Office space can be converted, and residents support a centre more steadily than commuters

The argument

A second argument concerns what happens to the buildings. Proponents accept that less office space will be needed and argue that this is a question of use rather than of survival. Central buildings have been turned into flats, laboratories, teaching space, clinics, hotels and studios before, and where conversion is difficult the constraint is usually planning rules and the expectations of owners rather than the structures themselves. On this account the adjustment reallocates central land to uses that were previously priced out of it, with housing the most obvious candidate in cities where housing is scarce. Proponents argue the result is a steadier centre, not a weaker one. A district serving commuters is busy on weekday mornings and empty at other times, which is why its cafes and shops are precarious and its streets unwelcoming in the evening. A district where people live generates demand across the whole week and the whole day, supports schools and surgeries rather than only sandwich shops, and is safer for being occupied. Proponents hold that this is a better basis for a city centre than a population that leaves every evening. They also argue that the relief on infrastructure is real. Transport systems built for a single daily peak are expensive precisely because they must carry everyone at once, and spreading or reducing that peak frees capacity without new construction, while reducing the land given to parking and roads. Proponents accept that the transition imposes heavy losses on the owners of office buildings and on the lenders behind them, but argue this is a change in who holds the value of central land rather than the disappearance of the value, and that confusing the two is what produces predictions of collapse.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that conversion is far harder than the argument allows: deep floor plates, central cores, limited windows and services designed for daytime occupation make many office buildings poorly suited to housing, and the works required can cost more than the building is worth. They also argue the sequencing is wrong, since owners default and buildings empty years before any new use is permitted, and an empty building drags down the street around it in the meantime. On infrastructure, critics note that transport systems lose fare revenue faster than they shed costs, so the saving described as freed capacity arrives as a funding gap that has to be met by cutting the service residents were supposed to enjoy.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Deep floor plates, central cores, limited windows and services built for daytime occupation make many office buildings poorly suited to housing, and the works needed can cost more than the building is worth. [Rejecting P2] A resident centre may be steadier once it exists, but buildings sit empty through default and planning delay first, and vacancy drags down the streets around it in the meantime. [Rejecting P3] Transport systems lose fare revenue faster than they can shed cost, so the freed capacity arrives as a funding gap met by cutting the service residents were meant to enjoy. [Rejecting C] Calling the losses a transfer of value understates them, since value that depended on a use nobody now wants is destroyed rather than passed to somebody else.