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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

#111

Post by gobbluth »

kitsune_ wrote: post #97
gobbluth wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 urban…

Agreed on basically all counts. But you're critical because you're spoiled... just visit anywhere in the American Midwest for a week to truly understand how blessed Switzerland is.

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

#112

Post by briandon »

gobbluth wrote: post #106
briandon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars really do give individuals more liberty. Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through. Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed. We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we c…

Is that really a good analogy? Do you really feel that sitting in your car on a freeway is so radically different (and liberating) than sitting in a subway car? If you're so certain that public transportation means giving something up, what is it that you're losing?

No analogy is perfect but, yes, that analogy is good enough.

If every car trip really did mean sitting in a traffic for an hour, then I would love public transport more. Thankfully, that's not the case.

My wife and I take taxis a lot and, even in uber-dense HK, we rarely get stuck in traffic. When we do, it's usually just at a handful of choke points, like entrances to cross-harbor tunnels, and the traffic gets moving again once one is in the tunnel.

As to what one gives up by not owning a car, living in densely populated areas, and using public transport, I would refer you to an earlier reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3974910

Basically, living close together and without a car means that the pain-in-the-neck factor of practically everything is increased. Everything becomes at best just a teensy bit more of a hassle and needs to be scheduled more carefully. Convenience and the ability to be spontaneous become more of a luxury.

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

#113

Post by hollerith »

ttfntatafornow wrote: post #94
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

That's the ratio for San Franciso. Silicon Valley, different story.

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

#114

Post by spullara »

gobbluth wrote: post #98
spullara wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, basically. Though it more like the existence of twice as many twice as small cities. It also means that we devote huge amounts of infrastructure dollars to the middle of nowhere serving virtually no one. Look at the subsidies we give to "rural phone companies" or the postal service.

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

#115

Post by jarek »

mattdeboard wrote: post #47
mjn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately the whole area is built on an assumption that you have a car. Santa Clara County in particular is amazing in that it's one of the few places in the world that has three levels of grade-separated freeways: national highways, state highways, and county highways. The latter (San Tomas Expressway, etc.) were paid for out of the money that Santa Clara County saved by opting out of BART, which is not coi…

I'm sorry but after living in Santa Clara Co. for a couple years, then moving back to my home state of Indiana, I can say with absolutely no compunction that Santa Clara Co. is a MECCA compared to where I live now in terms of public transpo. Maybe it could be a ton better but my god I cannot wait until it's time to move back there.

SCVTA is pretty bad compared to some select localities in North America (NYC, SF itself, Montreal off the top of my head). On a world scale it barely registers, the transport infrastructure compares unfavourably with, say, Lille.

Compared to Indiana it may well be nice.

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

#116

Post by jarek »

hollerith wrote: post #113
ttfntatafornow wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the ratio for San Franciso. Silicon Valley, different story.

Oh you mean like San Jose? "For every 100 females there were 101.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.8 males."

Palo Alto? "For every 100 females there were 95.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.0 males."

Cupertino? "For every 100 females there were 97.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.6 males."

San Bruno? "For every 100 females there were 97.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.1 males."

Redwood City? "For every 100 females there were 99.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.1 males."

Menlo Park? "For every 100 females there were 93.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.5 males."

Millbrae? "For every 100 females there were 90.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.7 males."

San Carlos? "For every 100 females there were 93.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.7 males."

San Mateo? "For every 100 females there were 95.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.8 males."

Atherton? "For every 100 females there were 96.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.3 males."

Milpitas, Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale were the ones with more males - worst ratio in Milpitas, 104.5 and 104.6 respectively. Surrounding cities would more than balance that out.

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

#117

Post by bfrs »

staunch wrote: post #109
bfrs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Civil Engineer [4] and advocate of commodity-housing [1], I can tell you that rent control [3] is the minor issue here. I'm glad that HN is finally paying some attention to the elephant in the room ...zoning laws. I bet that for most HNers who pay rent, it is about 50-60% of monthly expenses. This is freaking ridiculous! Look at it from a Civil Engineer's perspective: modern houses are built from very dur…

Maybe you're someone to ask. Why don't we have sweet apartment buildings like the kind you find Tokyo? In the heart of Tokyo you can rent a tiny (but complete, clean, modern, beautiful) apartment for They're small as hell, but totally sufficient and way nicer than living in a bigger shittier place. I think someone could make a killing bringing these kinds of buildings to the US. Any reason it's not possible?

Such housing already exists in the US.

See http://shine.yahoo.com/green/simple-life-in-manhattan-a-90-s...

But, why do you think so small, when what is possible is a BIG, clean, modern, beautiful, 2 BR apt for $50/month!

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

#118

Post by vorg »

> A variety of regulations—minimum lot sizes, maximum building heights, parking mandates, restrictions on renting out basements,...

Are you still allowed to start a business in your garage with a friend building, say, printers? What about hooking up a server to the web running a search engine?

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

#119

Post by mjn »

hollerith wrote: post #39
mjn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the numbers I can find, I don't think this is true. The biggest population constraint in the Valley by far comes in the form of explicit density constraints, such as minimum lot sizes, not rent control. Palo Alto has no rent control, for example, but is less dense than SF, despite the fact that demand exists for much denser housing to be built (especially near Stanford) if it were permitted. Some kind of scared-…

Do any parts of the Bay Area south of San Francisco have rent control? I do not know of any.

That's my point: the biggest density problem is the Valley sprawl, and that one's not caused by rent control, because there isn't any rent control there.

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

#120

Post by rsanchez1 »

This presents an opportunity that other cities in the US should be taking advantage, but aren't. There aren't enough engineers in Silicon Valley? Move somewhere that has enough engineers. If a city provides enough incentives for tech companies to move there, and attracts enough recognizable companies to increase its reputation, then that represents an opportunity to bring some of that Silicon Valley money home. I wonder what it will take for entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors to consider other locations instead of Silicon Valley first.
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