[HN Gopher] Downtowns are dead, dying or on life support, says u...
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       Downtowns are dead, dying or on life support, says urban policy
       expert
        
       Author : finitestateuni
       Score  : 4 points
       Date   : 2023-09-25 21:57 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fortune.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | As the article says, it's a trend which proceeded Covid, but
       | accelerated under lockdown.
       | 
       | At best, the short term fixes are ameliorative. Free parking and
       | lunch vouchers isn't going to "fix" this problem, and as the
       | article also says (as have others published here) conversion to
       | residential is a mixed bag: it is increadibly costly, major code
       | issues abound, and from sales records has a high failure rate in
       | the market: expectations of value differ.
       | 
       | I tend to think there's a massive listed property trust write
       | down either gone through, overdue or waiting for China to finish
       | falling over. Once the dust settles, the cost of re-development
       | of the city core will differ.
       | 
       | I hang on a forum for city planning [*] regrettably called
       | skyscrapercity.com -Regrettably because in fact, most cities are
       | not skyscrapers and most cities with skyscrapers don't need more
       | of them. I know I am an outlier in this belief in my home town
       | (Brisbane) and it is fantastically difficult to bust through the
       | persisting claims "taller is better" -In short (hah) it isn't
       | always so, and it isn't the vision of the city we want to either
       | work or live in, as this article points out.
       | 
       | It's not covid, it's us. We've been heading here for a long time.
       | We don't like living and working in Canyons. Livable cities have
       | a 15 minute circumference to everything you need including water,
       | parks, shops, and services. They are built on a human scale which
       | typically tops out at 8 to 10 storeys and have a small Central
       | Business District scaled to the commerce needs. A very few world
       | cities need more, and all of them are under significant stress
       | regarding land cost, building cost, and heritage preservation. It
       | is actually rare for WW2 to deliver scale opportunities for
       | rebuilding, as it did in Rotterdam and Tokyo. I don' think
       | proposing large scale bombing of major capital cities is a good
       | planning move.
       | 
       | [*] https://www.skyscrapercity.com/
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-25 23:02 UTC)