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Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

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211–220 of 261 posts

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#211
Better transit and a unified representative government is a great idea.

It's also never going to happen. Or if it will, it's decades away.

I've become convinced that if we want real change, it needs to be done by technology. Lyft for example could solve the transit problem if they figure out how to lower the cost of a ride, perhaps with automated drivers. Then you wouldn't need to build too much more infrastructure -- no need to get the entire bay rallied around a hundred billion dollar public transit system that's just going to get outdated again. We might need to make another bridge though...

Housing is another problem though. I've been wondering if technology can help there too but I haven't come up with any good ideas yet.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#212

Better transit and a unified representative government is a great idea. It's also never going to happen. Or if it will, it's decades away. I've become convinced that if we want real change, it needs to be done by technology. Lyft for example could solve the transit problem if they figure out how to lower the cost of a ride, perhaps with automated drivers. Then you wouldn't need to build too much more infrastructure -…

AirBnB arguably has the potential to help with housing. Some would argue it also winds up hurting it though.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#213

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…

> lived 3 miles from work Huh? So why weren't you just walking in the first place? That's like a 45 minute brisk walk. That doesn't sound like any kind of hardship.

It's a 570 ft elevation difference between where I lived and work. Yeah, maybe I need to work out more, but that was just too much for me 5 days a week. Also I didn't like walking through mid market.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I meant, as an option to people already in the valley. There must be tons of talent that join these companies when they don't have kids, and would like to work some place where they have more space, more nature etc, when they get older and have kids. I mean I moved out of a city to a distance of about an hour. I have the benefit of being able to work from home so I don't have to go to the office, but I'd very much ap…

One standard "alternative" to the Bay Area these days to be Seattle, which also is a culturally interesting metropolis.

There's always huge cost in fragmentation with adding an additional office; I'd imagine far more people would rather move to Seattle than a rural area.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#215
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice to see someone I can agree with. Sure there's plenty of beautiful Victorian homes in San Francisco, but there's a lot of shitty ones that need to be razed too. SF doesn't need all these 3-4 story, 3-4 BR single family homes with tiny unusable garages - it needs taller denser and modern apartment complexes with a nice park in the middle. All but about 1/8th of the city is just a sprawling suburb.

Hmmm... would you be willing to identify some of the neighborhoods you think should be razed. I personally think there's historical value in many of the marina style houses built in the 1920s, which may (I'm not sure) be what you're referring to here. Yeah, we have a problem, but razing 7/8ths of San Francisco? Yikes. Also - there are suburbs and there are suburbs. The excelsior in SF, as an example of a generally SF…

All the wood houses will end up burning down during the next quake anyways.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course someone from SF would have to call it "orthogonal"...

I'm from New York.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transport in the Bay is so, so hilariously bad. I'm in St. Petersburg, Russia right now and the subway here doesn't actually have a schedule. Instead, there's a clock on the wall. If the next train doesn't arrive within 2 minutes and reset the counter, something's not right. The stations cover basically the entire city, and as a result, venturing 5 miles across town feels about the same as going down a set of escalat…

Mass transit in America is terrible, period (outside of maybe Manhattan, despite the fact that our subway has been getting worse and is in dire need of upgrading). America sucks at mass transit, but for whatever reason Americans don't seem to care. I think it's because they're complacent, don't know any better, and have this toxic "everybody for themselves" mentality that makes it impossible to improve anything that'…

Chicago is decent.

A big factor in the USA that we only have a few major cities with a built up core like New York.

We have many major cities built like LA or Houston where it's spread out and makes public transport less of a priority.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. You'd still meet people at every other place people meet, which is where people look for dates anyway.

> Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. Traditionally, work has been a very common place to meet future spouses. I believe the rate has dropped in recent decades, but I would be surprised if it was so low as to be inconsequential, especially when considering something as important as many people view this.

According to 'Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary' (2010) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412448050 , around 10% of (hetero) couples met at work as of 2010, down from a peak of 20% in 1990. It is the fourth most common method behind friends, bars, and online.

Just the graph: https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/internet-dating.pn...

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#219
post #18

This article really gets it. It's all about transportation. It will never be possible for everyone who wants to be in San Francisco to live downtown, or even adjacent to downtown. Just like the article said, Manhattan is much denser but no more affordable. But we make it so hard for people to get around. You can take a bus for 45m or take the BART which is overcrowded, unreliable, and has trains that can be as much a…

Manhattan is more affordable. There are plenty of 1-bedrooms available right now under $2000: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/area:102,139,135%7Cbeds:... Brooklyn is still twice as dense as SF, and much more affordable.

When I looked into moving to New York, I saw similar rents and figured something was up.

Are these sub $2k places across from a public housing complex, rat infested, or just scam listings that magically have a new price once you call>?

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. You'd still meet people at every other place people meet, which is where people look for dates anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_multiplier_effect

https://be.helpful.com/helpful-how-the-math-of-viral-growth-...

Transitive property of dating. You might not date your coworker but you might date their friend... or a bit less likely a friend of their friend. Etc...

Also known in social gaming as virality, a statistic you can measure.

Also applies to knowledge transfer which is a reason to live near a hub.

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