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>two major 100+ floor buildings are going up

Which buildings? According to this [1] there isn't a single building in London (completed, under construction, or even proposed) that is 100+ floors. The tallest building in London (The Shard) only has 80 floors and there are currently no buildings planned that would be taller.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_...

Sorry to disappoint you but I'm not sure I agree here. It doesn't feel much different to 2006/07 - ie peak of the cycle in real estate for the City (not to say that I think the bust will be like 2008/09 but that I think there really is a clearly cyclical element to it).

The City is not a place families typically want to live because it has very little green space - and it's largely not a place marketed to families. High-end residential space in the City is essentially marketed at two groups: single people in their 20s/early 30s working nearby, and people for whom it's a second home near work. In my opinion, those markets are enough to sustain it for many years to come - they're likely to grow and what's more they have disposable income which will support the retail/etc element in a way homes for families these days don't.

The commercial real estate boom in the City is the latest in a long, long list of such. Unlike Canary Wharf, which has been very careful to manage space so that almost every square foot is always occupied except in the deepest points of recessions, real estate in the City has had a large speculative element to it for at least the time I've been observing the market (since the 90s), and I don't see anything different here.

There's a long-term growth story and a cyclical element. Long-term growth is about a move eastwards as the West End gets filled up/businesses get priced out. The cyclical part this time to me seems to combine an element of that with it being a "signalling" location for certain types of business about who/what they are.

Plus I believe the City of London has a policy of avoiding owner occupied apartments blocks. Once a building is owned by 600 people, there is no way you can buy it, demolish it to build something more adapted to the new demand.

I'm not sure that's true, and in any case they can't really enforce that - if a building owner wants to sell individual units, they can sell them.

The obvious counterexample to your point is the Barbican. Much of the Barbican is owner occupied and the vast majority of the flats there are privately owned (ie not local authority/housing association). I'm not sure but I think the Barbican still houses the majority of residents of the City proper.

It is possible that this policy didn’t exist in the 70s. To be honest I read that 10 years ago when I was looking into commercial real estate finance. They may also have evolved since.

Interesting, since I knew someone who lived in a City of London owned tower block (not actually in the City proper) as an owner-occupier. It was a 60s building with flimsy single-glazed windows and unreliable lifts, which made it affordably bad in the first place.

I wonder what happened to the concept of the garage startup that Silicon Valley's foundation is famous for? Too much money from profits and not enough people or ideas to invest in?

Paying for an office space is an extremely inefficient use of resources, especially when plenty of cafe space - or just, you know, your living room, kitchen - or garage - are useful even for teams of 20+ because will be rare to need everyone in a single space at once, and then you can just rent something larger for that event.

I kind of have a challenge with myself to work towards launching the fastest growing projects/platforms using as few resources as possible. whether I'll reach that goal is moot, though - it's more or less a mantra for me to pay attention to whether I am rushing or not.

>I wonder what happened to the concept of the garage startup that Silicon Valley's foundation is famous for?

Killed by housing costs and a mature industry.

Who can rent most of a house right out of school (HP), or bang around in their childhood home (Apple) in SV? Not only are the costs prohibitive, but most residents are from somewhere else, so no childhood home in existence anyway. Moving to SV is done to parachute in to the success that previous generations had to create for themselves.

Oversimplifying a bit, but the point is that both the economics and the demographics have swung way far away from "scrappy young geniuses" to "Ivy League careerists." It's almost a different universe, and would be completely distinct by now had Starbucks not been invented.

Maybe it could work for founders, but as an employee I would absolutely not sign on to a company whose space is a garage. First of all, it signals precariousness and non-seriousness. Second, I can get a job at any number of companies in more comfortable settings, so why shouldn’t I?

Maybe part of the difference is related to supply and demand: potential employees have other opportunities, so why should they make sacrifices for companies they don’t own more than 0.5% of?

> I would absolutely not sign on to a company whose space is a garage. First of all, it signals precariousness and non-seriousness

So you would have avoided Apple and Amazon then?

They would also have avoided a million companies you never heard of.

Right, so following the leading metric for your decision basing it on off of if they mostly run out of a "garage" is a terrible idea; adding the two Apple founders into the equation, assuming you have the opportunity to get to know them and their ideas and plans well enough, would be an important part to the equation of deciding where to work.

Only if you believe that you can distinguish lucky founders from normal founders with sufficient precision to beat the odds. Personally I wouldn't trust myself to do that.

Of course, you can only do what you're most comfortable with - which should depend on your understanding of as many pieces to the puzzle possible, that's how we understand risk/reward, and how we hopefully make calculated decisions.

If they were in a literal garage and I could have gotten another job paying 300k or more in a real office with free food then yes, I definitely would have avoided them.

Of course you're allowed to choose your preferences and priorities, how you make decisions.

There are also of course very nice garages, attached to nice houses - and very talented people who can maximize the resources available to them at any moment because they have a very clear plan to understand the strategy, path they must take. Keeping costs low by reducing real estate costs is in part why fully decentralized companies exist and work so well - they can scale very efficiently, however I believe that fully decentralized in the long-term won't work due to limited fluidity; spatial organization is important if not critical in certain respects.

My feeling is it's an aspirational good, like a BMW. Many of the people starting these companies are not really serious and are just waiting for another ship to eventually come in. It's the new unpaid internship of the upper middle class.

> [...] perhaps floors 1-20 as office and 20-40 as apartments or something, will almaot certainly be a feature of the next twenty years.

Please be wrong, please, please, please...

If I just can telecommute I don't want my workspace being my live space and my neighbours being my coworkers.

That can may be a thing if you are living by your own, living in a foreign city and without family. I can't see it other way.

Skyscrapers are only getting bigger. And while "walkability" and "going outside" are really important so too is density and density can breed innovation.

It's why weird companies with funny CEOs might try things that a serviced office corporation might not and might build an environment that's better for us all.

It would be rare I admit.

Ever read or watched High Rise by JG Ballard? Afterwards you might not be so keen on living in the same skyscraper as you work.

One thing the City as an area is short of is hotel space. Hotels or part-time occupancy residential (serviced apartments and second homes) feels much more realistic for that space than "true" residential space.

The reason for the boom is that building skyscrapers got a lot cheaper in the last 10 years as the techniques and approaches have been worked out in the Middle East and China. It's not really anything to do with the economy - just the chance to create a lot of office space cheap. I think that the other factor is the Queen Elizabeth line which will bring a lot of commuters from the west of london and outlying areas into city of london range. I expect docklands to be the big loser.

I had a previous job where the owner bought a building in NYC and made the top floors apartments, one of which I was offered at a low rate. I am very glad I said no, because imagine the golden handcuff scenario of having a below-market place to live ONLY if you keep working for a person/company who, at least in that case, turned out to be pretty creepy.

Doesn't FB own nearby housing that it rents to its employees

> cities have a new brighter car free future, where Barcelona's mega-blocks will meets the density of skyscrapers. But it needs ... looking after.

Without detracting at all from a really interesting speculation, this does sound like the opening crawl of a hopepunk Judge Dredd film.