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Comment by JohnJamesRambo | Hacker News Reader

Sweet ass apartments in office buildings I hope.

Not a chance. This is completely unrealistic without major, major reconstruction. It's cheaper to deconstruct and build a new building in its place.

Imagine the amount of plumbing you would have to redo for the toilets. There all sorts of codes for apartments, there must be so many windows, you need natural light in bedrooms etc

I doubt that practical considerations relating to renovating a building's plumbing are very relevant. NYC is known for an aggressive zoning policy against commercial-to-residential conversations, which they overtly defend as policy (to keep NYC attractive for business headquarters). If it were infeasible to undertake commercial-to-residential conversions for practical/construction reasons, the city wouldn't need to go out of its way to ban them.

They are extremely relevant. Office buildings have floor plates that are simply unlike residential ones. Rules of that kind are probably to discourage (i) conversions from commercial for old buildings that weren't as differentiated, possibly and (ii) stealth residential projects that are proposed as office for expedited planning review. SPUR recently hosted a panel with AIA and large developers which basically said that repurposing an existing office building is as expensive as ground-up development when it is feasible at all: https://twitter.com/maxdubler/status/1526651858143436801?s=2...

Great article on the problems of office to residential conversions. Essentially, good office buildings make bad residential, and vice-versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offic...

Will people still want to live in cities as much if you can work from home?

Cities are also where most social gatherings happen, esp. for younger people.

If these unused offices could be better as apartments, i don't see a decline in how cities being a great place to be.

If it's affordable, yes. Generally speaking, the only thing that keeps me away from wanting to live in a major city is paying 3x the price, for 5x less space. Most other parts of city life can be nice.

I think so. Some portion of the population likes the density and walkability of a city. If you take away a lot of commuting traffic, it's unlikely to get less liveable.

I co-own a small city office and we've always assumed redeveloping as three-storeys with residential above commercial would be our long-term plan. It's a short walk to dozens of restaurants/cafes/pubs, short walk to a chemist, small supermarket, florist, and so on. Two blocks from large parks and running/cycle tracks, etc.

Of course they will. There's more reasons to live in a city than just "it's close to work".

Also, there are plenty of people who work in the city who cannot work from home because their jobs require them to physically be present.

Some of the physically present jobs are supporting roles to people who now don't have to be in the city. Example: a restaurant worker has to be physically present to serve customers, but the customers were all former office workers.

Agree that cities offer more than just a place for business to happen.

WFH even if I stayed exactly where I am in a city is, for me, a strict upgrade, so I imagine yes. It also gives me the freedom to move anywhere I want in an entire city without having to worry about what that'll do to my work commute.

The main benefits are human connections and walkability. There are lots of others from decent restaurants and bars, multiculturalism, decent shops, concerts, theatre, street events, quiet (yes! … see the good HN discussions about leafblowers, lawnmowers and suburban noise), carbon footprint, …

I think the better question becomes, will cities remain as attractive, without the daily worker demand creating more shops/restaurants/entertainment? If just the locals, will those places continue to exist and thrive as they did pre-COVOD?

I’d expect people to still want to live in cities with a decent cultural offer. I’d be more worried about what will happen to places like the dormitory district that is London outside of zone 2. Why would one want to live in Brentford when they won’t need to catch a train to Waterloo every morning?

Haha! I would like to see an example of this.

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