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Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

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Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#131

Post by fmboingo »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

IMO, it's gotten bad enough in the Bay Area that local control of zoning ought to get abolished. Make a new regional zoning commission, put together some clear and consistent rules about what can be built and where, and rubber-stamp everything that meets those rules. Literal rubber-stamp here, as in "you give us an affidavit saying that your plan meets the specified rules, and you get a permit to build the same day,…

I always find it interesting to hear what people believe they deserve. In these comments you can hear the "I deserve to live in a house with my family of 4 in Palo Alto". Do you really deserve that? Says who? That would be like me showing up in NYC and saying I deserve to live in a penthouse on 5th Ave. No I don't. There is plenty of wide open space outside the Bay Area.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#132

Post by yonran »

golemotron wrote: post #9

It's a very anti-democratic move by California. They are willing to destroy local control of people in their communities to foster growth that will lead to further deterioration of living standards. Wouldn't it be better to try to grow tech outside of California in places like the Dakotas and Idaho where there is plenty of land and people in need of work? The American heartland could be a place rich in opportunity if…

It can actually be more democratic to remove local zoning authority, if stakeholders are disenfranchised from the cities that they work in. See https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/a-th...

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#133

Post by ianamartin »

skewart wrote: post #124
flomo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally from Minneapolis. Farmlands extend infinitely outwards in all directions. The real Met Council power is over the sewer pipes, which allows them to limit sprawl and set a growth boundary. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be run mostly by real-estate types who wanted "controlled growth". (that is, it was a racket.) In San Francisco, the situation is entirely different. We have a massive greenbelt su…

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

That sounds an awful lot like you're suggesting that people who have already acquired the rights to a piece of property shouldn't be allowed to keep them if a housing developer wants to put a high rise where your Burger King is.

Also, I wonder if you would make the same argument for places that are also generally though of as real-estate constrained. Like Manhattan, or Tokyo. Or the part of Brooklyn where I live.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#134

Post by ReligiousFlames »

Instead of growing vertically up, cities ought to consider down because it doesn't ruin existing property owners' view and the community's beauty of not turning into a concrete, brutalist jungle. Furtheremore, there's effectively infinite subsurface real-estate while the maximum usable height of buildings is finite. Musk's Boring Company transport ideas are also onto something but housing and office space should also be deployed underground to maximize spatial efficiency.

For example, the Mountain View San Antonio Shopping Center development has become an uninspired eyesore. I don't live there but it's unattractive.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#135

Post by djrogers »

azernik wrote: post #128
distances wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my ignorance, but are taxes really earmarked in the US? As far as I understand, in most of Europe the government and municipality just collect their dues and spend according to an approved budget with no earmarking whatsoever.

They really are. At least in California. One of many ways in which local government here is fucked up.

Common misconception- usually what happens is we are promised that funds from a new tax will be earmarked for something, then it winds up going in to the general fund, or spent somewhere else.

Taxpayers have a real blind spot to the whole 'money is fungible' concept.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#136

Post by ak217 »

flomo wrote: post #117
voxmatt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. I'm originally from the Twin Cities and we solved (parts of this) problem years ago with a regional government called the Metropolitan Council. When you have a metropolitan area that spans multiple local governments, coordinating efforts around transportation, development, and environment is critical. And coordination is difficult without some sort of central authority. https://en.wikipedia.org…

Originally from Minneapolis. Farmlands extend infinitely outwards in all directions. The real Met Council power is over the sewer pipes, which allows them to limit sprawl and set a growth boundary. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be run mostly by real-estate types who wanted "controlled growth". (that is, it was a racket.) In San Francisco, the situation is entirely different. We have a massive greenbelt su…

> a massive greenbelt surrounding a geographically constricted urban area

We have a bunch of parks (which add enormously to our quality of life) surrounding massive suburban sprawl. Within the city, there is space for hundreds of residential towers without demolishing anything but parking lots and decrepit buildings. Outside the city, in most places you could easily double the density of single family units, they are so spread out.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#137

Post by [deleted] »

ianamartin wrote: post #133
skewart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

That sounds an awful lot like you're suggesting that people who have already acquired the rights to a piece of property shouldn't be allowed to keep them if a housing developer wants to put a high rise where your Burger King is. Also, I wonder if you would make the same argument for places that are also generally though of as real-estate constrained. Like Manhattan, or Tokyo. Or the part of Brooklyn where I live.

[deleted]

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#138

Post by timr »

skewart wrote: post #124
flomo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally from Minneapolis. Farmlands extend infinitely outwards in all directions. The real Met Council power is over the sewer pipes, which allows them to limit sprawl and set a growth boundary. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be run mostly by real-estate types who wanted "controlled growth". (that is, it was a racket.) In San Francisco, the situation is entirely different. We have a massive greenbelt su…

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

"Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco."

"Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason why the housing supply is so restricted."

Prove your claim. The GP is right that there is essentially no undeveloped land in SF; a huge part of the housing moratorium debate centered on the fact that there are only a half-dozen or so vacant parcels in the Mission. This is true across the city.

You're arguing about underutilized land, which is a subject that cannot be addressed with simple assertions. In most cases, that "parking lot or burger king" is a contrived example that doesn't really exist: either the lot really is being developed (and you just don't know about it), or the owner of the land doesn't want to redevelop it (i.e. they're making more money with the current use than they would otherwise), or the land is in a place where a developer can't make a building work (pollution, neighborhood, etc.), or any number of other practical reasons.

I used to believe, like you, that "regulations" were the reason that SF has a housing problem. Then I started looking into it. Regulations make a difference on the margins, but the root cause of SF's housing crisis is simple economics: too much money chasing too little land. No matter what you do, it's going to be expensive.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#139

Post by koolba »

ianamartin wrote: post #133
skewart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

That sounds an awful lot like you're suggesting that people who have already acquired the rights to a piece of property shouldn't be allowed to keep them if a housing developer wants to put a high rise where your Burger King is. Also, I wonder if you would make the same argument for places that are also generally though of as real-estate constrained. Like Manhattan, or Tokyo. Or the part of Brooklyn where I live.

That makes no sense. GP is saying that the owner of the land, whether it's a parking lot or a Burger King, can decide to do something else with it like build a high rise. It's their land after all.

It's not like a random housing developer can come and kick you out just because they want to build condos.

Re: Bills before the California Legislature would crack down on NIMBYs

#140

Post by Sukotto »

ianamartin wrote: post #133
skewart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…

That sounds an awful lot like you're suggesting that people who have already acquired the rights to a piece of property shouldn't be allowed to keep them if a housing developer wants to put a high rise where your Burger King is. Also, I wonder if you would make the same argument for places that are also generally though of as real-estate constrained. Like Manhattan, or Tokyo. Or the part of Brooklyn where I live.

Here in Japan your neighbour can build pretty much anything they want (within zoning constraints) and there is little you can do about it.

The zoning here is pretty different than in the US though. The government created a national, unified zoning standard consisting of 12 zones.

Local governments can split their land into more-or-less arbitrary regions, and choose which zone type they want each region to have. They also have some control over how large the resulting buildings can be in each region by mandating the maximum ratio of floor space to land area for each region.

The main difference between Japanese and American zoning rules is that in the US, the zones are exclusive where-as in Japan they are (mostly) inclusive.

There's a fascinating writeup about it here: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.jp/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

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