Earlier quoted context omitted.
Barely any compared to an orchard.
1.1 gallons (~4 L) per almond.
Could be worse. Could be cows.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-04-13/cows-s...
California population declines for first time in more than a century
161–170 of 543 posts
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you’re mixing up density and crowding: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg
Density has a limit. It's easy to postpone the problem by replacing 2-storey houses with 20-storey high rises, but it won't work for long. Once enough people move in and demand catches up with the supply, you're back to square one, but with much less private space for everyone. Decentralization, on the other hand, is limited by the supply of land, that is fairly plentiful in the U.S. And it incentivizes taking care o…
We don’t need 20-story highrises. We could accommodate a doubling of the population without even raising height limits at all; see here and here:
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#163I'm not sure how much I believe that. It seems likely that this census was incredibly compromised compared to past censuses, and the 0.4% decline is well within what I'd consider a plausible margin of error.
In absolute numbers, California has a population of ~39.51M, so 182k isn't significant enough. Personally, I left for a multitude of reasons, but whoever takes these statistics and concludes that "California is dying" is delusional in my opinion, at least for the foreseable future.
I agree. California isn't dying. It's performing genocide on it's own poor.
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree so strongly with this sentiment. There is always such a defeatist attitude on these threads that assumes California is somehow full and unchangeable. Outside of the three metro areas, it's basically empty! Separately, in the metro areas, there's a lot of room for infill density. Three years back, I made the rational choice to leave because I could barely see a way to home ownership - not to mention having a f…
California needs to drastically ramp up water availability from new sources. Otherwise there isn't much point to the rest of this conversation.
It won't take much water to support more people, and adding more people might even reduce water demand. Getting rid of old fixtures with née construction drastically reduces water demand. Replacing single family lawns with multi family and shared lawns typically allows far more people to live on the same amount of land and at the same time use less water. Even as my town's population has grown, water use has dropped:
PDF, page 25: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual...
The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come.
The water rights system in this state are absurd, and we use water in terrible ways because of it. We need to reign in the farmers, who have been abusing aquifers and living without thought for the next generation. And we probably need to start taxing water rights, based on the water rights value.
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Density makes it easier to build the infrastructure to support population growth. Distribution makes it more expensive to build that infrastructure. Thus inreasing distribution hinders rather than helps the ability of California to support a larger population. That seems to directly contradict the points you were making.
Okay. Let's try this: raldi et al are talking about whether the state can support a 150% population increase, but I'm talking about whether 150% more people will want to live there. Let's walk through some of the numbers and issues in detail, together. As of 2019, San Francisco county has a population density of about 18,000 people per square mile. Let's say that San Francisco county is the ideal scenario for the Ral…
Well, you have successfully demonstrated that an strawman plan that nobody would ever dream of implementing wouldn't work. That isn't hard and I am not sure why you put so much effort into it.
San Francisco is a horrible example because it notoriously does really bad at density. Then you halve that density to make it even worse, which will of course force massive problematic sprawl. This alone makes the rest of your long comment pointless as you spend the whole time talking about the problems caused by running out of space due to your low density.
In fact, all of the challenges you've listed are easier to solve with high density cities.
Higher density cities have less water use per capita, so they make it easier to supply any given population level with water. However, I don't think California can support 100mil without large desalination projects.
Higher density cities use less power per capita, plus lower transmission distances reduce upkeep per capita.
With waste management, again you get higher efficiences with higher densities.
Higher density cities mean that you have more room for green space and recreation areas and they can be situated close to the people who use them.
Sure, those who find nature and wilderness attractive will find denser cities less attractive... but those people already find them unattractive.
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#166I'm a PhD student at Caltech. I'd love to stay in CA and become a prof at one of the world-renown universities in the state. The cost for a nice house is > $800K in all of the cities hosting these universities; on top of that, the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.
I know that CA (LA, SF, SD) housing has always been expensive but it seems like in the past 20 years or so it’s become cumbersomely so. Unless you rode up on the wave of raising house prices through those years (presumably, mostly boomers, or you’re already ultra-wealthy) buying a decent single family home is out of the question.
But with the boomer generation approaching EOL (sorry, a bit macabre) does anyone think prices will have to cool a bit as supply slowly starts to trickle up a bit? Or will that just attract other wealthy people from elsewhere into the market? The current price trend can’t possibly keep up at its current pace or no one will be able to buy…
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#167Paradise on Earth and home to the world’s brightest-future industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming from much less eco-friendly places.
I grew up in a high population density area with 3 generation sharing the same apartment because that was the way to go. It is far from being a bright future one would want. Constant conflicts in the family because the grandparents want to watch TV, parents need to rest after work, and the child wants to study. Constantly hearing your neighbors when they want to have a party, or do some renovation. Trashed up common…
The overcrowding you describe is endemic in California. Likely, nearly all you food is produced by people living in overcrowded housing, worse than you describe. What you describe is common for the people who serve you food in restaurants, and restock the shelves, and do pretty much all the stuff that makes society run these days in California.
And we got to that point without concrete boxes at all. Avoiding density isn't helping.
Let's imagine density, but with enough living space so that each person gets their own room. Let's imagine that we build so that we don't have to hear our neighbors' partying. Let's imagine that a full time wage lets somebody rent their own 1 bedroom apartment.
The only thing stopping us is an electorate that has your beliefs. We don't get crowding from building more housing, the idea is preposterous on its face. It doesn't pass a basic sniff test. We get overcrowding because we didn't build enough.
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
California needs to drastically ramp up water availability from new sources. Otherwise there isn't much point to the rest of this conversation.
It won't take much water to support more people, and adding more people might even reduce water demand. Getting rid of old fixtures with née construction drastically reduces water demand. Replacing single family lawns with multi family and shared lawns typically allows far more people to live on the same amount of land and at the same time use less water. Even as my town's population has grown, water use has dropped:…
> It won't take much water to support more people
I don't think this takes into account the ongoing decreases in CA's current water sources. Some of those sources are shared by multiple, growing, states.
> The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come.
This seems to undermine any arguments about not requiring much water to support more people.
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#169After leaving SF for 6 months I came back here to see if the housing market is better. I’m here for a month in an Airbnb. I just visited a place that was 4600$/month, 2 tiny bedrooms and all the windows gave on the landlord’s patio. Not like a nice patio, some small space surrounded by buildings, and not like I could see them, I could literally open my window and walk in their patio.
I just visited another place today at 5k/month with good location but not rent controlled (so they can pretty much double your rent at will) and the laundry isn’t even in unit. I still have to pay for a parking space.
At least it’s not a “tandem” parking, which I’ve been offered a lot these weeks. If you don’t know what a tandem parking is: you have to coordinate with another person because one car always block the other. It’s usually 250$, or more.
So right now I’m thinking, why do I want to spend so much to have the privilege to live in this city. It’s filled with homeless, it’s cold all year long, there’s a month of pollution every year due to the wild fires, and there isn’t that many things to do compared to a real city like new york. They don’t even have pedestrian streets or terrasses/patios/beer gardens (parklets are ridiculous).
So now I’m really considering moving to san diego, or nyc, or somewhere else…
Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Barely any compared to an orchard.
That sounds like a deflection. Besides, orchards can't grow in just any soil. What about fabs? Why is California an ideal location?
The funny thing is that Silicon Valley was literally built on top of orchards, and in the process created several Superfund sites that have made the soil unsuitable for orchards. And then paved it all over with the awful suburban sprawl of 1970s planning that has created little opportunity for more environmentally friendly non-car-based development, despite being one of the best places in the world to not be in a car and instead be out walking or biking.
I can't come to any conclusions, I'm just struck by the irony of it all.