Minneapolis’s empty downtown has struggled due to the continuation of remote work.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.

“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”

The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.

  • running_ragged@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 months ago

    It doesn’t have to all be bad. If the city could get the head out of their ass, they could sort out the codes and get it done. Let people who work downtown live downtown. Shrink the driving and parking infrastructure, turn it into a walkable, bikeable area.

    Rents/leases could go way down for the mom and pop shops that can survive in the new design.

    Other businesses can move further out where the people are, so the suburbs can become more walkable.

    If we made the focus on reducing waste, and making things easy for everyone, rather than how to make rich people richer, theres lots of solutions.

    • bluGill@kbin.social
      0·
      10 months ago

      It was obkious 30 years ago downtowns were in trouble because busimesses ere moving to suburbs. They still haken’t made serious effort to change the root causese of that.

        • bluGill@kbin.social
          0·
          10 months ago

          typing on my phone. I have never found a good keyboard for mobile. I turned autocorrect off long ago as it too often was changing what I wrote to something that was completely the opposite, at least without it you know I didn’t mean that can can figure it out (I hope). I’m using thumb-key which overall I like, but there are still issues with it.

          I have dysgraphia which means writing is already more difficult for me than most, combine that will small text boxes and random hitting of something I didn’t mean…

          I’m on a real computer now so I was able to run spellcheck and get at least the most obvious mistakes fixed.

    • vividspecter@lemm.ee
      0·
      10 months ago

      In addition, increase housing density by removing single family only zoning and adding more missing middle and affordable housing. Make the city a place people want to live (and can afford to live) rather than just a place people commute in and out from in their noisy, polluting cars.