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

forbes.com

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

#121

Post by briandon »

gobbluth wrote: post #104
briandon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

You, sir, have never been to Brooklyn.

Please, do step into my handy dandy time machine. We'll set it for thirty years in the future and then step out for a moment and count the number of hip, low-rise brownstones that we can see and then try to pick out the Brooklyner from amongst the other highrises.

I think that you're living in Brooklyn and enjoying it, which is great, and idealizing it without thinking about how Brooklyn is actually changing right around you.

[The Brooklyner is a 51-story skyscraper recently built in Brooklyn: the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyner ]

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

#122

Post by ebiester »

rdl wrote: post #84

The big hack for living in the Bay Area seems to be having roommates. I'm currently trying to find a really nice, big house in San Mateo County (the only Bay Area county which is pro firearms ownership, thanks to an excellent sheriff, Greg Munks). There's really spotty availability of nice houses in a "reasonable" price range (2-3br/2ba for $3000 or less) anywhere reasonable, but a lot of huge, absurdly nice houses (…

So long as you don't go too many months with too many vacancies and suddenly your rent doubles.

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

#124

Post by hollerith »

jarek wrote: post #116
hollerith wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wer…

Well, look at that! Thanks for the information.

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

#125

Post by pavel_lishin »

ars wrote: post #36
pavel_lishin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit to knowing nothing about real estate, and even less about ocean liners, but it seems that an ocean liner - even at sub-market rates - would be ridiculously expensive to buy, and then merely ludicrously expensive to operate. Sure, you're not burning a ton of fuel a minute plowing through dolphins and kelp, but you still need to generate power to operate all of the on-board facilities such as electricity, plumb…

Why can't the ship generate its own power? Is a power plant can do it, so can a ship - it's large enough to be able to make the generator efficient enough. Load it up with LNG every one in a while - LNG is transported by sea all the time anyway. If you plan ahead you can pipe the LNG throughout the ship for cooking, and maybe even heating.

It can absolutely generate its own power. But then you have to pay to ship a whole lot of diesel onto your ship. I'm betting that the liner's efficiency is a heck of a lot less than a local power plant's, since I assume that a line is optimized to move a screw through water, with electric power being a lower priority.

You could also build a better power plant on the ship, but that's not free, either.

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

#126

Post by seany »

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.

san jose does.

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

#128

Post by ktizo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #125
ars wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the ship generate its own power? Is a power plant can do it, so can a ship - it's large enough to be able to make the generator efficient enough. Load it up with LNG every one in a while - LNG is transported by sea all the time anyway. If you plan ahead you can pipe the LNG throughout the ship for cooking, and maybe even heating.

It can absolutely generate its own power. But then you have to pay to ship a whole lot of diesel onto your ship. I'm betting that the liner's efficiency is a heck of a lot less than a local power plant's, since I assume that a line is optimized to move a screw through water, with electric power being a lower priority. You could also build a better power plant on the ship, but that's not free, either.

Modern vessels use electric motors powered by a generator to move the screw anyway.
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