sound wonderful or insidious, friendly or patronizing, depending on the listener.
1. Build new communities entirely (see Night City)
2. No politically viable solutions to income inequality? Do it yourself! Implement your own local basic income program for non-employee residents. Would at least help with PR. Gives a new spin on the phrase corporate welfare.
It also drives up demand for new housing and thus urban renewal projects become viable, which contribute to create higher-quality housing suitable to modern needs, not to mention contributions to ancillary services like public transportation.
> It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area.
No it doesn't. It impacts those who don't live there but want to, and due to increased demand need to compete with more people for that privilege.
> Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses.
Ah yes, because those who didn't had opportunities to enroll in an engineering degree deserve to have their occupations ridiculed, and shouldn't even have the right to a respectable job.
Is there really a solution in your head where high-paid geeks are going to move to Boise or Zagreb or Perth[1] and be happy there vs. SF or Berlin or Sydney?
[1] Pause while residents of those places tell me how great they are.
You can’t be surprised that those who aren’t rich, and we’re already here, are angry at the situation.
Google not providing any information or responding to anyones' criticisms helps about as much as #FuckOffGoogle does.
When my two year old gets angry and starts a screaming fit, I tell her she's not getting her way and screaming won't help, and practice taking deep breaths with her, and talking soothingly with her until she can calm down.
Being angry doesn't make a person right. A person being angry does not mean you should give into their demands. A mob of angry people is not more right for being large, scary and potentially violent.
Well, tech companies, if anybody, should have figured out telecommuting, but they don't because of policies directly from the top. But failing that, tech giants are giant because they want to be giant and have a tendency to want to gobble up smaller companies. A less sharp growth rate and a more "small business-oriented" marketplace would soften the drastic swings brought by the giants throwing their weight around. But this is not what the market rewards, so you get consolidation, massive imbalances, and unsustainable growth.
Housing is on the forefront, but society has a secret grudge against the tech boom, for good reason, and it's starting to show. I expect this is just the first of several waves of backlash.
On the macro scale we're talking about, that means you want everyone to be poorer. You get that, right?
1. High growth creates durable wealth
2. Growth does not create waste
3. Trickle down economics
4. High growth doesn't create bust cycles
5. High growth doesn't ruin the environment
I mean, I could go on--it is a complex topic, after all--but your comment wanted to reduce it down to some kind of richer/poorer dichotomy, which is obviously false. And it was snarky, which is annoying.
1. Not create good jobs
2. Collude to pay lower wages to ensure they align with regional prevailing wages.
3. Build out their own employee-only housing complexes?
4. Do the govts job and plan and build housing and set building and planning policies which align with the economics?
I understand people want their cake and eat it, but they have to be reasonable. Tax appropriately, govern apptopriately.
Gentrification is, as a whole, a good thing. Nobody has a right to live in a specific neighborhood cheaply. Such social planning/engineering is destined to have countless side effects.
The fact is the war ended. Berlin became the capital of a very large and wealthy country. If Berliners wanted to avoid displacing people they needed to start building lots of houses. And they needed to start a while ago because building houses takes time. But they NIMBY’d against the perceived “gentrification” of new houses so now they’re behind.
Avoiding the problem for longer by blaming tech companies isn’t going to somehow put the genie back in the bottle. Accept Berlin has changed and build houses.
I wonder if the supply-and-demand model you're referring to is insufficient in this scenario. It sounds like political factors are at play here as well.
Of course, even with liberalized zoning regulations, housing prices would still be higher than normal in SF. But they wouldn't be horrendously bad like they are now.
Higher-paying-than-average jobs are for a minority pretty much by definition. Do you just want to outlaw paying people different amounts of money?
> There're lots of unemployed and people with low paying jobs in berlin, some artists, students etc. they make the city vibrant, fun, adventurous, but they can't stay if you have to pay 1200€ a month for a decent flat.
Agreed, which is why pro-housing policies are necessary. Make it easy for the market to build reasonably-priced housing, and have the government build housing itself.
But they can also leave and make another city vibrant, fun and adventurous.
It's also a fantastic example of what's possible when you don't have to worry about rent. The space is part of an old squat, still filled with artists who now get a steady flow of tourists to sell to. And some of the artists, who don't have to worry so much about day jobs, had time to take a side project building these creatures along with software to drive them.
Berlin, and kreuzberg in particular, is full of artists and rebels who moved into a war zone because they had no where to go, found a blank canvas, and made something awesome of it. Bowie did some of his best work in that environment, and it's also given us great punk music, and was an incubator for techno and edm.
You can call it NIMBYism, but for Kreuzberg it's really more about fighting gentrification and displacement, and preserving a city at the edge of society. There's a fundamental difference between fighting development in the mission and presidio...
Point being, the artists' den would become expensive bohemian district of the city anyway, startups or not, as "new money" people learn of it and start moving in to bask in the splendor of the underground culture. Eventually pricing out the actual artists.
Are you saying, some billions heavy foreign company should have the same "right" to influence a region as a local art collective has?
Because they are basically the same?
Are you serious?
SF tried "fighting" gentrification by blocking development, and it just made the problem twice as bad. Look at the results: do they look good to you? Why would you want to copy such an abysmal failure?
NIMBYs are the cause of much displacement, especially of the poor. In some cases this is because of ignorance, in other cases it's greed. Either way, it's not acceptable.
Yes, much like new cars tend to be more expensive than old cars. Is this...surprising to anyone? That used things are generally cheaper than new things?
> if you want to increase affordable housing stock, mowing down older, lower-rent buildings isn't the way to do it.
It actually can be, at least if you're increasing the total housing stock: http://cityobservatory.org/urban-myth-busting-high-income2/
Granted, for Berlin perhaps not always the case, and I think policies to that effect, that push for redevelopment to mean more total housing, would be a good idea.
And again, please don't ignore SF as a cautionary tale. SF tried the whole "let's not knock down buildings" thing, as hard as they could, in the face of overwhelming demand. Now: did it work?
In order for new construction to materially affect rent rate we would have to build more housing faster than it has ever been done before, for decades to come.
Leaving aside the question of whether it is desirable to convert SF into another Manhattan, we could actually do it: there are modern methods to build entire new apartment buildings in forty days, etc. We could, in theory, convert the Richmond and Sunset districts from mostly single-family homes to three- and four-story apartment buildings, and do it quickly enough that rates rise slowly. Not fall, or stay static, just not rise as quickly as they are now.
But still, how do the people not earning $100,000 or more afford to live there?
Just building the buildings would require a sizable portion of the entire California construction industry. Where does that army live?
How do all these people get into and out of the SF peninsula? You're talking about eventually two or three million people just in SF, South SF, and Daly City.
How long before those teeming millions forget how much we value nature and start eyeing the Marin Headlands, or all that beautiful land south of Pacifica? San Francisco is the largest city with the most wild land around it in the world.
Anyhow my point is, enough with the "Damn NIMBYs!" rhetoric already. This is a big ol problem that will take decades to sort out and the ocean will rise before that can happen, so please stop insulting your neighbors for liking their neighborhood, eh? One way or another it's not going to last, so why not let them enjoy it. You work in tech, right? You can afford to move up/inland early, beat the rush, no? You've got just enough time to stay and let your kids deal with it for you. Forgive me if that sounds harsh, I'm keeping it real: We have bigger problems than folks not liking new housing. San Francisco is at sea level.
I think it's unreasonable to expect a live-and-let live attitude to NIMBYs on online forums, while NIMBYs are pricing out the people who work in their neighborhoods through housing policy.
Sure there are other issues like global warming but it's not like having a place to live is a trivial issue. It's more than reasonable for people to care or be upset about it.
I'm talking mostly about the Bay Area here which I'm most familiar with, where a rule allowing you to build if you follow every law to the letter was shot down (building anything is a guaranteed long political fight), and minor things like having one apartment level above a shop are fought tooth and nail.
I actually can somewhat respect the position, that young people should just move away and other places in the country need to deal with growth. But I think to do that properly, you should still zone for a proportionate amount of housing as you do office space (jobs). And if you don't want growth, do little of either.
But approving lots of jobs, not zoning/approving the necessary housing, and then making excuses/blaming others as there's a shortage and prices/commutes go up - it's hard to see it as anything other than a massive political failure. Maybe calling this policy combination NIMBY is painting NIMBYs with a broad brush. But whatever you call it I think it's reasonable to be upset by it.
But that's garbage. Have you tried it? It sucks.
> NIMBYs are pricing out the people who work in their neighborhoods through housing policy.
Well no, you're wrong and that's my point. Wages drive rent rate increases according to the data going back 70 years.
If all the people you call pejorative names suddenly saw things your way and we all changed the zoning and laws and such overnight AND all the construction companies in the entire state came to the Bay Area and built nothing but apartment buildings all day every day for the next fifty years then MAYBE rents would level off, or at least rise more slowly.
Please stop calling your neighbors names for liking their neighborhood. It's not nice and it doesn't win arguments. And you're wrong anyway.
We could build at the fastest conceivable rate and it would not solve the problem.
> But approving lots of jobs, not zoning/approving the necessary housing, and then making excuses/blaming others as there's a shortage and prices/commutes go up
Whoa dude. Who is this super-human political dynamo who has done all of this?
> a massive political failure
Yes. And calling people names won't help. Not even a little bit.
> painting NIMBYs with a broad brush
More like painting with a hose.
My key point was about the ratio of jobs to housing. It may not be desirable or realistic to expand the overall population of the area past a certain amount. But I think it is realistic to zone/approve enough housing, to match the amount of jobs that are zoned/approved (through office space). Overall, the bay area has been adding much more jobs than housing, and I think this is a major factor in the housing problem aside from wages. And the result of this is that more and more of people's paycheck goes to housing, they have to commute long distances, etc.
Rather than opposing housing when there is a shortage, I'd rather see more effort put into opposing new office space instead, and when housing has caught up cities could facilitate a public dialogue about what residents want with regards to growth etc.
> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists...
The term "NIMBY" is used IMO to caricature and demonize people who have done nothing worse than own their own homes and desire some control over their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Land use is hard enough to figure out without painting our neighbors with a pejorative brush.
> the actual housing policies of many cities in the bay area, which are extremely against adding new housing
I agree.
> most commonly characterized as NIMBY
That's the idea I am decrying. Please don't do that.
> It looks like you view this term to be offensive, I didn't realize.
I do. Worse, it's actively working against mutual comprehension and effective political solutions. We have the technology: "Four-story Berkeley building built in four days" https://sf.curbed.com/2018/8/6/17656118/fast-apartment-resid...
The solution we need is political and getting mass cohesion at the level required takes positive uplifting values, not name calling and caricatures.
> My key point was about the ratio of jobs to housing. It may not be desirable or realistic to expand the overall population of the area past a certain amount. But I think it is realistic to zone/approve enough housing, to match the amount of jobs that are zoned/approved (through office space). Overall, the bay area has been adding much more jobs than housing, and I think this is a major factor in the housing problem aside from wages. And the result of this is that more and more of people's paycheck goes to housing, they have to commute long distances, etc.
Yes, absolutely! It's been easier and more profitable for developers to build skyscrapers and office buildings for decades, so that's what we've got.
I'm not denying that there are folks who don't look much farther than their own backyards when it comes to their votes on land use issues. I'm saying that, in order to make any real progress, we have to understand each other and work together.
> Rather than opposing housing when there is a shortage, I'd rather see more effort put into opposing new office space instead, and when housing has caught up cities could facilitate a public dialogue about what residents want with regards to growth etc.
Legend has it that SimCity was developed to explore the ideas of Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language. I think we should play a giant, realistic simulation of the city, region, state, biome, nation, continent, globe, all together in a MMORPG.
By the time we have hammered out what we want the future to look like the robots will be able to build it for us in a twinkling. I estimate ~30 +/- 15 years if the weather remains (relatively) stable.
> Tenants are gaining the upper hand in urban centers across the U.S. as new amenity-rich apartment buildings, constructed in response to big rent gains in previous years, are forced to fight for customers. Rents are softening most on the high end and within city limits, Terrazas said. Landlords also have been losing customers to homeownership as millennials strike out on their own, often moving to more affordable suburbs.
A very typical pattern was a new, physically beautiful building with shoddy design and construction, so that it looks like luxury housing but the walls are thin and you can hear your neighbors, for example. Often the front office is staffed with perky young ladies who have no authority or ability to do anything other than sign up new tenants. They are not the building managers, other than in name, they're salespeople. Any problems you might have require you to call a call center on the East Coast. One place I looked at was owned by a huge corporation that had ~$2B debt and a bunch of weird holdings. Basically someone's pet company had bought the building as an investment, with all the problems for the tenants that you might imagine that entails: regular and steep rent increases, minimal staff and maintenance, cost-cutting everywhere.
So yeah, I am not surprised that the bottom feeders (of the high-end) are scrambling for marks and suckers. The quality buildings are easy to spot, I eventually figured it out. Can you guess the marker? [1]
But they still aren't renting to the folks who make ~$100,000 or less, eh? This article describes a correction, but the overall trend is still up, no? Or maybe this is some kind of inflection point in the 70 year trend, and the burst of construction combined with people moving out of hot city centers has fixed the problem?
In the meantime, it's easy to find a place in SF if you can afford $4000 a month, but almost impossible if you can only afford half of that. Calling that "the upper hand" is a bit rich.
[1] They have long waiting lists.
Those are some pretty emotional words, but show how much in a bubble we tech people might live. Curious if anyone knows more about the movement behind this, I doubt it's a majority opinion of the public?
The protesters would be a lot more interesting if they'd start reading Marcuse and seeing middle class job security and mortgages and the like as a totalitarian system that works by its addictiveness. But reading the life work of old men who were once angry young Marxists who watched their revolution fail and then their nation turn to fascism isn't as much fun as yelling at Google.
This is important! If someone has enough skills/ambition to be actually useful to an early stage startup, they can make better money elsewhere. So if they're putting in their time with the startup, they're being motivated by something else. That doesn't mean they're being exploited. It means their interests can't be measured entirely in dollars.
As long as they feel like they're getting something useful from the experience, then I don't think "exploited" is the right word. And if they think they're not getting anything out of it, it begs the question just how that early stage startup is going to make them stick around. Exploitation involves more stick, less carrot.
1) Renting: the protestors rent instead of own the homes they're living in, so their costs go up with the housing prices. The government could have reduced this problem by promoting home ownership in the past.
2) Income inequality: the protestors are not techies, so they won't be employed by Google, and will earn far less than Google's employees. The government can reduce this problem by increasing income leveling.
Source: Our office is in the same building.
>- The Council of Occupiers
We haven't heard the last of them :|
The Betahaus is here, maybe 5 minutes by bike https://www.google.com/maps/place/Betahouse,+Prinzessinnenst...
“The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops (“start-ups”) promise to deliver new ideas to Google’s company business.”
They lost me right there. If they want to fight skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If they wanted the space to be used for something else they should have bought or rented it themselves. Protesting Google does nothing to change these.
> skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If
So they aren't in your opinion?
> they wanted the space to be used for something else they
> should have bought or rented it themselves.
How?
> Protesting
> Google does nothing to change these.
Lol, this is pretty much Economics 101. When Google demands more space, so when they indeed move into the whole space, it will get more expensive.
Ok, the upcoming snowball effect is much more difficult to understand - you need at least a PhD in Math and CS for that: that extra space needs to be filled with chairs and people of whom some or many move from abroad. (Quite likely also from existing Google offices to keep the Google spirit.) These people create additional demand in the housing market. More over other startups, possibly popular and highly funded ones will follow suit and the same thing repeats, with lower magnitude though.
"...work-shy benefit scroungers, strike-hungry air traffic controllers, long-living pensioners, unruly refugees, and all other local pests from the neighborhood..."
Those are clearly terms of endearment. Meant to evoke anger that OTHERS call them that. Owning the words to take them back, as they say.
Also, this is German. Go do a little cultural research next time before the lazy comment.
Regarding strike-prone air traffic controllers, I've heard that the worst (or best, depending how you're looking at it) in term of number of strike days are the French air controller.