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Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

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Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#121

Post by megaman22 »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
epistasis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz have anti-housing factions similar to everywhere else in the Bay Area, and the pro-housing faction is in earlier stages of organization than in the Bay Area. Scotts Valley City Council actually had a member say in open meeting that they don't want "those type of people" living there, in reference to renters and presumably others without the means to buy a home. Santa Cruz is…

I would stand up and oppose dense urban housing plopped down in the middle my suburban single-family home neighborhood, too. I guess that makes me an evil, dirty NIMBY, but oh well, I'll live with the label. When your message is "dense urban is the only acceptable way to live" don't be surprised when people who don't want their neighborhoods to turn into apartment complexes push back.

It does get hairy when people start throwing eminent domain into the mix.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#122

Post by bkcreate »

baron816 wrote: post #11

Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it ev…

Its a little bit of hyperbole to say it still looks like the 70s when there used to still be a lot of orchards back then. They never could have anticipated this growth

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#123

Post by stephencanon »

closeparen wrote: post #101
RestlessMind wrote: post #10

I hope they also invest in roads and mass transit. A lot of residents in those 10K new homes will be working outside of North Bayshore. Heck, even if one is working at Google, it could be at any other myriad campuses across Sunnyvale / San Jose / Mt View. There would also be kids, who need to be transported to schools. Without roads and transit improvements, North Bayshore can easily turn into a nightmare.

Agreed, but >There would also be kids, who need to be transported to schools. We should be building neighborhoods such that kids can walk to school. Even my single-family-home dominated 2.5 square mile "village" could manage that.

Yeah, 10k homes is more than enough to support a school of it's own. They shouldn't need to be bused anywhere until middle or high school.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#124

Post by glenneroo »

csomar wrote: post #74
lisper wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've travelled all over the world and lived in LA for 22 years. Dubai is the least walkable city I've ever seen by a wide margin. It would hold that title even if the weather did not already make it feel like hell on earth.

The weather makes it impossible to have the city walkable and enjoyable. If you want to see another city less walkable than Dubai, it is Qatar. There isn't even public transportation there (though a metro line is in the works).

Bahrain is the same.

I was stuck there for a few days for a job and wanted to do literally anything other than sitting in the hotel. There was literally nothing within a 30 minute walk (in brutal heat) so a taxi was required, but I didn't have any local currency, so I asked the hotel concierge where the closest ATM is. I then had to walk 30 minutes, just to find a broken ATM inside of a little structure with a broken A/C. At that point, I realized if I walked another 30 minutes, I would be at the mall. 2 of the 3 ATMs at the mall didn't work. After 20 minutes of realizing the mall was full of Gucci and other designer shops which I had no interest in, I took a taxi 15 minutes to the next nearest mall. Again, nothing but designer shops. Taking another taxi to visit yet another (unfinished) mall, which was worse than the last two, not to mention only 1/3rd of the shops were even open, but according to multiple people and the taxi driver, it was the "hot spot to go". The taxi driver refused to park inside because the line of cars was hundreds long and would have taken ~30 minutes. I ended up walking 15 minutes from the highway to the mall.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#125

Post by xbmcuser »

prawn wrote: post #104
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why people think HK is a bad model, sure Kowloon walled City was bad, but modern HK is quite nice. I also got the impression that Dubai wasn’t very walkable, but I’ve never been there.

Dubai is a horrible place to be a pedestrian, at least the areas I briefly visited. Everything is at a huge scale so the distances are extreme, and obviously the climate doesn't help at all. I wonder if anyone has ever built a city, or significant part of a city, with either a purely subterranean transport layer, or all pedestrian layers a storey above? (Obviously I'm talking beyond a subway system.)

It has become a lot more pedestrian friendly compared to 15 years ago my first visit and 1 year ago my last visit. But the problem of afternoon heat cant be solved.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#126

Post by jonursenbach »

andys627 wrote: post #31
RestlessMind wrote: post #10

I hope they also invest in roads and mass transit. A lot of residents in those 10K new homes will be working outside of North Bayshore. Heck, even if one is working at Google, it could be at any other myriad campuses across Sunnyvale / San Jose / Mt View. There would also be kids, who need to be transported to schools. Without roads and transit improvements, North Bayshore can easily turn into a nightmare.

Building roads/auto-dependence will exacerbate said nightmare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand It's time for a serious change to building around transit, walking, and biking.

The peninsula isn't really walkable.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#127

Post by refurb »

jsolson wrote: post #24
baron816 wrote: post #11

Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it ev…

If by mixed do you just mean residential over retail? Is the Bay Area actually opposed to that?

I'd be worried you'd never fill the retail on the ground level. The small neighborhoods that have the retail/residential buildings have a ton of vacancies even now due to high rents.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#128

Post by dweekly »

ghaff wrote: post #116
lisper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, Vegas and Montreal have pretty crappy weather and they are 10 times more walkable than Dubai.

Vegas? Most of it is sprawl and the Strip (where few people live) is enormous hotels that are actually pretty spread out. I agree the Montreal core is fairly walkable. Cold is generally easier to deal with than heat. There's also a large connected Underground that people use when the weather is bad.

Vegas has wide pedestrian boulevards, escalators for elevated pedestrian crossings, throughways inside casinos, and even a pair of monorails. The Strip is mostly linear and there aren't long stretches with nothing there - food, lodging, entertainment, and (of course) gambling are never more than a few dozen feet away at any point.

But I have to say, Rochester, MN - the Mayo Clinic - has to be one of the more extraordinarily walkable places I've ever been: the whole city is not only interconnected underground between apartments, parking structures, and offices but there are plentiful underground facilities as well. It amazed me to have streets so empty when I first showed up: I had no idea where everyone was! The answer is: why on earth would you go outside? :)

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#129

Post by dionidium »

bkcreate wrote: post #122
baron816 wrote: post #11

Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it ev…

Its a little bit of hyperbole to say it still looks like the 70s when there used to still be a lot of orchards back then. They never could have anticipated this growth

>They never could have anticipated this growth

That's silly. San Francisco isn't the first city to boom. Detroit added more than a million people between 1910 and 1930. Brooklyn added a half a million people per decade in the early 1900s.

And neither of those cities look like Midtown Manhattan or Tokyo or whatever else SF residents seem to imagine is required to support fast growth.

They did it by building vast areas of multi-story mid-density mixed-use developments. There is zero mystery here, both about what was clearly starting to happen in the SFBA 30 years ago and what should have been done about it.

Re: Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017)

#130

Post by Bahamut »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #94
tormeh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching? Pleasant work? I've tried it and it's worse than the ops job I have now. Very stressful. Even teachers I know agree. You do get long vacations to compensate, but it's not all good.

Yes, many, many people enjoy working and generally interacting with the children. The vacations are a perk, but they're not even the primary perk.

Not sure where you get pleasant perk from - a lot of teachers I know are often working 12 hour days.
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