Gawker laments The Death of the Suburban Office Park.


The author of this article believes that these suburban office parks are "terrible environmentally, terrible for transportation, and terrible for the soul".  They probably wouldn't be terrible environmentally or terrible for transportation if people lived in the same suburb as their office.  I realize that the suburbs are not in any way hip enough for the denizens of Gawker (as evidenced in the comments), but some people obviously like them.  And of course, the buildings themselves are ugly, but they serve a purpose -- or they used to when we used to have vibrant and growing small business sector. 


What really frightened me about this post was actually the comments.  These Gawker commenters have no idea that the vacancy of these office parks marks a significant loss to the economy -- it is these small businesses in ugly suburban office parks which employ the majority of the middle class that is the tax base that funds the government programs the commenters so love.  One of them suggested converting the vacant office buildings into "housing or shelters or something useful."  You mean something useful like a business that employs people, trades them money for work and allows them to be self-sufficient -- and pay taxes?