[BicoastalAnn]

Another factor is companies are growing increasingly work-at-home-friendly - especially huge companies like GE. I think this is going to contribute to the moving of HQs. Being in the suburbs is only really worth it if you need space due to headcount.

[jax12479]

Having worked in both cities and suburbs, I found suburban office parks to be dreadfully boring and isolating. There's an energy and vitality to working in the city that you really miss when you are stuck in the 'burbs. Sure, there are some who are fine with spending all day in the same building, and going to a corporate cafeteria every day for lunch, but most people I know find that atmosphere stifling.

It's the same reason that most young families coming to the suburbs from a city want convenience and walkability. Isolation and total car dependency is not how many people want to live anymore. Sidewalks, public transportation, neighborhood coffee shops, parks... these are the selling points now, for residents And employers.

I think much more was at play for GE, but as far as atmosphere, they're trading up.

[ctguy87]

Originally Posted by wtby4000

The suburbs are the slums of the future.

It's already happened in Paris, and it will happen in New England as well.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Paris suburbs are dense and more susceptible to concentrations of poverty. New England suburbs (and most of America's) are low density and require owning a vehicle. The concentrated pockets of higher poverty and crime in Hartford's suburbs (East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, Vernon) are along bus lines and full of dense multi-family housing and apartments.

[Wilton2ParkAve]

Originally Posted by jax12479

Having worked in both cities and suburbs, I found suburban office parks to be dreadfully boring and isolating. There's an energy and vitality to working in the city that you really miss when you are stuck in the 'burbs. Sure, there are some who are fine with spending all day in the same building, and going to a corporate cafeteria every day for lunch, but most people I know find that atmosphere stifling.

It's the same reason that most young families coming to the suburbs from a city want convenience and walkability. Isolation and total car dependency is not how many people want to live anymore. Sidewalks, public transportation, neighborhood coffee shops, parks... these are the selling points now, for residents And employers.

I think much more was at play for GE, but as far as atmosphere, they're trading up.

Having a nice yard, square footage and good schools trumps coffee shops and overcrowded mass transit for families. Again the narrative sounds entirely scripted with the pro-urban crowd these days (energy and vitality?, do you people watch too ).

[NewJeffCT]

Originally Posted by jax12479

Having worked in both cities and suburbs, I found suburban office parks to be dreadfully boring and isolating. There's an energy and vitality to working in the city that you really miss when you are stuck in the 'burbs. Sure, there are some who are fine with spending all day in the same building, and going to a corporate cafeteria every day for lunch, but most people I know find that atmosphere stifling.

It's the same reason that most young families coming to the suburbs from a city want convenience and walkability. Isolation and total car dependency is not how many people want to live anymore. Sidewalks, public transportation, neighborhood coffee shops, parks... these are the selling points now, for residents And employers.

I think much more was at play for GE, but as far as atmosphere, they're trading up.

If you work at GE in their corporate office, you'll most likely find people eating lunch at their desks/in their offices or grabbing snacks out of the vending machine, or possibly having an administrative person order lunch from the company cafeteria or a local restaurant - rarely will they have a chance to go out for lunch, as they have to keep their nose to the grindstone all the time. From what I'd heard about GE was that they used to have competitions to see who could work past midnight the most number of times. Not sure if that has changed at all.

Sure, if you're in the city and get out as a semi-reasonable hour, you definitely have a lot more options on what to do than you would in a suburb.

[CT_Yank]

Originally Posted by Wilton2ParkAve

Having a nice yard, square footage and good schools trumps coffee shops and overcrowded mass transit for families. Again the narrative sounds entirely scripted with the pro-urban crowd these days (energy and vitality?, do you people watch too ).

This is also the truth. Today's hipster is tomorrows grey bearded middle aged dad who does not want to carry a stroller up & down a walk up. The suburbs will not die but there is a major uncertainty about good paying jobs available in the future. Corporations moving to big cities have a never-ending pool of global resources. Between H1 visa program, offshoring and technology efficiencies, employees are no longer long term assets but liabilities to be unloaded asap when they don't meet your short term plans. This could lead to rot and severe pricing pressures in suburbs.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Just jumping in here for a second, as a former Connecticut resident, along with someone who works for a major GE union.

One aspect that I think you guys are not considering, which I'm sure was a major concern for GE, is corporate headquarters are consolidating in the nation's biggest cities. Suburban corporate campuses are very much out of style. This is true even for corporate headquarters in smaller cities, if those cities don't have a major international airport.

We saw this recently in Pittsburgh with the merger of Heinz and Kraft. At the time of the merger, it was thought that Kraft's huge corporate campus in the Chicago suburbs was going to be an "asset" to the new company. However, within less than a year, the new management announced it was going to leave this campus and move into office space somewhere in Downtown Chicago. For the time being the Pittsburgh "co-HQ" is still here, but the writing is on the wall regarding this. On the other hand Kennametal, which is located far outside the City in Latrobe, is relocating into Downtown Pittsburgh - at least for now, they are saying they may move on to a bigger city if the state doesn't accept their shakedown for money.

I honestly expect that Connecticut will lose almost all of its major corporations within the next few decades. This isn't due to the business climate - Wyoming is rated number one in the country in terms of its business tax climate, and it doesn't have any Fortune 1000 companies. South Carolina is a popular place for people from the Northeast to retire due to low taxes, but it only has five. It's about consolidation where you can find young educated professionals and the best airports.

Actually this was discussed by some of us in a Ct economy thread a few days ago. I agree it will be a huge factor..millenials want urban, and they are coming of age.

[Mike 75]

As a Gen Xer, I've heard this urbanization story before. Fresh out of college everyone wanted to live in a city. And we all did, for 5 to 10 years - until we didn't. Life happens, people get married and have kids and reassess their priorities. And what's attractive about city living when you're 25 and single can be pretty unattractive when you're 35 and married with kids. Not to say that there aren't people out there who find city living with kids to be perfectly fine, or even preferable. But of my contemporaries, those people are the exception, not the rule. Hence the migration to the suburbs. I have yet to see why this is any different for millenials.

But it could be that GE sees Boston as the best of both worlds. Vibrant city life to help attract younger workers along with ready access to great suburbs to retain the older ones. We shall see.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by Wilton2ParkAve

Until the pendulum swings and the urban narrative fades (millenials start having children en masse, schools don't improve in urban areas etc) It's not much different than the M&A environment in corporate America, large conglomerates were en vogue through the early 00s, whereas now where are seeing the same bankers pitch the virtues of divesting what they previously built (Big Banks, MetLife, GE Finance etc). Despite media pitching heavy handed for city living, there is actually less need to actually reside in the dense, stressful, tight cities given the advances in technology. The current inhabitants will figure this out...

It's not need..it's want. Nashville had same thing occur with Nissan hq who lost much of younger staff when they left central city temp hq for suburban brand new hq

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Eh, I dunno. Even if you presume that millennials will move to the suburbs the same way that earlier generations did (which isn't quite true - less are having kids, those whom are are having less kids, and more, albeit a minority, are staying in cities even after having kids), the type of suburbs professionals want these days are different. They want walkable town centers and rail access to the City - something only a few places in Connecticut have. Indeed, all of the developing "hip suburbs" of NYC I'm aware of are quaint Hudson Valley areas like Hastings on Hudson. Or else they leave NYC entirely for a cheaper part of the country. They don't move back to Connecticut.

More importantly, even if millennials decamp to the suburbs, that will not cause jobs to become decentralized again. The job decentralization happened because the cities were hugely dangerous. Crime has fallen pretty consistently now for the last 25 years for reasons no one is entirely sure of, with major urban cores safer than any time since the mid 1960s. Unless cities become actually dangerous, it really isn't in the interest of companies with offices in major cities to suburbanize these days. This is bad for CT, because only Fairfield County is really within NYC commuting range.

Great points. My godson is working in Ct a large hq, but he interviewed in Seattle and Atlanta also, and had either offered, he would have declined the Ct suburban hq job for a city job, and he still wants to be in a large city. His uncle in his 40s is raising a family in NYC. My 40ish nephew debated between a nearby Chicago northern burb and the central city, and has a family with 3 small kids. He left Fairfield, Ct and working in Wall Street for it, and works in downtown Chicago, but lives a short train ride away.


The suburban fad of yesteryear is not permanent. It was an anomaly that lasted a few decades. Todays coming of age gens have no interest in it. (BTW, I am a Boomer, but I understand this gen views suburbia differently.)


PS: Crime fell as it peaked solely when 18-30 year old male US urban population were at US all time highs. They dropped as a %, crime dropped, and more sophisticated pd methods helped that, too.