After 8 years in SF I have been seriously considering moving to NYC, largely over my commute to South Bay, but also for the substantial increase in density which brings with it a manifold increase in cultural opportunities and activities. The weather is a drawback (in probably 200+ days in NYC over 10 years I can remember a single week of what I would consider nice weather). I have realized that crappy climate is a p…
What kind of work do you do - and what qualifies as interesting work? I assure you a talented software developer can earn as much if not more in NYC than SF.
Why not? The subdivisions of California are creatures of state law, either statutory or constitutional. An initiative can modify statues or the constitution. There are three limitations on them (Art. II, section 8, (d), (e), and (f)) but I don't see how any of them would apply here. Do you see a federal constitutional or statutory doctrine that would prevent it from doing so?
If you move the goalposts to modifying the State Constitution, sure, you can do anything that doesn't conflict with the Federal Constitution. The votes would never materialize. In Palo Alto or Los Gatos you couldn't even get 2% of voters willing to surrender their right to local governance. Why not turn this around...SF can agree to become part of San Jose. Are you still interested?
I live all the way on the other side of the country. I don't have a dog in the fight. I just suggested that the Bay Area could be reorganized into a single municipality through the initiative process if the voters of California decided to do that.
Whether or not you could actually get the votes is something I'm not equipped to answer. A big part of it would depend on what people in Southern California think of the idea given that it contains over half the state's population.
> Do we want to be a white-washed Disneyland for software developers, or do we want to be a vibrant, diverse, integrated (and bigger) city?
What if people actually prefer the former? I mean, sure, their "stated preference" can be later but the "revealed preference" can actually be a myopic selfish one; which is not that abnormal and totally in line with basic human nature (claims of "being progressive" notwithstanding!)
So much here resonates with me. I’m sitting in a train right now taking me from a suburb into downtown Portland, OR...an easy commute...only $5 a day gets you unlimited transportation across all of the regional transit services (all part of the excellent TriMet system). I moved here from the Bay Area mainly due to affordability and sane public transit. The Bay Area is an amazing place but it’s imploding under the wei…
"I moved here from the Bay Area..." At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough if people/companies keep immigrating from California and New York, and elected officials keep proposing policies modeled after the Bay Area. I'm not saying "stay away" as I enjoy much of the growth PDX has seen over the last few years, especially the fact we have a much easier time finding…
> At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough ...
It is already in the process of doing so.
> please please please push back against freeway expansions ...
And this attitude is the reason. I don't know why people think that adopting the same anti-growth, anti-construction, anti-roads attitude that has made San Francisco so unaffordable for regular people will have a different outcome here.
I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest time recorded is 40 minutes without any delays and essentially running the "last mile"). This was the longest commute of my life, and I lived 3 miles from work. It would take me just a little more time to walk there. Biking was faster, but more dangerous -- I g…
Fresno is really a great place. I was there for over two years. I don't know why it gets badmouthed so much. And, yes, compared to coastal big cities in California, it is dramatically cheaper. They are starting a high speed rail line there. It is 500,000 people and much more spread out than the coastal big cities, so it is not nearly as dense. The bus system is the best I have ever seen in the US, so you can live wit…
The weather is miserable for half the year, and there’s less to do. A bunch of my extended family lives in Fresno and elsewhere in the Central Valley, but I can’t imagine living there.
The politicians they elect throughout the Central Valley are also absolutely bonkers.
Fresno is really a great place. I was there for over two years. I don't know why it gets badmouthed so much. And, yes, compared to coastal big cities in California, it is dramatically cheaper. They are starting a high speed rail line there. It is 500,000 people and much more spread out than the coastal big cities, so it is not nearly as dense. The bus system is the best I have ever seen in the US, so you can live wit…
The weather is miserable for half the year, and there’s less to do. A bunch of my extended family lives in Fresno and elsewhere in the Central Valley, but I can’t imagine living there. The politicians they elect throughout the Central Valley are also absolutely bonkers.
So, serious question, explain to me why you think the weather is "miserable" and what is it you "do" all the time that you can't imagine living in Fresno?
I don't get it. There are national forests there. Woodward Park is huge. There is an international airport. What kinds of activities are you into that you can't get your needs met in a city of 500,000 people, about the 36th largest city in the US IIRC, which means there are entire states that don't have a city that big in them.
> Do we want to be a white-washed Disneyland for software developers, or do we want to be a vibrant, diverse, integrated (and bigger) city? What if people actually prefer the former? I mean, sure, their "stated preference" can be later but the "revealed preference" can actually be a myopic selfish one; which is not that abnormal and totally in line with basic human nature (claims of "being progressive" notwithstandin…
Social causes aside, do a majority of software developers really want to live only with software devs? What happened to monocultures being bad?
It might come with being a local, but I always feel alarmed when people contrast to places like NY or LA, which have a dominant industry but isn't as dominated by it, and have costs of living that allow those outside of the high-paying industry to survive. Having a one-industry region is trouble both economically, and culturally. (Doesn't it get tiring to only meet people who are in tech? Doesn't it create bubbles cut off from the larger world?)
That's great, but it seems kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?
>What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely? I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote. Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.
The folks who are having the most trouble living in SF - the ones who don't work in tech - often don't spend all day looking at a computer, and have to be physically present at a specific location to do their work. They're teachers, firefighters, nurses, chefs, mechanics, contractors, etc. Generally the tech crowd is impacted the least by housing prices, because they have higher incomes and more job mobility.
I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest time recorded is 40 minutes without any delays and essentially running the "last mile"). This was the longest commute of my life, and I lived 3 miles from work. It would take me just a little more time to walk there. Biking was faster, but more dangerous -- I g…
Not talked about: you're married. Having worked from home while being single it has its ups and downs. Sure you can get to the gym more but unless you're a natural extrovert you're going to meet way less people - and you'll be less likely to "find someone" (if thats what you're after) compared to the huge number of single people in the city.
I feel like this is a hidden motivation for many people. Maybe just me.