The Birth and Death of the Office

Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by ciphol on Sunday June 12, 2022 @02:02AM (#31711888)

It is inherently impossible for most people to walk/bike to an office job, that is not due to a choice of urban design. The point of office jobs, and cities in general, is that agglomerating huge numbers of people lets you choose workers from a larger pool, which leads to more specialization and higher productivity. These huge numbers of people will need to live across a large area, so wherever you put the office, at most some of them will be in walking/biking distance. Dense downtowns at least allow you to serve everyone with an efficient rapid transit system, dispersed office jobs would not allow that. I agree though that low-density suburbs are a big drag on efficiency.

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Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by ninesnines on Sunday June 12, 2022 @04:14AM (#31712664)

I think it's important to note that it is inherently possible for most people to walk/bike to an office in the US. Many European cities (I live in Copenhagen, for example) make this an extremely viable option. Honestly, if you take your car or the metro to work, it is usually slower, more expensive, and you don't get a nice workout! But many European cities are designed in order to pedestrians to be able to get around easily. I've also lived in Boston, and the bike accessibility there could be possible, but right now its a bit too dangerous to make it a viable option for most people.

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Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by ryukafalz on Sunday June 12, 2022 @12:22PM (#31715691)

> I've also lived in Boston, and the bike accessibility there could be possible, but right now its a bit too dangerous to make it a viable option for most people.

I live in Philadelphia and this is true there too. In general the city is dense enough that bike commuting is very viable, but the most direct routes are far too dangerous for most people.

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Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by Joeri on Sunday June 12, 2022 @03:04AM (#31712239)

That’s in a mindset where workers are interchangeable and change employers often, and employers make no effort to cluster together. You could also have a model where workers specialize within either a single company for life (japanese model) or a cluster of geographically near companies doing the same line of work (silicon valley model) and they choose to live near this location. New employers in the same line of work would then choose this site specifically because of the nearby workers.

I think the challenge is not with the specialized workers, but with the lower paid staff. The cleaners, the cooks, the maintenance crew, the guards. They won’t be able to afford to live near such places because they get displaced by specialized workers, and then they’re stuck in a commuting model.

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Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by ciphol on Sunday June 12, 2022 @03:17AM (#31712335)

Working in one place for life is very economically inefficient for any intellectual work. Eventually there will be a company that would get more value out of you, and therefore is willing to pay you more, but you won't be able to take the job.

Clusters of companies already exist. One is Manhattan where finance jobs are concentrated, another (like you say) is Silicon Valley where tech jobs are concentrated. In both, the workers choose to live across a vast area.

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Re:The Birth and Death of the Office by ryukafalz on Sunday June 12, 2022 @12:36PM (#31715815)

> In both, the workers choose to live across a vast area.

I wouldn’t say this is that much of a free choice in Silicon Valley, where housing density is highly limited by regulatory means.

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