economics

At least the highway will have no traffic out to the big box store and back

Filling so much empty ground-floor space may require cities to rethink what brings people downtown. It may force officials to change how they regulate buildings, and property owners to shift how they profit from them.

Source: The Ground-Floor Window Into What’s Ailing Downtowns – The New York Times

“May”? The NYT are just hedging hard on this. Cities will have to rethink how downtowns function, officials will have to change how buildings are regulated, property owners will have to shift how they profit from them, businesses will have to adapt to a different customer base.

Case in point, this article in the Minneapolis St. Paul Journal(disable your javascript to read)

Fhima and other community members who make their living downtown see firsthand how the absence of thousands of Target (NYSE:TGT) workers at the retailer’s Nicollet Mall headquarters impacts the city’s overall vibrancy. From shops and restaurants to public transportation and property values, downtown Minneapolis is struggling without a strong, consistent daytime population there to support it.

At the end of the article they actually have a section titled “What Target can do about”. Newsflash: they en’t doing shit. They just held their third auction to clear own office equipment. Even if they wanted to bring everyone back they don’t even have the furniture to put those people in.

Cities at large could make an effort to populate downtowns with small businesses, small/medium size landbastards, and change zoning to allow for living in skyscrapers. But that takes political capital no one wants to spend.

A lot of people would love to live downtown. Hell, a lot of people already do, but if they want basic necessities they need to get them delivered, or worse, drive out to the suburbs to get them.

At least the highway will have no traffic out to the big box store and back Read More »

It’s gentrification by any other name

Not every sector has benefited the same from the influx of digital nomads. Sarai Balderrama, the co-founder of Agencia de Arte, a digital platform that promotes up-and-coming Mexican artists to international clients, told Rest of World, “For over a year, I’ve been trying to tap into that market but they don’t seem interested in staying. You usually buy art when you start calling a place home.”

Source: Digital nomads now come first for Mexico City’s gig workers – Rest of World

The resident population of Mexico City has been screaming at these people to willingly integrate with the fabric of the city instead of just insulating themselves from it. Already thousands have been priced out by these digital nomads.

When Latin American people go to the US or Europe to work, Americans usually scream at them to integrate, and the vast majority of them do, even if they don’t speak the language. They pay taxes, they pay their bills, they spend discretionary income if they have any left after wiring money home.

But Americans and Europeans are not willing to return the favor.

It’s gentrification by any other name Read More »

Sitting in the dark watching the screen, somewhere

Will young people — trained during the pandemic to expect instant access to new movies like “Hamilton” and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” — get into the habit of going to the movies like their parents and grandparents did? Generation Z forms a crucial audience: About 33 percent of moviegoers in the United States and Canada last year were under the age of 24, according to the Motion Picture Association.

Source: Hollywood’s Obituary, the Sequel. Now Streaming. – The New York Times

Millenials and Zoomers have a little problem though… we haven’t got any money to spend. Even if there is an economic boom we will not benefit from it unless there is systemic change at all levels of government, business and society.

The cost of a single movie at the theatre will get us an entire month of streaming. The math isn’t hard.

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Shadow cities, rising

I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.  Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. […]

Source: NYC Is Dead Forever… Here’s Why – James Altucher

Is NYC truly over? For the longest time it was the place to be in this entire planet but now it certainly feels like it’s spiraling downwards, and we say this from my relatively comfortable perch in the Midwest, which does have problems of its own.

City government is still throwing billions into its police department even though nobody living in the city wants that anymore. Nobody likes De Blasio, who keeps thinking salvation will come from somewhere even though Trump has repeatedly said he’s more than willing to let NYC die. NY state government have their own issues, which depend a lot on the economic might of the city. Landlords are about to start throwing themselves off roofs—let them, no one stop them!

It reminds us of Tijuana when I arrived there so long ago. I was told Avenida Revolucion would be teeming with people, people who would be drinking, laughing, partying; usually loud boisterus Americans, yes, but they’d bring along people from all over the world. It all came crashing down on 9/11 and the economy of the city took a big hit when the border closed entirely. After that, there would only be light crowds and those usually on the weekends.

We worked on La Revo for years. We remember. It took nearly a decade for the city to recover, and then that stopped with the cartel drug wars.

Reading this article about NYC reminds me of all of that. It also takes into account the availability of broadband for most everyone, which changes things when you can do your job from anywhere on the planet that has the bandwidth to let you.

Other cities are suffering from the same issues. London is seeing this compounded by Brexit. Hong Kong, compounded by the hostile takeover by PRC. San Francisco, compounded by sky-high rents. With broadband you don’t have to deal with any of these issues; You can now have your dream house in the country and have good wifi.

NYC will recover first but it will take decades.

Shadow cities, rising Read More »

I only write here on this here blog thing

Source: Submission Fees are Classist as Fuck – CLASH

Once upon a few lives ago I thought of a story, and thought up an outline. Something simple, a riff on a story that has been done a million times by a million people.

During this time I was poor — had to walk to and from work, spent the bare minimum on food, clothes. Everything went towards rent, and saving up for moving elsewhere.

But it turns out you have to pay to submit stories anywhere. The tale died and it’s only memory is of its death.

Fin.

I only write here on this here blog thing Read More »

“Vamos a la plaza” turned into “vamos al moll”

In the early 1990s, Manuel Camacho Solís—then Mexico City’s head of government—announced his goal to turn Mexico City into a “global city.” To that end, he approved five redevelopment-oriented urban megaprojects. The reconstruction of the corridor between the Alameda Central—a park in the center—and Paseo de la Reforma was one of them. The others included the revitalization of the city’s historic center; the creation of Santa Fe; the improvement of Avenida Masaryk, the main thoroughfare in the upscale Polan

Source: An Alternate Future for the Mall | Online Only | n+1

This article was written before the ’17 quake struck the city. Given the fact a lot of buildings that did not fall down during the quake are now toppling, it will lead to a redistribution of spaces across the entire city.

Let’s hope the city government will do what is right, providing housing to those who lost it in the neighborhoods they’ve lived for decades, instead of what it easy thing, shoving them out to the edges of the city.

“Vamos a la plaza” turned into “vamos al moll” Read More »

Heading towards el barranco

The government of Mexico has a new problem on its hands: what to do with the burgeoning ranks of state governors, current or former, that are facing prosecution for fraud or corruption. It’s a particularly sensitive problem given that most of the suspects belong to the governing political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico uninterruptedly from 1929 to 2000. It returned to power in December 2012 with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto. And it clearly hasn’t changed its ways.

Source: Mexico’s Economy Is Being Plundered Dry | naked capitalism

Heading towards el barranco Read More »