704
submitted 9 months ago by SeaJ@lemm.ee to c/news@lemmy.world

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.

“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”

The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] punkwalrus@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago

Disclosure: I work from home and enjoy it immensely. I never want to work in an office again.

So sorry rich people are going to make less money off of their real estate investments, boo fucking hoo, how about adapting to technological and cultural changes better?

There is that, and some rich people need to be boiled in their own pudding. But this affects all downtown businesses, even mom and pop shops. People will just flee like urban flight did when people went to the suburbs. What's left? I hear about "well, turn office buildings into residential space," but the logistics of that with fire codes, building codes, and urban planning are not drop in replacements. They can be done, but at great cost.

We're looking at an urban decay beyond what we've planned for. Minneapolis is terrified to become another Detroit or Gary Indiana.

[-] running_ragged@lemmy.world 61 points 9 months ago

It doesn’t have to all be bad. If the city could get the head out of their ass, they could sort out the codes and get it done. Let people who work downtown live downtown. Shrink the driving and parking infrastructure, turn it into a walkable, bikeable area.

Rents/leases could go way down for the mom and pop shops that can survive in the new design.

Other businesses can move further out where the people are, so the suburbs can become more walkable.

If we made the focus on reducing waste, and making things easy for everyone, rather than how to make rich people richer, theres lots of solutions.

[-] bluGill@kbin.social 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It was obvious 30 years ago downtowns were in trouble because businesses ere moving to suburbs. They still haven't made serious effort to change the root causes of that.

[-] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

Good point, but as an aside... is your backspace key broken?

[-] bluGill@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

typing on my phone. I have never found a good keyboard for mobile. I turned autocorrect off long ago as it too often was changing what I wrote to something that was completely the opposite, at least without it you know I didn't mean that can can figure it out (I hope). I'm using thumb-key which overall I like, but there are still issues with it.

I have dysgraphia which means writing is already more difficult for me than most, combine that will small text boxes and random hitting of something I didn't mean...

I'm on a real computer now so I was able to run spellcheck and get at least the most obvious mistakes fixed.

[-] vividspecter@lemm.ee 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

In addition, increase housing density by removing single family only zoning and adding more missing middle and affordable housing. Make the city a place people want to live (and can afford to live) rather than just a place people commute in and out from in their noisy, polluting cars.

[-] Mac@mander.xyz 33 points 9 months ago

Demand has changed in the market? Bummer. Anyway,

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 26 points 9 months ago

Oh no, we might not need heavily built-up downtown centers any more. But we need to need them! For some reason.

[-] archomrade@midwest.social 18 points 9 months ago

but the logistics of that with fire codes, building codes, and urban planning are not drop in replacements. They can be done, but at great cost.

Most of the buildings were talking about are made to accommodate stricter codes already. The problem isn't really at all the cost of retrofitting them, so much as it is the lower rent/sf price they can charge for it.

Everything else you mentioned is fair, but the only reason people would rather leave urban centers if they don't need to be there is the cost of living there. No matter how you slice it, the biggest obstacle to dense residential city centers is the established expectation of higher ROI on the space and the over-leveraged building owners who can't afford to charge less for risk of defaulting on their properties.

[-] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 9 months ago

In the end, it's about bailing out the rich. They should have diversified their bets away from commercial real estate.

Covid mashed fast forward, but remote knowledge work was a thing before it. It was a foreseeable risk, even just from guessing normal rich people motivations: once the San Francisco crowd figured out they could cast a bigger net for talent, AND pay lower-cost-of-living city salaries to them, it was going to spread.

this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
704 points (100.0% liked)

News

23275 readers
3061 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS