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Old 09-11-2014, 04:14 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
7,541 posts, read 10,219,386 times
Reputation: 3510

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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I mean, I'm not opposed to putting in more tax money towards public transit, but there has to be a better way.

No, wait, there is a better way. It's called building more housing in areas already well served by transit.
They are doing that.


But there are already 10's of 1000's of homes already built in outlying areas where the vast majority of the middle class lives. And those homes will be standing for many decades to come.


What future employment patterns will look like in 50 or 100 years is uncertain. I personally suspect we'll see a lot more home-based work as telecommunications advances, and we will reach peak traffic and parking in places like town sooner rather than later.
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Old 09-11-2014, 07:26 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,362 posts, read 16,918,642 times
Reputation: 12390
Quote:
Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam View Post
But there are already 10's of 1000's of homes already built in outlying areas where the vast majority of the middle class lives. And those homes will be standing for many decades to come.
I understand what you mean. One of the ironic developments of the modern "great inversion" - whereby wealth moves back into the city, is that sadly the people locating along transit lines are the ones who actually *could* easier afford the cost of a driving commute, while those who have no choice but to rely upon public transit tend to be shunted into more and more inconvenient locations. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what we can do about this. The areas with worse connectivity to downtown will (comparatively speaking) continue to drop in desirability unless they have other factors (good schools, etc) which keep them on top.

Quote:
Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam View Post
What future employment patterns will look like in 50 or 100 years is uncertain. I personally suspect we'll see a lot more home-based work as telecommunications advances, and we will reach peak traffic and parking in places like town sooner rather than later.
I don't think we'll be seeing much more telecommuting, because numerous studies have found people actually do less work from home, since they have greater distraction, and lack the peer pressure of seeing their fellow employees working.

That said, I agree that we are close to peak traffic/parking. Probably it will peak in the next 20 years.

First because self-driving cars will become perfected enough to allow for remote parking, at which point few people would pay a premium for a Downtown garage when they can tell their car to go park out in Robinson (or wherever) during the day. At that point parking garages will probably quickly become unprofitable - Downtown might retain one for big-shot executives and the like who want really convenient (and expensive) spaces, but that would be about it.

Second, I expect a lot less people will be working period twenty years from now. The trends in automation are not promising if you believe that keeping the vast majority of the able-bodied population employed is a social necessity. Some studies suggest as many as half of all jobs will be gone in twenty years, and no one really knows what jobs will replace them. As I expect less people will be working (and/or people will be working less) there will be less commuting. Downtown employment may hold up slightly better, however, as a lot of creative/managerial jobs are expected to be harder to automate in the near future.
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Old 09-11-2014, 11:08 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
7,541 posts, read 10,219,386 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post

I don't think we'll be seeing much more telecommuting, because numerous studies have found people actually do less work from home, since they have greater distraction, and lack the peer pressure of seeing their fellow employees working.
I'm thinking not just of telecommuting and working from home, but working in smaller regional offices into of a large centralized location in town.

Even in the large offices, the work is still specialized with accounting on one floor and the law on another. No need to have them stacked on top of each other, messenger service and mail rooms are now nearly obsolete.

Quote:
Second, I expect a lot less people will be working period twenty years from now. The trends in automation are not promising if you believe that keeping the vast majority of the able-bodied population employed is a social necessity. Some studies suggest as many as half of all jobs will be gone in twenty years, and no one really knows what jobs will replace them. As I expect less people will be working (and/or people will be working less) there will be less commuting. Downtown employment may hold up slightly better, however, as a lot of creative/managerial jobs are expected to be harder to automate in the near future.
The end of work due to automation has been prophesized since the time of Ned Ludd in the 18th Century. Automation has been at the root of much civil unrest since then, including the introduction of oil pipelines and airbrakes led to less need for railroad help and the subsequent 1877 Rail strike here in Pittsburgh.

Always bounced out of this before. Work will continue to change, but I believe it will continue in new forms.
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Old 09-11-2014, 11:51 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,362 posts, read 16,918,642 times
Reputation: 12390
Quote:
Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam View Post
.
The end of work due to automation has been prophesized since the time of Ned Ludd in the 18th Century. Automation has been at the root of much civil unrest since then, including the introduction of oil pipelines and airbrakes led to less need for railroad help and the subsequent 1877 Rail strike here in Pittsburgh.

Always bounced out of this before. Work will continue to change, but I believe it will continue in new forms.
That's the classic argument about why automation won't eliminate jobs, but there's three main flaws in it in the current period.

First, automation was historically limited largely to manufacturing, but is beginning to creep into service. You can see this with auto-checkouts at supermarkets clearly. Online shopping replaced many elements of "the store" with computers. Self-driving cars will eliminate millions of drivers for things like taxis and long-haul truck driving. Fast food places are experimenting with eliminating cashiers entirely, and machines exist which can make relatively good hamburgers and coffee drinks with no input other than the customer pushing buttons. Customer service is quickly being replaced by voice recognition software. Hospitals even have robots which do the work of pharmacy techs, dispensing medicine so accurately that if it wasn't for needing the pharmacist's signature by law, it could be totally automated. They're even working on robots which can determine if fruit is ripe before it's picked, which should eliminate a lot of the remaining non-automated agricultural work. Given within the next two decades we'll have computers with as much processing power as humans, and also have fully autonomous human-looking "androids," it's difficult to see any one job which can't be automated - although initially the high cost of the systems might keep them out of wide use in some fields.

Related to this, it's hard to see what will replace the jobs lost - particularly rapidly enough to matter. The service industry grew up as manufacturing went into decline, but with most of the service industry in decline, what comes next? Some people would point to education and health care, but these industries are both bloated due to bureaucracy already. With Obamacare, it seems like Healthcare might have turned a corner in terms of cost control, which should bring down job growth. The education bubble is expected to eventually burst as well, as most of what higher education provides in particular is a high-cost way of signaling to employers you are a worthwhile worker. Big data companies are current working on aptitude tests which more accurately determine this than your educational experience, and some companies (such as Xerox) are already so enamored with these tests they've stopped asking for college degrees from managers.

Finally, even if you presume that some skills are so rarefied that computers will not be able to compete, not everyone is qualified for said jobs. To put it more bluntly, what will stupid people do in the future for a living - people who cannot seriously understand algebra or construct a decently written short essay no matter what schooling you put them in? If the "strong back" sort of jobs are completely replaced by machines - if every job requires brains, not brawn - then some people are just going to be functionally unemployable.
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Old 09-11-2014, 12:16 PM
 
Location: Awkward Manor
2,576 posts, read 3,080,297 times
Reputation: 1684
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
That's the classic argument about why automation won't eliminate jobs, but there's three main flaws in it in the current period.

First, automation was historically limited largely to manufacturing, but is beginning to creep into service. You can see this with auto-checkouts at supermarkets clearly. Online shopping replaced many elements of "the store" with computers. Self-driving cars will eliminate millions of drivers for things like taxis and long-haul truck driving. Fast food places are experimenting with eliminating cashiers entirely, and machines exist which can make relatively good hamburgers and coffee drinks with no input other than the customer pushing buttons. Customer service is quickly being replaced by voice recognition software. Hospitals even have robots which do the work of pharmacy techs, dispensing medicine so accurately that if it wasn't for needing the pharmacist's signature by law, it could be totally automated. They're even working on robots which can determine if fruit is ripe before it's picked, which should eliminate a lot of the remaining non-automated agricultural work. Given within the next two decades we'll have computers with as much processing power as humans, and also have fully autonomous human-looking "androids," it's difficult to see any one job which can't be automated - although initially the high cost of the systems might keep them out of wide use in some fields.

Related to this, it's hard to see what will replace the jobs lost - particularly rapidly enough to matter. The service industry grew up as manufacturing went into decline, but with most of the service industry in decline, what comes next? Some people would point to education and health care, but these industries are both bloated due to bureaucracy already. With Obamacare, it seems like Healthcare might have turned a corner in terms of cost control, which should bring down job growth. The education bubble is expected to eventually burst as well, as most of what higher education provides in particular is a high-cost way of signaling to employers you are a worthwhile worker. Big data companies are current working on aptitude tests which more accurately determine this than your educational experience, and some companies (such as Xerox) are already so enamored with these tests they've stopped asking for college degrees from managers.

Finally, even if you presume that some skills are so rarefied that computers will not be able to compete, not everyone is qualified for said jobs. To put it more bluntly, what will stupid people do in the future for a living - people who cannot seriously understand algebra or construct a decently written short essay no matter what schooling you put them in? If the "strong back" sort of jobs are completely replaced by machines - if every job requires brains, not brawn - then some people are just going to be functionally unemployable.

People, and not just stupid ones, will be unemployed and starve, and die and be made into soylent green.
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Old 09-11-2014, 12:45 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,362 posts, read 16,918,642 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by doo dah View Post
People, and not just stupid ones, will be unemployed and starve, and die and be made into soylent green.
That's one outcome. Keep in mind it's not actually in the long-term interest of the wealthy have us all be unemployed and dying of starvation. Not only because of the whole pesky revolution problem, but because the economy cannot grow without consumer spending. Being "rich" would cease to mean much of anything pretty soon after mass employment began to evaporate. I don't think the wealthy will be this farsighted however, which is why I really do think some kind of fundamental social/economic change - a post-capitalist system - is inevitable once the marginal value of labor is low enough in a democratic society.

As I said in another thread, my preferred solution is a basic income - a "citizen's wage." It's a nice simple system which could replace existing benefits for low-income people, with the added plus there would be no means testing. Once you lump together the cost of Social Security, TANF, SNAP, unemployment, and all of the other cash or indirect cash benefits, the math might come rather close to working without substantial tax increases, as it has been found to be revenue neutral in Canada.

Other possibilities, suggested by more neoliberal economists, are to give every citizen a grant of shares in publicly-traded corporations sufficient that they could live off dividends - basically creating market socialism, albeit perhaps with some remaining inequality.

Shortening the work week might also work, for a generation or two, provided the minimum wage rises to keep up with it. But in the longer run these sort of ideas - which are effectively job sharing - won't solve the issue of automation.
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Old 10-06-2014, 11:41 AM
 
3,291 posts, read 2,749,135 times
Reputation: 3375
Columbus provides blueprint for how to develop Mellon Arena site | TribLIVE

Trib article saying that Columbus' arena district should be a good blueprint for the rebuilding of the civic arena site. Looks like a bad idea to me - why strive to create another stupid arena district that will be bland and cookie-cutter? The lower Hill should be a natural extension of downtown, not a goofy, generic theme area. And of all the districts to choose from, they at least could have used DC's Penn Quarter as a better example of a blueprint; seems much better than that district in Columbus to me.
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Old 10-06-2014, 11:49 AM
 
2,290 posts, read 3,814,136 times
Reputation: 1746
I agree... not impressed with Columbus Arena District at all... plus that idea is dated by about 20 years. (of course, the Pens plan is now nearly a decade old... with only minimal updates... such as the giant television screen to broadcast Penguins game).
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Old 10-06-2014, 12:12 PM
 
Location: Manchester
3,109 posts, read 2,900,672 times
Reputation: 3718
Urgh Columbus.....one of my least favorite places on the planet. Why not just build a version of the Waterfront on the site?

Is urban planning really that difficult? I was just thinking last Thursday night as I ran through the North Shore, how absolutely terrible those new buildings look. I mean my house has more presence and character than those things. The city really should institute some design standards in regards to material use, and what not. Does everything have to look like an office park, or a Disneyesque replica of what America used to look like. South Side Works is not horrible, there is some variety in those buildings, but again they look like one buiding with multiple facades cut out and glued to them.

Either go ultra modern (which may be nice for once in Pgh) or go ultra historic....the mish mash in the middle is what ends up looking cheap and dated about 3 weeks post construction.
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Old 10-06-2014, 12:12 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,362 posts, read 16,918,642 times
Reputation: 12390
Quote:
Originally Posted by _Buster View Post
Columbus provides blueprint for how to develop Mellon Arena site | TribLIVE

Trib article saying that Columbus' arena district should be a good blueprint for the rebuilding of the civic arena site. Looks like a bad idea to me - why strive to create another stupid arena district that will be bland and cookie-cutter? The lower Hill should be a natural extension of downtown, not a goofy, generic theme area. And of all the districts to choose from, they at least could have used DC's Penn Quarter as a better example of a blueprint; seems much better than that district in Columbus to me.
800 units of housing over more than 100 acres is supposed to be impressive?
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