It's a corporation distinct from the state government but the governor still influences major decisions, whereas the local government doesn't have any direct control.
As of 3 years ago, the WeWork at Bowling Green was also tight on bathrooms, but the private stalls automatically unlocked after 5 minutes. It seemed like a genius idea, but there was still always a line of several people (and the building was so cramped that I didn't really blame other people for wanting to get more than 3 feet away from their coworkers for a few minutes).
Interestingly, in Europe, NSAIDs like ibuprofen are frequently paired with vitamin C, because the addition of vitamin C has been shown to protect the stomach from damage [1]. Not sure why this apparently doesn't exist in the US.
Well you can't really consider the Bay Area housing bubble and cost of living spike without taking the tech boom into account. I think it's both the fault of NIMBYism/failure to build sufficient housing in the South Bay, and the fault of large companies, VCs, and startups for doubling down on the South Bay instead of distributing new jobs more evenly throughout the rest of the country.
I'm not convinced that concentrating tech exclusively in the valley has objective network effects that outweigh the costs.
Regardless, from personal experience most of my colleagues would prefer to live in any large metro area but the South Bay (including friends in Mountain View, some of whom were told in the interview process that Google did not have availability in NYC, Chicago, or Pittsburgh). It's untenable for Google to hugely expand its Mountain View campus (http://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activeproj...) while its satellite offices, where many employees would prefer to work, are at a standstill. This is driving potential employees on the east coast into Mountain View, where they don't want to be, who end up pricing out working-class families from the bay who are desperately trying to stay there.
Maybe to not effectively destroy cities and communities with CoL traps? Y'know. Basic "we are members of a society and should be working to make it better" stuff. (Shocking, I know, but there have been eras where even Big Businessmans thought about this.)
The 'cost of living trap' is due far more to a growing amount of wages (good!) chasing after an essentially-capped housing supply near those jobs. When well-paying manufacturing jobs boomed in Detroit during the 1910s auto boom, its population doubled in a decade, and increased by 50% in the following decade— but its housing stock grew to match!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#Demographics
I am aware of everything you are citing. City policy should change. At the same time, the corporate interests that are triggering this should have the social conscience to seek alternate solutions rather than straining the public good to its breaking point. Corporations exist to serve society, not the other way around, and bad actors should be treated as such.
Uhm, you do know that CA housing supply has not grown nearly as fast as in other states? We are not keeping up with population growth. That's why CoL is high. What should be an easy deal of more tax dollars from the rich and services for the poor has become more money for landlords and evicting the poor.
Ah, yes. It's the cities' fault. Only the cities'. Not the people piling on top while knowing it's both untenable and unfair to their fellow citizens to piss in the public pool as they are--they're blameless.
You know we can walk and chew gum at the same time, right?
I don't think it's gotten any better as far as cracking down on drivers. When I try to get picked up at NYC area airports, if the driver calls right away and asks where I'm going, I hang up, cancel and report them for violating the TOS, and request a refund (which I've always gotten).
If they're not just in it for short-term speculation, then they can rent the house out and hire someone to manage it. Make some more profit while contributing to the Vancouver economy and rental market.
This would go against the ideas of being able to go to Vancouver on a whim, and finding things as they were left,
or being able to jump on a plane in case of Mainland China Meltdown and directly move into their house/flat.
Those apartments are not meant to be rented, they are safe places.
Contributing to the Vancouver economy and rental market?
This demographic could not care less, this does not factor in their decisions.
(I have only empirical evidence of this mindset, but I would be willing to expand on what I base my reasoning on.)
Cameras seem like overkill and are a much bigger privacy concern for the purposes given in the article. Motion sensors and NFC beacons should be fine for tracking occupancy and location (for those who opt in to that).
In Manhattan, it's mostly bike couriers who go the wrong way. When I cut across one short block the wrong way because it's convenient, there have been a few pedestrians who've called me out on it. So someone who's on a bike all day should know the "right" way by now. There are also frequently bikers on some busy avenues when there's a bike lane a block over, which is also just laziness or failure to plan ahead.
I think Uber Pool only gives you 1 minute from the time the driver arrives, but I've never had a driver leave without the second passenger when they took 5 or 10 minutes to show up. Plus people never like to admit that they're at fault; if they driver leaves after 5 minutes because a passenger wasn't at their pickup point, the passenger can probably leave nasty feedback and risk the driver being banned if it happens a few times.
