Also, not as many women => not as many babies supporting population growth.
Not only that.
No urban sprawl -> no backyards & cul-de-sacs -> few babies -> no natural population growth.
Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
51–60 of 128 posts
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#52In short, the reason there’s too much money chasing too few businesses isn’t that the country is running out of people with good technology ideas. It’s just that bad housing policies mean that there’s nowhere for additional people to live. Well, you could spend millions and take years to move thousands more engineers to Silicon Valley. Or you could just get on a goddamned airplane and invest your money more than a fe…
I think you are ignoring the fact that Silicon valley is an ecosystem of engineers/product managers/sysadmins etc. all of which a growing startup needs. Hence, while a remote area might have people with ideas, it most likely will not have the eco system to sustain the growth of the startup.
I think 'the ecosystem' consists mostly of people with connections to money. Which of course is true, since the money is so provincial. Yes, there are lots of engineers there too, but as the article points out, they all have jobs plus back-up offers lined up three deep. Instead of going to the trouble to import people, why not invest in them where they're at? I'm not talking about farm towns in Iowa, I'm talking about places like Boston, New York, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, etc, etc.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#53In short, the reason there’s too much money chasing too few businesses isn’t that the country is running out of people with good technology ideas. It’s just that bad housing policies mean that there’s nowhere for additional people to live. Well, you could spend millions and take years to move thousands more engineers to Silicon Valley. Or you could just get on a goddamned airplane and invest your money more than a fe…
More offices in the East Bay/Berkeley would be an improvement. Maybe a mini air taxi bus to go from one tip to another. (Berkley Airport - San Carlos/Palo Alto Airport - Reid Airport)
Spot on, we need to see more business move into the east bay where there's plenty of room for it and transportation infrastructure already in place... it's only natural
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#54I'll try to be nice here, but the author is a fucking idiot. To posit that the Bay Area can handle the population growth of sprawling and ill-planned Atlanta, Phoenix and Las Vegas is patently ridiculous. The Bay Area is already one of the most dense metro regions in the US and to think that the area could see growth like that without a MAJOR disruption in quality of life is absurd. I also think many engineers, who c…
You're sort of both right. One reason I don't want to relocate to the Bay (despite several offers) is when I do the math, my quality of life is substantially higher here in the middle of nowhere New Mexico on astonishingly less money. If you're not after the glory, it doesn't necessarily make economic sense. Doubly so if you don't like the kind of work that exists in the bay. If the housing and commute time issues we…
If you are single or DINK (double income no kids) - moving to Bay Area (or NYC for that matter) can have economic sense.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#55I'd love to see the bay area achieve a level of density that makes mass transit (and not cars) the norm everywhere.
There has been a lot more progress, at least in areas like Palo Alto, than this article makes clear. Throughout my life countless properties have been turned into relatively high density homes.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#56There's another problem: integration of mass transit across counties... BART and Caltrain each have their advantages, especially BART which is truly rapid. But those are arteries, and we need to see veins also connect across counties.
For example it's a pity that Palo Alto, being at the county line between SAMTRANS and Valley Transit, does not have any good street car service. The light rail that ends in Mountain View should continue to Palo Alto, and I hope the density will push that.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#57As a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not…
The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. I am having trouble wrapping my head around this quote. How could this be? Do you mean supply? There is always more demand for a good at lower prices than higher prices. If you took rent control away poor people would still want to live in nice places and pay low rent.
From the Wikipedia article on price ceilings:
"A price ceiling set below the free-market price has several effects. Suppliers find they can't charge what they had been. As a result, some suppliers drop out of the market. This reduces supply. Meanwhile, consumers find they can now buy the product for less, so quantity demanded increases. These two actions cause quantity demanded to exceed quantity supplied, which causes a shortage"
Price ceilings are monumentally stupid. Unfortunately, the government rarely seems to be run by people who have much of an economic education.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has nothing to do with rent control. San Francisco is just one part of the Bay Area, and the Bay Area is just one part of California. The entire state has high real estate prices, despite pockets of low-priced housing (Stockton, for example). Law of supply and demand: a lot of people don't want to live in freezing Minneapolis or bleak Detroit. Or Mumbai or Monterrey, for that matter. Rich or poor, they would rat…
Stockton hasn't had high real estate prices since 2008 when their market crashed harder than anywhere else in the country.
That's why I said it was a pocket of low-priced housing.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#59As a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not…
If they didn't have rent control in San Francisco half the population would clear out every bubble. The city is already transient enough as it is. Having lived in and around San Francisco I have seen the mega-booms and busts. I think that rent control keeps the housing market from being warped by the gigantic tidal waves of money that slosh in and out of San Francisco every couple of years.
Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
#60I just moved here from Italy, and it's almost impossible for me to get an apartment that's near public transportation. I mean, other than caltrain there's little if nothing public transportation here, and that may be part of the problem too. I certainly can't rent a house in the hills if there's no way for me to get to work from there. I ended up renting from a colleague.
Agreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and public transportation, and I wish we'd learn from their example. But try telling 99% of the US that 1) their shitty sprawled real estate is effectively worthless, 2) their obese asses will have to give up their cars, and 3) we've spent 70 years of infrastructure i…
The problem is that the U.S. is huge compared to Europe. I agree that we need more mass transit but it's a different problem here.