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Comment by downrightmike | Hacker News Reader

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downrightmike·

Once the bubble pops, maybe they can be converted into homes?

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Seeing how short all the buildings are in London, its housing shortage is obviously fairly self imposed in that city.

There are plenty of tall new buildings being built.

So many commenters about London on here who don't actually live here.

They are fairly concentraded over small area, meanwhile rest of London is endless sea of small row houses.

Lack of housing is almost always a zoning issue. Builders will always build if there's money to be made and people to sell houses to. The only reason they're not is because they're not allowed to.

You’re often not even allowed to build things that aren’t in keeping with the area even if nobody can see the bits of the property. It’s mostly about stopping people nearby having a nicer house than you.

You could easily build plenty of high rises but they are either insanely overpriced or extremely poor quality in London.

There are a ton of skyscrapers being built. They’re just not particularly affordable

Data centres have big halls, usually no windows whatsoever, and are wide and flat so windows are only possible at the edges. They're even worse for conversion than office buildings.

Better to raze them and build apartment buildings.

That sounds perfect for the warehouse conversion London landlords love!

Subdivide in 16 Shoebox rooms give it a party / commune vibe and laughing to the bank.

Bonus points if it’s not up to building code

Why? Even if the data centers are built for just AI, they can just ditch the GPUs and reuse them for storage etc .. no?

Everyone seems to be carrying a smartphone, continuously creating more high res photos and videos..

It's _never_ going to pop. It'll just inflate and inflate until it's big enough to take us all with it. To the singularity.

Just like shopping malls

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