"land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%."
I live in Milan so I think I'm qualified to write about this. The office space one wants is close to home or to metro or train stations, unless one lives outside the city. In that case the best office space is close to the highways on the same side of the city you're from. I used to work at 10 minutes by feet from office, then exactly at the other side of the city. It took one hour to get to office, by car or public transport. I preferred public transport because of the free time for reading. I work mostly from home now with customers within 30 minutes (walking of cycling), which is even better.
I can understand that zoning rules limit the number of offices and houses that can be build close to the best areas but as a city dweller do I really want to see buildings built everywhere, in every single space between existing buildings or replacing smaller ones? Call me selfish because I don't care about raising the country GDP but I don't think so. Maybe it's because I'm European but my ideal of a city is not a large archaeology. It's more like this http://goitaly.about.com/od/moreitaliancities/tp/small-itali... and Milan is a reasonable compromise between access to fast Internet, customers and quality of life. People born in those other cities won't agree but they still come here to work :-)
I live in Milan so I think I'm qualified to write about this. The office space one wants is close to home or to metro or train stations, unless one lives outside the city. In that case the best office space is close to the highways on the same side of the city you're from. I used to work at 10 minutes by feet from office, then exactly at the other side of the city. It took one hour to get to office, by car or public transport. I preferred public transport because of the free time for reading. I work mostly from home now with customers within 30 minutes (walking of cycling), which is even better.
I can understand that zoning rules limit the number of offices and houses that can be build close to the best areas but as a city dweller do I really want to see buildings built everywhere, in every single space between existing buildings or replacing smaller ones? Call me selfish because I don't care about raising the country GDP but I don't think so. Maybe it's because I'm European but my ideal of a city is not a large archaeology. It's more like this http://goitaly.about.com/od/moreitaliancities/tp/small-itali... and Milan is a reasonable compromise between access to fast Internet, customers and quality of life. People born in those other cities won't agree but they still come here to work :-)