3 ms·

If you have a limited amount of area and many many people that want to live there, something has to give. You can build up (which SF largely refuses to do) but

If you have a limited amount of area and many many people that want to live there, something has to give. You can build up (which SF largely refuses to do) but even that has its limits and its costs. The larger answer is changing things so not everyone wants to live in the same place. Figuring out how more people could work remotely while remaining productive would have a huge payoff in this area. But I don't think that's particularly amenable to a wholly technical solution. It's more of a problem of applied psychology in the form of management techniques. From a different direction, considerably better urban and regional mass transit would help. In the bay area, that's made much more difficult by the relatively small geographic size of SF proper as compared to the metro area. Compare NYC which incorporated its inner suburbs a century ago. Though on the upside at least all of the bay area is in one state.

sampo 11y ago
> You can build up (which SF largely refuses to do) but even that has its limits and its costs. To be honest, San Francisco is nowhere near any reasonable density limits. Population densities: San Francisco 7 000/km² Paris 21 000/km² Manhattan 27 000/km² Kowloon Walled City 1 255 000/km² Building with Manhattan density, SF could have 4 times its current population. If it wanted to.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  You don't even have to build up by much. Paris largely tops out at about 6 stories high. They just build a lot of 6 story buildings.
- tracker1 11y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head... they really don't want to. The people that live there like it there, and don't want it to become a city of sky scrapers. I wish someone would wake up and try to build out from a nice city somewhere else with room to grow. Boise, ID and Reno, NV come to mind... For that matter grow existing cities with infrastructure and room for growth. Some of the latter is happening but not nearly to the extent that it has in SF. There are plenty of cities that have room, and would appreciate seeing hundreds of thousands of tech jobs move into the area in a couple decades, without the population constraints SF is seeing.
  - sampo 11y ago
    > don't want it to become a city of sky scrapers Paris is, mostly, not a city of skyscrapers. Depends on how you define a skyscraper, but for example Paris has less over 400ft tall buildings than San Francisco.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      They also don't want to tear down every 2 floor building to build a 3-4 floor one... The only way to increase population density in an established city is to build much taller buildings compared to what is already in place. SF has height limits which prevent this, so you can't build really tall buildings. So density shifts will always be relatively small unless you start tearing down huge swaths of buildings to build slightly larger ones, and with parking requirements on new buildings still won't have much more density.
  - snuxoll 11y ago
    > Boise, ID I live in Boise, good luck. Almost everyone here is actively hostile to public transportation and high-density construction - so while there's plenty of area to expand to the South towards Mountain Home it's almost entirely overpriced subdivisions, with no transit options other than your own vehicle - and don't get me started on the mess that we already have with I-84. The lack of high-density construction isn't really that big of an issue since we have plenty of space, but the lack of public transit funding is going to bite us and is largely responsible for why you mostly see expansion towards the West along I-84, which is causing us to start looking at expanding it yet again, why on Earth we haven't invested in commuter rail at this point is beyond me.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      Understandable... I wasn't really even speaking specifically to density, so much as some room for growth. It took Phoenix a long time to get the highways we do have in place. Even finishing out the I-10 in phoenix was a lot of big work.. the 101/202 work was interesting (never completed regions meant to go through reservation lands). And widening the US-60 was pretty interesting as well. It overlapped bidding for the stadium, so it seems that they held up the process to reduce the chances of Mesa or Chandler getting the bid. I'm not saying it's a great example, just an example of a decently sized city that isn't locked in and could be a growth area. Right now, I try to live fairly centrally, but that puts work that is closer to the edges of the area out of what I consider a reasonable commute for me (I won't go much over a 30 minute commute).

sampo 11y ago

> You can build up (which SF largely refuses to do) but even that has its limits and its costs. To be honest, San Francisco is nowhere near any reasonable density limits. Population densities: San Francisco 7 000/km² Paris 21 000/km² Manhattan 27 000/km² Kowloon Walled City 1 255 000/km² Building with Manhattan density, SF could have 4 times its current population. If it wanted to.

Tiktaalik 11y ago
You don't even have to build up by much. Paris largely tops out at about 6 stories high. They just build a lot of 6 story buildings.
tracker1 11y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head... they really don't want to. The people that live there like it there, and don't want it to become a city of sky scrapers. I wish someone would wake up and try to build out from a nice city somewhere else with room to grow. Boise, ID and Reno, NV come to mind... For that matter grow existing cities with infrastructure and room for growth. Some of the latter is happening but not nearly to the extent that it has in SF. There are plenty of cities that have room, and would appreciate seeing hundreds of thousands of tech jobs move into the area in a couple decades, without the population constraints SF is seeing.
- sampo 11y ago
  > don't want it to become a city of sky scrapers Paris is, mostly, not a city of skyscrapers. Depends on how you define a skyscraper, but for example Paris has less over 400ft tall buildings than San Francisco.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    They also don't want to tear down every 2 floor building to build a 3-4 floor one... The only way to increase population density in an established city is to build much taller buildings compared to what is already in place. SF has height limits which prevent this, so you can't build really tall buildings. So density shifts will always be relatively small unless you start tearing down huge swaths of buildings to build slightly larger ones, and with parking requirements on new buildings still won't have much more density.
- snuxoll 11y ago
  > Boise, ID I live in Boise, good luck. Almost everyone here is actively hostile to public transportation and high-density construction - so while there's plenty of area to expand to the South towards Mountain Home it's almost entirely overpriced subdivisions, with no transit options other than your own vehicle - and don't get me started on the mess that we already have with I-84. The lack of high-density construction isn't really that big of an issue since we have plenty of space, but the lack of public transit funding is going to bite us and is largely responsible for why you mostly see expansion towards the West along I-84, which is causing us to start looking at expanding it yet again, why on Earth we haven't invested in commuter rail at this point is beyond me.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    Understandable... I wasn't really even speaking specifically to density, so much as some room for growth. It took Phoenix a long time to get the highways we do have in place. Even finishing out the I-10 in phoenix was a lot of big work.. the 101/202 work was interesting (never completed regions meant to go through reservation lands). And widening the US-60 was pretty interesting as well. It overlapped bidding for the stadium, so it seems that they held up the process to reduce the chances of Mesa or Chandler getting the bid. I'm not saying it's a great example, just an example of a decently sized city that isn't locked in and could be a growth area. Right now, I try to live fairly centrally, but that puts work that is closer to the edges of the area out of what I consider a reasonable commute for me (I won't go much over a 30 minute commute).