It's hard to describe downtown/fidi as the heart of the city. It was already pretty dead on weekends compared to the rest of the city in 2019. OTOH, rents have been stubbornly flat or growing in other parts of the city. Places like the mission, hayes valley, marina, north beach and polk are very lively now and I'm back to struggling at getting reservations at some of my favorite places outside of downtown. I think what suffers the most is tourism - as places like Union Square, downtown and fisherman's wharf are relatively empty.

Yep, going to hell in a handbasket. Just terrible. Most certainly going to be a desolate wasteland before long. I'll do you a favor and buy your house.

> This is how cities die. If the downtown gets abandoned the heart of the city stops beating.

My office is in a 90+ year old skyscraper in Chicago. Our building is not renewing leases; they’re trying to empty it out to convert to residential. At our last town hall the CEO said he’s hearing talk about incentives to terminate leases early.

In the Chicago Loop, population is up 10% since before the pandemic, and expected to continue to increase faster than new construction can handle, so there is real demand for converting old office buildings. Old buildings typically have ideal floor plates. New office buildings are bad, but there was a story in The NY Times just the other day about a developer who cut a vertical hole in the middle of a newer skyscraper in Manhattan so the giant rectangular floor plate became an O-shape, allowing apartments along the interior of the building to have windows opening to an interior courtyard.

SF really needs to get on the ball before the damage to the city is too great.

That was a good piece in the NY Times. I'm skeptical about what probably an expensive lower-story apartment with a view out into basically a lightwell would be like. I've had hotel rooms like that but maybe this is better done.

I’d be really skeptical too, and I hope the price-per-square-foot is much lower to compensate.

I would imagine that some well-angled mirrors near the top of the building can greatly increase the amount of light that goes down that hole.

"I'm skeptical about what probably an expensive lower-story apartment with a view out into basically a lightwell would be like."

The key here (I assume) is that it is a 90 year old skyscraper (according to your parent) and those older buildings are, generally, easier to convert and have a smaller floor plate, etc.

Of course I have no idea about this particular building but word on the street is, older office buildings have a better chance of being good candidates.

I would assume older buildings to have larger floor plates? Many of New York's newer skyscrapers, esp. the "one luxury apartment per floor" kind, are really skinny.

For office buildings, no.

Older office buildings tend to be geared towards small offices for smaller businesses, like small law practices. Modern cubicle farms are much larger, open offices even more so.

Also, older regulations on building forms pre-war required more setbacks at taller heights, creating the “wedding-cake” style tower common during that time. The modern glass box is generally wider.

Perhaps a matter of taste, but the older buildings are more attractive visually which raises their desirability. 1930s Art Deco beats steel and glass. They are also very centrally located in the inner core.

The 180 Water Street with the courtyard added in the Times article is an example of a newer building (1970).

> Our building is not renewing leases; they’re trying to empty it out to convert to residential

How do they plan to retro-fit the appropriate sewerage, water, gas and electricity connections? They're the biggest blockers for converting to residential. Not saying it can't be done, but expensive, and interesting to see novel ways of approaching this, as there is going to be a big demand for that in the coming years.

Gas, electricity, and water all seem fairly easy and just a matter of money. (They’re all provided under pressure.) Sewer falls by gravity and so has more physical constraints on routing and access for clean outs.

Yeah - I've never understood this arguement, all the big buildings I've worked in have had electricity, water and sewerage - maybe not plumbed in the dispersed way that you get in residential but available throughout the buildin at any rate.

In addition to what everyone has already written, it might be worth pointing out that office buildings usually have a floor-to-ceiling distance far greater than residential buildings. So you can add in a bunch of piping directly underneath the floor, then create a new ceiling below the pipes, and the result is still very acceptable.

Second, the quirks are part of the charm [*]. Nobody is marketing these conversions as ultra-luxury units. The history of the building is celebrated, not hidden

[*]. For example, our building still has an operating mail chute system and I bet that it will be kept around after conversion.

Take a look at this page: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-york-citys-mail-ch...

The photo of the Roosevelt Hotel near the bottom shows what ours looks like on the office floors - floor to ceiling glass so you can see letters from above zip past on their way to the lobby.

The usage rates are vastly different. What do people in an office building use water for? Coffee, dishwashing, toilet flushing. Those will be somewhat dispersed through the day. Compared to a residential building where half of the building is having a shower in the space of an hour or so in the morning. So you need to get more water in and more water out, both of which probably need the pipes replaced, and more space to hold them (even more at the lower levels of the building). Similar problem with electricity if that's what's being used for cooking.

This is how cities -- cities without commercial on street level and residential above, cities where you need to own a car -- die.

By and large, U.S. does cities wrong.

Fortunately for San Francisco, "commercial on street level and residential above" does describe many of its neighborhoods

That doesn't describe SF in the least.

Didn't say it did.

OP said this is how cities die, my point is there's a type that is more at risk, and most U.S. cities are that type.

Then I don't understand your comment.

Grandparent said "this is how cities die" related to remote working and emptying the downtown core - as is happening SF.

You then said "This is how cities -- cities without commercial on street level and residential above, cities where you need to own a car -- die."

The topic is San Francisco. So am I to read your comment as completely unrelated to the topic at hand?

The phrase "cities without commercial on street level and residential above, cities where you need to own a car" is adding a condition onto "this is how cities die" to say that the original prediction doesn't apply to SF. Because SF has "commercial on street level and residential above" and you don't "need to own a car", people in the rest of the city depend less on the downtown. While downtown may be abandoned, it's not heart of the rest of the city.

At least that's what Terretta is saying. I haven't even visited SF in over a decade, so I don't know what its current situation is like.

You don’t need a car in SF. Also can you name a city that has “died” recently? Maybe Detroit?

The greater Detroit area has not been in great shape for decades, but my understanding is that the core of the city is thriving.

OP to whom I replied said "This is how cities die."

My point was they have no resilience and can die if they are automobile commuter cities with a hollowed out resident-free center.

If the downtown gets abandoned by offices, it can be populated by something else epxloiting lower prices, as has happened countless times throughout the history. Take London's Soho for example: first populated by wealthy families and Huguenots, then abandoned by them and taken over by prostitutes and such, which ultimately made it the centre of entertainment with new theatres and music venues, made cool by gays, and then gentrified again by the wealthy. It's a circle, not a line.