I'm sure there's plenty of demand for commercial space on a lower rent. Commercial space is much more than offices, but those things are priced so that only high-margin artificially high-density knowledge work can afford them.
Our modern cities are clearly not economically viable (proof of that is that people can't afford to live in them), so yeah, something will break sooner or later.
>
Our modern cities are clearly not economically viable (proof of that is that people can't afford to live in them)
No, that's not sufficient proof. You'd need unaffordability, and high rates of rental vacancies to prove that. Most of the unaffordable cities have near-zero vacancy rates.
"That place is too crowded now, nobody goes there anymore."
If the cities were net-negative economically, there'd be a net outflow of people from them (As anyone who can't make ends meet on the margins would pack up, leave, and create those vacancies.)
Yet, that's not the case. There's an economic pull to cities, the are, on the net, more productive than the countryside (Because the proximity of people makes the cost of bringing goods and services to market very, very low.)
The cost of land, in the long-term, rises to meet the economical productivity of an area. The reason that cities are so damn expensive is because they are productive.
Yeah, that's the issue.
I'm sure there's plenty of demand for commercial space on a lower rent. Commercial space is much more than offices, but those things are priced so that only high-margin artificially high-density knowledge work can afford them.
Our modern cities are clearly not economically viable (proof of that is that people can't afford to live in them), so yeah, something will break sooner or later.