California population declines for first time in more than a century • Hacker News Board

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#541

Post by codefreakxff » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

pharmakom wrote: post #331

codefreakxff wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand your statement that traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Certainly just increasing density with no other controls just increases traffic congestion. The best approach would be increasing density while decreasing reliance on personal transportation. https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-gre...

Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable.

I disagree. And I’m thinking of California in particular here. There is FAR too much reliance on personal transportation. It has little capacity to support “just increasing density”. There’s nothing natural about it. It will take a very serious planning effort to transform the state.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#542

Post by codefreakxff » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

0x000000E2 wrote: post #450

codefreakxff wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand your statement that traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Certainly just increasing density with no other controls just increases traffic congestion. The best approach would be increasing density while decreasing reliance on personal transportation. https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-gre...

Forcing low density housing causes sprawl. Look at European cities which generally have cores 5-10x denser than Cali. Most of them have no such traffic problems because you don't have the whole population travelling 30 miles on roads every day

Yes. But California isn’t Europe. There’s a million factors that led to California, or America as a whole, sprawl. Probably, primarily, land is plentiful and cheap. When it is no longer possible to get cheap land then density will naturally follow.

Take New York as an example. Limited land area. Lots of money. Drove up density and has a low reliance on cars and has an ok public transportation system.

Everywhere else it’s just cheap as hell to buy land and build. California is getting to the point now that some areas are expensive and density is increasing. But its also easy for people to just move somewhere else still

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#543

Post by epistasis » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

neonological wrote: post #539

epistasis wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bankruptcy? That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard. California has a massive budget surplus, despite going through a pandemic. There's such a massive surplus that it is overflowing the rainy day fund. And due to spending limits set back in 1979, a bunch is being refunded: https://www.kqed.org/news/11872910/flush-with-cash-californi... You should think back to whatever source told you such a silly thi…

My tip for you is to stop using the word preposterous. You present a correct argument here but in my other thread you used the same garbage and offensive language were utterly wrong. You completely embarrassed yourself and had to run away from the conversation. My advice to you is to be more humble. You're so hellbent on finding people incorrectly pointing out that California is in an economic downturn that you "thou…

Lol, I did not embarrass myself in that thread at all, but it was clearly not productive in the least!