171–180 of 261 posts
1) Build better transit to connect areas that are affordable (or areas at all i.e. San Jose / Oakland) to central business districts
2) To accomplish this by creating a centralized governing authority for the whole Bay Area.
I wonder if this kind of consolidation has ever happened before. Did New York City absorb areas that it now controls as it evolved, or did the parties agree afterward to some symbiotic relationship?
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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…
110 degrees in August.
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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…
110 degrees in August.
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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…
I’m sure there’s all kinds of cool stuff in Fresno if you know where to look. It’s not the same as the Bay Area though.
His proposal is two-fold, for those who want a summary. 1) Build better transit to connect areas that are affordable (or areas at all i.e. San Jose / Oakland) to central business districts 2) To accomplish this by creating a centralized governing authority for the whole Bay Area. I wonder if this kind of consolidation has ever happened before. Did New York City absorb areas that it now controls as it evolved, or did…
What surprises me is that there aren't more startups headquartered in Oakland. Sure, it's a bit more hassle for people in SF to get out there, but you're going against the flow of traffic, so the commute is pleasant. And my suspicion is there are a lot of senior people living in the East Bay (or even further out). People who've moved on from small apartments and roommates and and have their own places, or have a family, or want cheaper rent... whatever it is. I suspect there's enough of those people who'd love to be getting on and off at 19th St Oakland and working down near Lake Merritt, rather than commuting into the city. I have a senior engineer friend, living in Berkeley, who said he'd take a $20k pay cut not to have to commute into SF. And that's not even a bad commute.
If I was starting up, looking to save some money, and wanting to hire experienced developers, I would definitely be setting up in Oakland.
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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 real solution is for companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc to have the COURAGE to create large work epicenters outside of the Bay Area. Create headquarters for tens of thousands of workers in more remote areas with a strong infrastructure, with great benefits for working families. Do what Amazon wants to do with a second HQ, and create demand outside of the Bay Area. If Google created a new HQ in Kansas Cit…
> If Google created a new HQ in Kansas City, with it's fiber links, and low cost of living, and added really great benefits like free day care, etc, then won't software engineers move there, especially those that are ready to start a family? I bet you they would. I definitely would. Maybe some, but I'd be really surprised if you get substantial numbers of your top people to move - which effectively blocks the overall…
After all, there are plenty of successful, non-startup companies that are quite distributed.
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He didn't use a car to commute before (I'd hope) given he was in the middle of SF. But now he likely needs one to get to the grocery, take his kids to school, etc even if he's WFH. And he's likely also using more energy at home, too. So yes, more pollution - and if a lot of other people moved there, higher prices too.
Well, if a neighbourhood is good and convenient, it is only natural that more people would like to move there, more energy would be consumed and prices would rise. Besides this obvious thing, what exactly is your point?
Saying "it's crowded here, let's go move somewhere else and make that crowded" is not just kicking the can, it's making the problem worse because often those areas have even less mass transit.
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Aren't there attractive places in California where tech companies could set up offices to accommodate those who want to leave the valley, while still making sure everyone is still just a few hours drive away if they should be required in a meeting at main HQ?
Attractive enough to pull the top talent? No The underlying problem here is the same problem you have with remote work - it's vastly harder to get complex tasks done when people are remote. For all sorts of reasons (including project expediency), you ideally want the front-line programmers in the same office as the technical leaders.
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There's a difference between the major park in a major city that is used by thousands of people a day, and that shitty town of 5k people that doesn't want anyone else to move in. Shit, there are more people in GGP right now than there will be all week in Brisbane. At the same time it's not like Brisbane isn't building. They just aren't building housing , because they want to build commercial so they can get the taxes…
Yes there is a difference. The difference is that Golden Gate Park is near the author's home, and Brisbane isn't. High rise condos around Golden Gate park wouldn't affect the usability of Golden Gate Park all that much. It would barely affect the beauty. Yes, Brisbane ought to build more housing, but what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. And if we want Brisbane to give up its autonomy so that we can…