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Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

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Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#251

Post by jjav »

astrange wrote: post #247
jjav wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they hate You paint with a very broad brush. I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it. But the average regular person doesn't particularly hate any of these, they just want to live in their home in an area they like. > You can say "they just like their neighborhoods" I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for sel…

> You paint with a very broad brush. No I don't, this is realistic. You can easily experience it anytime you like. They're also on Nextdoor if you can't go to any planning meetings. > I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it. The problem is the political system is set up to only listen to these people, because urban planners are embarrassed about whe…

> > I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for selecting the area?

> Walkable to a grocery store. Obviously it can close, but I can't stop that from happening.

But I bet you'd be unhappy if you chose this place specifically for the walkable grocery store and suddenly it's gone and now you need to drive. Maybe you don't even have a car, or even parking, because you built your life plans around the choice to walk to the grocery. Surely you'd be quite sad and probably annoyed by all that, suddenly having rearrange your life in a big way (either move, or get a car and parking).

(Also, people do protest and lobby for stores to remain open all the time. Sometimes they succeed sometimes they don't.)

> And we're not supposed to care what these people want; they have influence over their property. They don't have influence over the "neighborhood" because they're not paying for it.

That is a very dystopian world to live in. The whole point of society is that there are common norms in an area. If you're not allowed to have a voice about anything except what you financially own, that's a bleak future.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#252

Post by theluketaylor »

NoPedantsThanks wrote: post #219
theluketaylor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is this a "more handouts for developers"? Removing zoning restrictions just makes building possible, it doesn't create any subsidies for building. Handouts for developers is opening good agricultural land for development. Fixing generations of terrible zoning for infill development is just unlocking existing sites to be more than exclusively single family homes. > instead of mandating the redevelopment of…

Maybe you haven't looked into how these laws work, but they are handouts to developers because they guarantee that a developer can buy one house and put up 10 units (in CA, for example) without any opposition or time-consuming permitting process. So when an elderly person with out-of-state children dies, those children are going to sell to the quickest and most-secure bidder... a developer with a cash offer. And you…

> And you make a lot of unsupported assumptions about commercial areas all being contaminated.

That comment was specifically about industrial, not commercial. We agree on redeveloping unused commercial space, but I suspect you wouldn't be interested in the sort of mid-rise mixed use neighbourhood I would be.

Your complaints basically all boil down to change isn't perfect, therefore it shouldn't happen. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. The solution is to advocate for the aspects of better zoning and building codes you'd like to see, not just cynically declare the entire enterprise doomed.

> handouts to developers because they guarantee that a developer can buy one house and put up 10 units (in CA, for example) without any opposition or time-consuming permitting process

That isn't a handout. That's preventing NIMBYs from tying development up so tightly it's impossible to build anything. Handouts would be giving away public land for a song or massive subsidies to build. Developers still have to pay the going rate to acquire the property.

> the laws are on the books

The linked law is not on the books, it's a proposal.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#253

Post by cyberax »

quesera wrote: post #111
cyberax wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Napa is dry, rural Napa is more green than the SFBA in general. It also is about as hot as most of the Bay Area outside of SF. > and has no jobs. Good. Keep asking questions. What caused the lack of jobs?

Napa County has acute water availability problems. SF County and most of Alameda County (the most populated parts) generally do not. I didn't say Napa was hot. Sacramento is hot. But SFBA comprises a large area and large climatic variations. I don't think it's meaningful to consider all 9 (or 13) counties in comparisons, because all things become true. Cold, hot, humid, dry, windy, placid, densely populated, sparsely…

The thing is, climate doesn't matter. Vegetation doesn't matter. Good looks don't matter.

All that matters is proximity to jobs. Sacramento doesn't have a lot of them (although that is changing now), so it's not attracting significantly more population.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#254

Post by eeghyrdcg »

Tostino wrote: post #201
eeghyrdcg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience in the US people use “left”, “liberal”, “socialist” etc synonymously (and mostly pejoratively). Same for “right”, “conservative”, etc.

But what ignorant people think isn't really relevant here when trying to discuss terms that do in fact mean different things.

Maybe. A lot of people will truly believe Sierra Club to be “left” without understanding what that (used to?) mean. A descriptivist would say maybe that suggests the words’ meanings have changed.

If everyone is ignorantly incorrect maybe it’s just a different thing now.

I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#255

Post by MetaMonk »

causality0 wrote: post #7

Each home only getting twelve percent of an acre qualifies as "exclusionary housing only for rich people"? Just how insane is the cost of living in Berkeley?

https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator/Californi...

"Berkeley's housing expenses are 198% higher than the national average and the utility prices are 30% higher than the national average. Transportation expenses like bus fares and gas prices are 34% higher than the national average."

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#256

Post by earthwalker99 »

eeghyrdcg wrote: post #254
Tostino wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what ignorant people think isn't really relevant here when trying to discuss terms that do in fact mean different things.

Maybe. A lot of people will truly believe Sierra Club to be “left” without understanding what that (used to?) mean. A descriptivist would say maybe that suggests the words’ meanings have changed. If everyone is ignorantly incorrect maybe it’s just a different thing now. I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.

>I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.

This is the point I think you are missing. No definitions are "changed" because there is nothing new. It is only regression. It's anti-intellectual at best. Humanity can only become more ignorant as a result. By virtue of enlightenment principles, the only acceptable way forward is to question why such a degenerate tendency has arisen and consider what to do about it.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#257

Post by eeghyrdcg »

earthwalker99 wrote: post #256
eeghyrdcg wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. A lot of people will truly believe Sierra Club to be “left” without understanding what that (used to?) mean. A descriptivist would say maybe that suggests the words’ meanings have changed. If everyone is ignorantly incorrect maybe it’s just a different thing now. I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.

> I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though. This is the point I think you are missing. No definitions are "changed" because there is nothing new. It is only regression. It's anti-intellectual at best. Humanity can only become more ignorant as a result. By virtue of enlightenment principles, the only acceptable way forward is to question why such a degenerate tendency has arisen and consider what to…

I don’t think I’m missing anything. You’re just saying “I prefer prescriptivism. Mine.”

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#258

Post by earthwalker99 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #236
earthwalker99 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. The terminology comes from the French Revolution, in which the right wing was for preserving the establishment monarchy. Ever since, "right wing" has colloquially meant support for preserving the established order.

Yes, and monarchy is a long standing cultural tradition going back long before the establishment of modern nation states and the bloated megalithic monarchies they produced. I don’t see how what I said goes against the origin of the term (which I am of course aware of). Your definition is overly narrow. Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar? Is the contemporary far right fighting to mainta…

One of the most important insights raised by the French Revolution and those who study it is that cultural traditions were not challenged. Working people were not willing to part ways with the cultural traditions associated with the monarchy, despite aggressively opposing the politics of the monarchy. It's all but impossible to study the French Revolution without grappling with this contradiction.

>Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar?

They were right wing by every account. Any doubt was universally discarded with the Night of the Long Knives. No serious historians disagree with this.

>Is the contemporary far right fighting to maintain the current status quo?

Definitely. The current status quo is capitalism and all stripes of the right, including both the Republicans and Democrats in the US, merely represent the interests of different capitalists, including the minority who insist their desires are closer to feudalism (like Peter Thiel).

>Was overturning Roe v Wade aligned with left wing interests or right wing? Etc.

It's only right wing under capitalism, due to the drastically unequal burden of raising children under capitalism.

Furthermore, defending Roe v Wade alongside the Hyde ammendment (as the Democrats do) is also right wing. The Hyde ammendment is a strictly economic measure that outlaws subsidizing abortion services with tax revenue, ever further dividing the rich from the poor.

A left wing effort would have focused on overturning the Hyde ammendment decades ago in addition to codifying Roe v Wade, but doing so would undermine the tremendously profitable American heathcare system so the Democrats (a right wing party) would never consider it. Note Obamacare was a windfall for the healthcare industry, a key donor of the Democratic Party.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#259

Post by kasey_junk »

jerlam wrote: post #237
tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge problem here: the hottest areas of Chicagoland have the best schools, in large part because property tax levies fund the schools, which sets up a vicious cycle: voters will approve arbitrary levy increases for the schools because they assume (justifiably) that they're getting the money back in house values. Their kids graduate, they don't care about the schools anymore, so they sell their (appreciated) ho…

At least it sounds like you're funding good schools in Chicago. California has a bizarre problem where the most expensive areas to live cannot fund their schools. Cupertino, the city of Apple's HQ, median home selling price over 2 million dollars - relies on state funds to pay for its public school district, since local property taxes aren't enough: https://siliconvalleythings.medium.com/why-do-silicon-valley...

Chicago has one of the worst pension problems in the country largely on the back of public employee pension underfunding, including the teachers union.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#260

Post by CydeWeys »

apsurd wrote: post #53
CydeWeys wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, real estate prices are famously low in the most upzoned parts of the country (Manhattan). If you can build a 100 floor skyscraper on a piece of land, that land is insanely valuable!

I learned this in 6th grade. You need bedrock to build skyscrapers. Laws of physics and all...

That knowledge is severely out of date, then. You don't need bedrock to build skyscrapers, and indeed the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is built on top of sand with no connection to bedrock whatsoever. You just need to pour immense amounts of concrete to serve as a foundation.
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