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Building infrastructure is scoped for maximum occupancy at a point-in-time, not over time. And maximum occupancy is typically denser in an office than residential.

Put another way, what matters is the maximum volume the electrical, sewer, HVAC, elevators, emergency power, etc can handle. If it is scoped to handle 1,000 people for 8 hours of a day, it will do just fine for 300 people 24 hours per day.

> Also, when some natural disaster hits and the city loses power? You can't go home. Your home is 50 floors up.

I mean, you’re acting like 50-story residence buildings don’t exist, when in fact they do in many cities already.

> Building infrastructure is scoped for maximum occupancy at a point-in-time, not over time. And maximum occupancy is typically denser in an office than residential.

That... depends? On one hand, an office building scoped to handle 1000 people for 8 hours a day might handle more peak toilet flushes than 300 people for 24 hours a day, but the latter might get way more peak shower/dishwasher/sink/washer use than the former.

Converting office buildings to residential is something that already really happens, so there’s not actually a question about whether it is possible. My comment was just to summarize why.

Nobody is saying residential buildings don't exist.

The claim -- which all the experts seem to back -- is you can't convert large office buildings to residential. For some of the reasons parent says, plus more importantly, you only have a habitable outer shell or donut given light requirements. And it's extremely expensive to take water and sewer, which are all located in the core, and distribute them out to each future apartment.

See eg https://slate.com/business/2022/12/office-housing-conversion...

It depends. Smaller scale prewar office buildings work pretty well (I live in one). 80's postmodern towers not so much. At least here (downtown Chicago), it's mostly prewar office buildings that are obsolete for modern office use and are being converted to residential and hotel.

>Put another way, what matters is the maximum volume the electrical, sewer, HVAC, elevators, emergency power, etc can handle. If it is scoped to handle 1,000 people for 8 hours of a day, it will do just fine for 300 people 24 hours per day.

Almost. Use case for commercial office and residential is significantly different. In an office building, the largest electrical load will be HVAC. In a residential environment, it will be more evenly split between water heating, HVAC and appliances.

For example, in an office building, you might have one or two smallish water heaters to provide hot water for sinks, with a recirc pump to keep the water heater requirements down even further. There may not even be a dishwasher at all.

In residential, you get dishwashers, washing machines, showers and sinks that all need hot water. And they will run often, usually at fixed time points meaning you cannot diversify the electrical in the same way you would for an office building.

My point about a 50 story converted office building is the office building's elevators are sized differently for a different use case. There is a great deal of witchcraft and sorcery in how elevator companies do this calculation, but a 50 story residential has different elevator requirements than a 50 story office. It may not be much, but it is different. And you can't just add an elevator if you need to. They are integral to the structure of the building.

All this to say, yes, it can be done, but it won't be. It's fantastically expensive and there just aren't enough rich people to justify doing more than one or two.

This also does not apply to a more modest 3, 4 or 5 story office building. The requirements are much more manageable for these. I am only referencing the big buildings, maybe 10 stories or higher.

Detroit is doing it all over the place.

I live in an office building that was first opened in 1914 and was converted into residential units.

Another 18-floor office building across my street is being converted as we speak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Buildin...).

The Park Avenue Building is supposed to be converted in residential units by the end of 2024 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_Building).

The Book Tower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Tower) is nearing completion with a host of residential units in its main tower.

Griswold Street, a major avenue in Detroit that cuts through our financial district has converted so many old office buildings into residential units that I have lost count.

From the posted Wikipedia links, it appears that at least the United Artists building has already begun being demolished.

The theater part was demolished.

The high-rise building part remains and is being converted into residential units right now.

> Can't be done.

It can be done and has been done, but what the article fails to recognize is that it is spectacularly expensive—the original build-out, of course, but also the maintenance (I’ve seen this firsthand in the stratospheric HOA fees in the one class-A office-to-residence conversion I toured in my condo search).

Office to residential will happen, but it will be at the top end of the market. It is fundamentally incompatible with affordable housing.

How much were the HOA fees in that building? Just curious.

For a ~$400k 1BR+den, about $1k/ month. This building also has $1-2m 3BRs where the HOAs start at $2k and go up north of $3k.

wow that IS pure insanity

> It can be done and has been done, but what the article fails to recognize is that it is spectacularly expensive

I mean, of course it can be done. We can also solve the homeless problem by moving them all to the Moon and building Moon bases.

The point is that it is not practically possible for the reasons I stated as it is fantastically expensive. There are simply not enough rich people to buy into a converted office building. You will get a handful of them in name brand cities, but the ability to secure financing for these things will very quickly vanish.

I live in a converted office building. And few office buildings are over 50 stories (in fact, the higher floor counts are usually residential towers).

Conversions from business to mixed or residential have happened so it's not an impossible thing either e.g. 70 Pine Street.

And while business buildings are not internally designed for 24/7 occupancy, their accesses are scoped for much higher occupancy as businesses tend to have denser occupancies than residential.

So most of the problem is the interior setting, which has to be retrofit anyway.

> Also, when some natural disaster hits and the city loses power? You can't go home. Your home is 50 floors up. Nobody is walking that.

Residential towers exist all over the world. And that's literally what Billionaire's Row is.

Even ignoring the effort needed and it's cost: who want to reside in former office buildings if now downtown areas start to be depopulated from local workers and so services built for them?

Plenty of people live in service-devoid suburbs. Services follow density of people.

Ok, good. So what's the purpose of converting former office buildings in residential one? Workers who left them surely do not came back in them to reside, they left and choose new homes more apt to the WFH purposes, something not easy to find in a dense city.

Where you have plenty of space to develop renewables in a dense city? Where the home garage to recharge your car? Where the place to get larger and larger package due to the flourish of on-line retail? Where the place for future flying cars/drone delivery etc?

If middle-class people start to de-urbanize cities would be let full of desperate with much job offers to find work.

There is plenty of demand for living in dense walkable places, which is why they're more expensive per square foot than houses in the burbs. You don't need to recharge your car if you don't have one at all, which is much more sustainable.

Mh, I'm from EU so my view it's not on the current USA population but here while there are some who want to live "at a hyper-short range", that's all but NOT sustainable: they do not pollute, as single humans, but they need a supporting structure who pollute much.

The denser an area is the more territories around are needed to feed it, to a point of 1000+miles ranges vs few if population is not that dense.

Anyway, at least in Europe people who want to be in cities normally are a not so marginal cohort, but still far little in size than the one who want to flee, only few countries where services are not developed outside cities have different mean opinion.

One possible purpose is demand shift: lots of (relatively affluent) people want to live in cities, and are currently inflating rents in neighborhoods that otherwise would be more affordable.

(In general, it's incorrect to assume that WFH implies a desire to flee to suburbia, particularly in dense cultural hub cities: people often seek employment in these cities because they want to live there, not the other way around.)

Ok again, but those people want to be there because they work in the city, if a significant cohort of workers leave the city why they do want to be there? Most would have no job there anymore.

What about all the industrial lofts that were converted into residences beginning in the 80s? Not every commercial building is a skyscraper.

IMO, elevators are just as bad as cars (exceptions of course apply)