The rents go up and up. One by one the small mom and pop shops put up a going out of business sign. And soon, they’re replaced by high end niche stores or chains that make a block in one major city indistinguishable from a block in another. And as Sarah Goodyear writes in the NY Daily News’: “There, as they say, goes the neighborhood.” Can we have growth without giving up character? Or are we destined to become the malls of America.

+ In San Francisco, it’s not just small business owners who are getting priced out of the market. Even the tech companies are getting squeezed.

+ And how crazed is the shared office space boom? Put it this way, Staples wants to rent you some office space.