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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)

#141

Post by dwild »

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.)

In Montreal, we have the largest underground complex called "The Underground City". It's a series of tunnels of a total of 32 km that allow going almost everywhere downtown (add to that the subway and soon the electric train, we could say almost everywhere in the city) without going outside.

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

#142

Post by 52-6F-62 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #105
prawn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Canadian cities (sans Vancouver) seem to have a lot of pedestrian tunnels (often doubling as downtown malls). In HK you can get pretty far underground as a pedestrian in some parts (you can basically walk between subway stations in an underground labyrinth to avoid rain). Also, Minneapolis has a nice skyway network. Then there is La Defense in Paris where the pedistrian level is above street level.

Yeah Toronto has the PATH system and you can get around much of the downtown core that way (though I prefer not to...). Toronto itself is really quite walkable for hours in most directions if you live downtown. However to get to anything in further reaches of the city—Scarborough, Etobicoke, or Vaughn—it's far better to have a car. Living downtown and visiting the zoo on transit is a long stretch ;)

Calgary also has a skyway network (called the Plus-15 http://plus15.com/). Living there one winter was odd to me after Toronto—you'd never see anybody on the streets. And downtown Calgary is reasonably quiet on a normal, nice day. That said that town is also quite walkable—though it's best parts are relegated to certain parts of the city that are separated by less interesting areas.

Victoria, BC is one of my favourite walkable places so far. I also really enjoyed my time in Montreal, but I'm a little conditioned to the cold.

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

#143

Post by ghaff »

dweekly wrote: post #128
ghaff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extraord…

But it's pretty much just tourist stuff: casinos, a mixture of crappy and mostly high-end restaurants, souvenir shops, bars. I'm not sure I can think of having seen a grocery store outside of rundown convenience stores. And the transit is fragmented because most of it only runs between hotels with the same owner.

So the Strip is walkable but mostly in the same sense that a big shopping mall with tower or two of apartments is walkable.

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

#144

Post by ac29 »

nkoren wrote: post #100
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…

This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard t…

Major European cities have had centuries to develop, and were built in large part before automobiles existed, which necessitated density and walkability. Silicon Valley, by contrast, was largely agricultural or undeveloped even 50-60 years ago, and development of suburban housing represented a significant increase in density (and automobile transportation was cheap and fast then, so relatively low density housing made sense).

Now, we are left with the problem that the suburbs aren't going anywhere for the most part, due to lack of political will, and lack of a reasonable market-based solution -- single family homes are often in the $1-1.5 million range for ~1/8 acre lots in less desirable areas, and redeveloping even a relatively small subdivision would be extremely expensive, even if you could get everyone to sell (they wouldn't), and get permission from the city. Redevelopment is limited right now to the commercial corridors, such as El Camino Blvd, and existing commercial/industrial/business districts, all of which are undergoing pretty heavy redevelopment in much of Santa Clara County. Transportation infrastructure including both public transportation and public roads are also undergoing multi-billion dollar improvements, though some of the work may take a decade or more to complete.

source: I have lived in the Silicon Valley area for over 30 years -- its changing faster now than at any point I can remember.

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

#145

Post by ak217 »

nkoren wrote: post #100
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…

This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard t…

Support Scott Wiener's SB827, which will require zoning restrictions to be relaxed around California metro public transit stations. Currently many BART and other subway stations in California are in neighborhoods where you can't build anything other than single family, 2 story houses.

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

#146

Post by ac29 »

AskewEgret wrote: post #137
dionidium wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 area…

In less than 50 years, Chicago went from a town of fewer than 5000 to the second largest city in America, with well over 1 million residents, yet during that period: a) Skyscrapers didn't exist until the end of the period b) Mass transit as we know it didn't exist until the end of the period c) Half the city burned down in a single fire, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless My grandfather told me that his commut…

>Nobody can reasonably claim to not have known or anticipated.

Suggesting that people could have predicted the dot-com boom of the 90s or the tech/startup driven boom of the past 15 years (and that it would be so heavily focused in the Bay Area) seems a little far fetched. It might seem obvious now that it has already happened, but in the 60s and 70s I don't see how you could have known (the industries driving development then were Defence and Manufacturing, both nearly nonexistent now). Plenty of areas in the US were increasing in density and economic development during that time, only one of them became Silicon Valley.

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

#147

Post by DataWorker »

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…

I disagree. People want to be here despite the cost of living, the crowding and transit. Mixed use is a scam. Nobody that works in the shops at Santana Row can even approach having the income to live there. The whole justification for these strip malls with million dollar apartments above them is s farce. And it’s the only plan some local cities have for accommodating future growth (which the citizens don’t want in the first place.)

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

closeparen wrote: post #98
kekeblom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that most people making the decisions own one or more units. If they decided to build more housing, the value of their investments would decline.

I'm not sure this is true - the value of their land would skyrocket if rezoned for a more productive use.

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by kaycebasques »

radarsat1 wrote: post #132
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…

Honestly, after visiting the bay area, this is among my top reasons for not wanting to move there. It is so beautiful, and yet.. for someone coming from a city lifestyle, it just doesn't seem.. livable. At all. I got lost walking to my meeting from the train station in Mountain View, and people didn't even know how to give me walking directions to where I needed to go. It was crazy. It wasn't that far by a straight l…

I’ve lived up and down the peninsula and haven’t relied on a car in 10 years. Thanks to a mix of choosing strategic locations, biking, BART, Caltrain, Lyft, Zipcar / Getaround, and friends with cars. Anecdotal, I know, but just chiming in to say it’s definitely possible.

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

#150

Post by albertgoeswoof »

russellbeattie wrote: post #111

Every time they mass-build housing, the results are horrible. The quality of the homes is always "transitional". In Europe or even New York, you can rent flats which are large enough for a family and constructed to give you a sense of privacy, even with density. Floors and ceilings and walls are solid enough you barely notice you're sharing the building. Shops are always close by, as well as public transport and scho…

Not sure that's true about Europe, most mass-built housing globally suffers from the same issues.
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