US Office Space Is on Track to Shrink for First Time on Record | Hacker News Reader

US Office Space Is on Track to Shrink for First Time on Record

bloomberg.com

45 pointstoomuchtodo17 comments

I've been full-time remote for many, many years longer than Covid, but I still look back on my time in office fondly; there was a camaraderie that is difficult to duplicate over Zoom. For software engineers at any rate, the optimum may be remote with frequent enough face-to-face gatherings for social connections between coworkers. Of course, individual preference will vary.

Given that office spaces are concentrated in downtown areas, and downtown areas in many of America's most renowned cities have deteriorated rapidly in the past few years, I'm not surprised that this is happening. Hopefully developers are able to convert some of those office buildings into residential use, which the article looks at briefly.

Same, and had the same thoughts about... missing the office.

Then I realized it's probably rose colored glasses, because I was younger and more social then - going out to lunch, bars after work, joking around.

I think today, older and married, I'd be a bit grumpier and less social, so probably wouldn't enjoy it much at all.

The whole office and home debate is not about working physically outside of your home. It is about excessive and unhealthy commutes to work due to myriad factors.

If you could hop on a bike/trolly/bus/train/walk to work (to multiple employers) in 10 minutes consistently, then this would not be a discussion.

Which is impossible without density, so in the end, the discussion is about how densely we want to live vs how spread out we want to live.

Interesting, I had many friends who got more positive and playful after they got older, got married and stopped giving a fuck how they interact with others. As I can see now it’s the older cohort that wants to socialize at the office not the young folks.

I'm not positive we're disagreeing here, just sharing my personal thoughts. I definitely quit caring what people thought long ago, though, that part is true.

I find the younger generation antisocial to detriment, but maybe that's the old guy talking. So I think a lot of the folks missing it are of my ilk. Kinda how some guys miss playing high school football and such. I didn't, so my 'glory days' were in the office, and I admit as much.

> Given that office spaces are concentrated in downtown areas,

There's a lot of commercial sprawl far from downtown cores. Sure, big glossy companies like to splash for nice views and central locations, but a great number of office workers are in suburbs, working for businesses that you've never heard of.

I think it's a grass is greener thing right now.

We miss the office because of a couple particular nice things. We're not thinking about the traffic, The daily grind, having to fit in lunch time while at the office, having to deal with the people that we hate in the office, higher pressure, somebody looking over your shoulder all the time, etc. I work from home and I would never go back to an office if I could.

https://archive.is/r3V9Q

The self-driving cars have arrived just in time for the work from home revolution.

Except they haven't arrived in any meaningful way for commuting.

Talk to me when they're more plentiful and cheaper than an Uber and is a better option than owning a car.

People always act like it's binary.

We're all going to be working from home, we're all going to be driving self driving cars.

It's gonna be some people doing some things, others others. Just new options now.

Was a bit of humor actually, thanks for being fun at parties :)

An idea for reuse came up on my evening walk. Instead of residential conversions, do school conversions.

Where one of the more visible ways the greatest generation built schools for boomers, boomers instead built pre-fab buildings for schools.

I suspect a challenge here is that there's simply not that great a need for schools, and that office buildings tend to be far more clustered than school needs are.

If higher education, schools also typically have a range of classroom / lecture room sizes which office building are poorly suited to match. Seminar-to-classroom size (5--30 students), perhaps, but not mid-to-large lecture halls (100--500 or more students), without some major redesign.

Though theatre conversions might work. I'm thinking of a lecture hall with Imax A/V capabilities....

That's one potential alternative use, I'm sure, but probably not the best.

As cool as this sounds schools need to be located in the neighborhoods they serve. Some central business districts have few residents as they are purely zoned for office buildings and parking garages. Taxpayers are also allergic to paying for premium real estate. (Sometimes to their own detriment. e.g. Building a new school on the outskirts of town saves money on land acquisition but results in slower and costlier school bus routes and parents use more time dropping off their kids).

>Some central business districts have few residents as they are purely zoned for office buildings and parking garages.

I think this is exactly the problem many folks are proposing we solve, by doing things like changing out some of that unused office space dor schools and housing.

It's basic market economics. Use the space for things we need, things that are in demand and space for which is scarce, not for things that are in surplus and have a flooded market.

Use the space for things we need; but also eliminate needless segregation of services; Live + Work + Play.

Schools (and housing) not located near business districts results in roads, with traffic. And for schools versus businesses two ends of the same commute (train or car)

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