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Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

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Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#91

Post by gok »

sogen wrote: post #58
gok wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Served by rail. If you see a bus, they blew it. And if you see streetcars, they blew it worse. Streetcars combine the traffic creation of buses with the inflexibility of a rail line. As an added bonus they make biking extra treacherous. If you have the budget to build a real buried or elevated rail line, go for it. Otherwise stick with BRT until you do.

You should see the line of tourists waiting to ride the streetcars...

Think those are probably the cable cars? Those are indeed completely absurd, but eh, it's a roller coaster for tourists.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#92

Post by eip »

tomkarlo wrote: post #63
cmontella wrote: post #26

I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest time recorded is 40 minutes without any delays and essentially running the "last mile"). This was the longest commute of my life, and I lived 3 miles from work. It would take me just a little more time to walk there. Biking was faster, but more dangerous -- I g…

That's great, but it seems kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?

>What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?

I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote.

Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#93

Post by polskibus »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #30
polskibus wrote: post #17

Is it beneficial for the rest of US to save SF? Won't its demise actually improve the lives in the rest of the country/world as businesses spread out after workers or allow remote work?

Isn't that true of any city? Let's permanently shut down the subway in NYC. The rest of the country will benefit from the flood of educated people looking for jobs elsewhere.

I suppose it depends whether a city is a hub that serves other cities too, on the shape of wealth distribution and how the rents are shaped. As far as I know NYC has rent control laws and it serves as financial hub for many other cities. If you dismantle it, another city will take it's place, but one not multiple - that's pretty much how finance works.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#94

Post by pfarnsworth »

jra_samba wrote: post #73
pfarnsworth wrote: post #45

The real solution is for companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc to have the COURAGE to create large work epicenters outside of the Bay Area. Create headquarters for tens of thousands of workers in more remote areas with a strong infrastructure, with great benefits for working families. Do what Amazon wants to do with a second HQ, and create demand outside of the Bay Area. If Google created a new HQ in Kansas Cit…

In its heyday HP did this. Look at places like Roseville and Fort Collins. Essentially company towns. And while the going is good, and the quarterly numbers keep going up, everything is great. But eventually the bad times come, and the employees living in these places are cast off like so many worn shoes, along with their families. I've seen this. I'm never moving out of the SF Bay Area until well after retirement (a…

Risk vs return. That's okay that you prefer the Bay Area. I would have no problems if I knew that Google were committing to a permanent HQ in Kansas City. If they close down, they close down. I have no control over that, but I do have control over saving money and still maintaining a high quality of life because I'm not obsessing over property prices, private school for my kids because the public schools are so terrible, etc.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#95

Post by [deleted] »

compiler-guy wrote: post #19

"Someone else should make the sacrifice." There's the problem right there. From the article: "Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons." "And we also probably don’t want high rise condos on the edge of Golden Gate Park. San Francisco isn’t New York." I've voted in favor of every housing initiative available to me, but you can't make your favorite part of the Bay Area sacred and…

[deleted]

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#97

Post by compiler-guy »

lukasb wrote: post #67
rsync wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons." Good for them. I mean, probably not, but Brisbane is their town and they should determine their own values and courses of action. The solution to San Francisco needs to occur in San Francisco - not CC county or Marin or Sonoma. There's a lot of very, very distinguished and historic and noteworthy 1-4 story housing stock in San Francis…

Except San Francisco is paying the price for Mountain View and Palo Alto being willing to add jobs but not housing. Arguing "well then those cities should build housing" is true, but misses the point: given that people can commute, city boundaries are sort of irrelevant. It's a regional problem.

This is true, but incomplete.

Strictly, the entire area is paying the price for the entire area being willing to add jobs but not add housing.

San Francisco is no different from Palo Alto and Mountain View in that regard.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#98

Post by krausejj »

compiler-guy wrote: post #19

"Someone else should make the sacrifice." There's the problem right there. From the article: "Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons." "And we also probably don’t want high rise condos on the edge of Golden Gate Park. San Francisco isn’t New York." I've voted in favor of every housing initiative available to me, but you can't make your favorite part of the Bay Area sacred and…

Very true, and I definitely didn't mean to imply in the article that the areas around SF should "make the sacrifice."

What I'm advocating for is regional ("metropolitan") leadership and planning. We all have to make sacrifices. That doesn't mean we can't have planning - I think urban planning is essential to building a city that works. But we need to do the planning at the level we're having the problem - which is, the Bay Area level.

Maybe high-rises do make sense on Golden Gate Park, but then we'd better have BART stations there taking people down to Mountain View and Sunnyvale (or wherever they're working).

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#99

Post by geebee »

GiraffeGlove wrote: post #75
rsync wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons." Good for them. I mean, probably not, but Brisbane is their town and they should determine their own values and courses of action. The solution to San Francisco needs to occur in San Francisco - not CC county or Marin or Sonoma. There's a lot of very, very distinguished and historic and noteworthy 1-4 story housing stock in San Francis…

Nice to see someone I can agree with. Sure there's plenty of beautiful Victorian homes in San Francisco, but there's a lot of shitty ones that need to be razed too. SF doesn't need all these 3-4 story, 3-4 BR single family homes with tiny unusable garages - it needs taller denser and modern apartment complexes with a nice park in the middle. All but about 1/8th of the city is just a sprawling suburb.

Hmmm... would you be willing to identify some of the neighborhoods you think should be razed. I personally think there's historical value in many of the marina style houses built in the 1920s, which may (I'm not sure) be what you're referring to here.

Yeah, we have a problem, but razing 7/8ths of San Francisco? Yikes.

Also - there are suburbs and there are suburbs. The excelsior in SF, as an example of a generally SFH neighborhood, has a population density of 17,640/sq mi. Palo Alto has a population density of 2,808.46/sq mi . I think you can make a compelling case that because it is closer to job centers, we should increase density. I don't really object to the use of the word "suburb" to describe the excelsior (or the sunset), but if someone uses "suburb" to refer to a low density neighborhood more typical of what an American thinks of as "suburban" (7/8 of SF is "suburb"), I do think there may be an ambiguity creeping into the argument. The two things are very different.

Re: Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

#100

Post by ghaff »

gok wrote: post #91
sogen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the line of tourists waiting to ride the streetcars...

Think those are probably the cable cars? Those are indeed completely absurd, but eh, it's a roller coaster for tourists.

They're very cute. Utterly impractical as public transportation. But cute :-)
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