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Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

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Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#91

Post by briandon »

bhickey wrote: post #86
briandon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

> Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week for that stuff? Having left London, I really do miss Ocado. Unlike the silly timing restrictions you suggest, they delivered at any hour between about 0700 and 2300 with one hour windows. > ...ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops…

> Having left London, I really do miss Ocado. Unlike the > silly timing restrictions you suggest, they delivered at > any hour between about 0700 and 2300 with one hour > windows.

We really do deal with six-hour windows here (and the delivery people tend to miss even those and come late). One-hour windows sound great, especially if they never missed them. You're still stuck waiting around for a delivery person, though, even if it is just for an hour once a week.

> This is just the tragedy of the commons at work. Outside > of the City there are bus lanes (shared with cabs). It > isn't the job of society to subsidize drivers in > congested areas. There's simply no political will to > squeeze private autos.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I wasn't saying that driving was faster than taking a bus in my city, though it is. I was actually thinking of the local rail system, the MTR. Taking a taxi anywhere or driving yourself is almost always faster than taking the MTR.

By it's very nature, public transport, which has to run on a schedule and leave gaps between runs to allow passengers to accumulate and then make multiple stops is, is often going to be slower than an individual getting into a personal vehicle and driving themselves to their destination.

> You're tilting at a straw man. Single family houses and > high rises aren't the only options. Greater London, for > example, is full of four story row houses.

I'm not British and haven't been to London (I just live in a former British colony whose development was planned by British civil servants), but the reference to Greater London seems to refer to London plus its suburbs.

Hong Kong has a lot of three-story "village houses" in what passes for rural areas here but which in reality are more like suburbs or outer boroughs.

HK village houses don't have elevators. Do the four-story row houses in Greater London have them? If so, then great. If not, then I would imagine it must be quite unpleasant for the people on the higher floors to carry their groceries (or anything else) up to their flats.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#92

Post by gobbluth »

briandon wrote: post #66
gobbluth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

I do live in an urban environment (NYC for a decade now), and you're... confused on some counts. Public transportation is radically faster than cars, at least in any city with a fraction of the same population. Have you ever tried to drive through Atlanta or Miami? And living in an urban environment doesn't demand high-rise towers -- walkable townhouses and height-restricted buildings abound, and there's no shortage of human-friendly neighborhoods in New York. (I also hate midtown Manhattan, but that's nowhere near representative of city living.)

If you absolutely need a car for big purchases, Zipcar and its competitors are easily accessible. If you're older, you have BETTER options here in the form of delivery services than you'd have in a rural setting. If you'd like to get a little further away from the city in a nice, quiet Queens neighborhood, you can hope on the express train and read a book while you're zipped to your destination.

Hong Kong is a different animal just because it's, well, Hong Kong. But nothing in the world quite compares to that, and you really shouldn't associate New York or Paris with that crazy city.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#93

Post by spullara »

gobbluth wrote: post #90
spullara wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't compare Europe to the US. They are tiny. For example, one of the largest countries in Europe is France: slightly less than the size of Texas. It's metropolitan population is 65m. Texas is only 28m. Other countries there are even more lopsided. Just as with cellphone networks, smaller area is easier.

That's not actually true. The US is 3,794,101 sq mi. Europe is 3,930,520 sq miles However, Europe is almost entirely concentrated in walkable, urban areas -- even beyond the major cities, small towns are accessible by train, navigable by foot, and have excellent support in the form of public transportation. If people do have "cars," they tend to be tiny or Vespas. There's no reason we can't have the same system here,…

It really is true.

Population of Europe: 738,199,000 Population of US: 311,591,917

If the US were double density, it would have more walkable, urban areas, etc.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#94

Post by ttfntatafornow »

wes-exp wrote: post #10

Also, not as many women => not as many babies supporting population growth.

there are just as many women here as anywhere else.

Males: 408,462 (50.7%) Females: 396,773 (49.3%)

if anything, when you consider that there are far more homosexual men than homosexual women, men have it good here.

http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#95

Post by gobbluth »

hollerith wrote: post #70
gobbluth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Am…

I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now?

You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are forced to infringe to some extent on fundamentalist interpretations of property rights for urban planning. But you might as well throw up your arms and complain about building codes and zoning restrictions anywhere else if such things are such "onerous restrictions on individual liberty."

The reason why so many Americans have settled in exurban developments is because we've artificially subsidized those lifestyle with federally-funded freeways, artificially cheap gasoline, and destructive corporate attacks on public transportation systems (especially in the 1950s, check out the GM attack in Los Angeles as an example). Exurbs didn't develop organically, nor are they in any way models of efficiency, cost, or sustainability.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#96

Post by briandon »

kiwidrew wrote: post #85
briandon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

Except that's not the only style of living that HK offers. Some people do opt for the arrangement you've just described, living in e.g. the "Lake Silver" high rises way out at the very end of the Ma On Shan metro line. Most of them don't seem to mind it, even though it means long rides on the bus or MTR to go anywhere. But it's just as easy to live a few stops from work, in an older neighbourhood like Sa Ying Poon or…

The overwhelming majority of people in HK live in highrises, virtually all new housing being built here (unless your uncle is a village chief and/or you're a male who can prove that he is of villager stock and has a right to build a village house) consists of giant highrises, and most of the existing housing stock consists of the same.

So, while you're correct in saying that highrise living is not the only choice, it is the reality that most people here are living in highrises and that the small percentage of people living in smaller buildings will continue to dwindle over time.

Regarding older, low-rise, buildings, those low-rise residential buildings that do exist and which aren't out in the boonies are being gradually "redeveloped", as you may already know. The government or a developer buys a certain percentage of the flats and compels the holdouts to sell, usually at a price that won't permit the residents to buy a newer flat in the same neighborhood, demolishes the building(s), and erects a huge tower block.

Regarding the minibuses, a car or taxi is still faster than taking a minibus for the same reasons that a car or taxi are faster than the MTR: no walking/waiting/walking and you're going to your destination directly rather than following a route and making lots of stops at places that you don't want to go and then.

This is a separate issue, but haven't you noticed that most of the drivers are visibly impoverished (raggy-looking clothing, many missing/black teeth, etc.) and many are senior citizens? The minibuses, especially the red ones, also tend to speed and get into lots of accidents. Rarely does more than a day or two pass without a report of a minibus ramming into something and most of the passengers being injured, or two minibuses t-boning each other and two minibus-fulls of passengers being injured, etc.

Also, you do know that most of the red minibuses are under triad control, that the drivers have to pay a huge lump sum when they start driving and then "parking fees" every month thereafter?

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#97

Post by kitsune_ »

gobbluth wrote: post #38
DanI-S wrote: post #13

The Bay Area is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and if they turn it into another Los Angeles I will cry. This country is phenomenally huge and there is no reason whatsoever to live clustered together in vile, concrete scabs. Compact cities are more efficient, but congested urban sprawl is most definitely not. Strict building regulations are part of what make this place productive and desirable in the f…

I also love San Francisco, but you have the wrong target in mind. Urban density is GOOD. What sucks is a car-centric culture that forces sprawl. You want a NYC or European-style transportation system, where it's completely unnecessary to own dangerous, unreliable, expensive automobiles. Cities designed around walking -- like the good parts of San Francisco -- are WAY more human-friendly and memorable. I guarantee tha…

You can have sprawl without having to rely on individual transport by car. This is precisely what is going on in smaller European countries such as Switzerland. Cities and villages are connected through an extensive rail and bus network.

From my city, trains are leaving for Zurich, Geneva, Bern, Lausanne, Basel etc. every 30 minutes.

Most commuters take the train even if they own a car.

I'm still a proponent of urbanization because suburbs seem to disrupt natural spaces. If you travel from east Switzerland to Geneva in the west by train, you will always see a house somewhere, on the entire 400 kilometres of journey. Every village looks alike.

That said, I do think mega-cities can be very tiring and demanding. I only have limited experiences in this regard but cities like Seoul or Istanbul are not the most relaxing environments for its inhabitants.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#98

Post by gobbluth »

spullara wrote: post #93
gobbluth wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually true. The US is 3,794,101 sq mi. Europe is 3,930,520 sq miles However, Europe is almost entirely concentrated in walkable, urban areas -- even beyond the major cities, small towns are accessible by train, navigable by foot, and have excellent support in the form of public transportation. If people do have "cars," they tend to be tiny or Vespas. There's no reason we can't have the same system here,…

It really is true. Population of Europe: 738,199,000 Population of US: 311,591,917 If the US were double density, it would have more walkable, urban areas, etc.

I'm sorry, but that's not how urban design works. We're not forced to develop proportionate to land mass. Your argument is seriously that the existence of the Dakotas prevents us from building decent cities? Are there so many people in Wyoming that we just don't have the population to build decent subways in Seattle?

We're trapped by a car-centric lifestyle, and it's absolutely poisonous.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#99

Post by briandon »

gobbluth wrote: post #92
briandon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

I do live in an urban environment (NYC for a decade now), and you're... confused on some counts. Public transportation is radically faster than cars, at least in any city with a fraction of the same population. Have you ever tried to drive through Atlanta or Miami? And living in an urban environment doesn't demand high-rise towers -- walkable townhouses and height-restricted buildings abound, and there's no shortage…

The walkable townhouses and height-restricted buildings you're talking about (1.) only exist so long as the aesthetic/lifestyle value of a low-risey city balances against the demand for more housing and developers' desire to make money and (2.) make public transport trips take longer because you have to walk past more of your neighbors' low-rise buildings to get to a public transport hub and the bus/train/whatever has to travel farther (past the low-rises) to get anywhere and also make more stops if more hubs/stations have been built to offset the problem of people living relatively far apart in those low-rise buildings.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#100

Post by gobbluth »

cageface wrote: post #60
gobbluth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because I don't want to spam with the same message, please see my response to Spullera. The argument you're using may be intuitive, but it's very incorrect.
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