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Comment by timinou | Hacker News Reader

Title slightly misleading... The article makes the point that downtowns are turning from office to social centres and the $453B figure is more of an investment in repurposing offices and rethinking urban spaces for that purpose.

I welcome these changes... Yes we'll need to rethink our urbanism, but if anything this switch feels like a coming back of what our urban centers are supposed to provide us.

Imagine parking spaces becoming local artisans/food stalls, conference rooms becoming event spaces, coworking spaces adapted to people's lifestyle and living patterns (e.g. a suburban cowork with childcare and a dog park).

"gutting downtown" might be true for those who are wary their office real estate investment will not have a positive ROI. But the way I see it, this change in urban patterns is a paradigm shift in wealth distribution patterns and in economic opportunities for leisure services, both locally and globally.

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Not sure what you read there but the roughly $500B figure is a real loss in the commercial real-estate sector as leases some off the books. It’s a slow burn.

There’s an additional expense to try to repurpose these building as residential but it’s a massive one that won’t come easily. You can’t just turn modern office buildings into residential building by reworking the interior. Most wouldn’t meet residential codes (like bedrooms needing windows, emergency egress, additional plumbing and waste requirements, parking etc)

Commercial real estate is going to take a massive hit the next 3-4 years and that $435B number is a real estimate in the decline in commercial real-estate value. It comes from this study.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30526/w305...

It's easier to turn office buildings into luxury apartments than into affordable ones -- a single 3000 square foot apartment has more layout flexibility, fewer plumbing & parking requirements, fewer emergency exits than five 600 square foot ones, et cetera.

Advocates aren't going to be happy about 3000 square foot luxury apartments rather than affordable ones...

This is a good point. Downtowns might easily move from drab office parks to unaffordable places for rich people.

If ever there was an industry that I feel zero sympathy for when I hear about them taking a loss, it's large scale real-estate, especially the ones who own large urban centres and turned them into grey wastelands of offices, parking, and shopping.

"Commercial real estate is going to take a massive hit the next 3-4 years and that $435B number is a real estimate in the decline in commercial real-estate value."

That doesn't really hurt my feelings that much, outside of the 401(k) and IRA holders who will lose a lot of retirement money. Hopefully the plan admins and financial people involved in those plans will start dumping commercial real estate in favor of something with more legs before that 3-4 years is up.

Even as higher income people become more geographically distributed, they'll naturally support locavore options, cultural event spaces, an so on, in smaller town centers.

I do wish there were more resources to help places experiencing rapid influx manage growth more intelligently. Towns shouldn't have to endure a big box store phase before investing in livable forms.

Well said. I work from home, yet I still live in Washington DC. The downtown gradually becoming more fun and livable is a good thing, despite the pain and financial loss that'll happen over the next decade to get there.

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