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> 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 dens

by 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).
- TheCoelacanth 11y ago
  Paris isn't exactly a city of skyscrapers. SF could get much denser without adding a single skyscraper.
  - spiralpolitik 11y ago
    It could but they would have to expand the public transport infrastructure. If you look at the "cheap" areas one of the many issues is that they have poor transportation links to the downtown area. However expanding public transport in SF is almost a difficult an issue as building skyscrapers. See the central subway as an example of the other end of NIMBYism.
    - mateo411 11y ago
      I think SF is building the Central Subway pretty quickly. It looks like the subway will be completed in a few years. It seems like a success in terms of putting new infrastructure in a crowded city. The BART SFO extension took about 30 years to complete. That took a lot longer was a lot more litigious than the construction of the Central Subway.

by sampo 11y ago

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).
TheCoelacanth 11y ago
Paris isn't exactly a city of skyscrapers. SF could get much denser without adding a single skyscraper.
- spiralpolitik 11y ago
  It could but they would have to expand the public transport infrastructure. If you look at the "cheap" areas one of the many issues is that they have poor transportation links to the downtown area. However expanding public transport in SF is almost a difficult an issue as building skyscrapers. See the central subway as an example of the other end of NIMBYism.
  - mateo411 11y ago
    I think SF is building the Central Subway pretty quickly. It looks like the subway will be completed in a few years. It seems like a success in terms of putting new infrastructure in a crowded city. The BART SFO extension took about 30 years to complete. That took a lot longer was a lot more litigious than the construction of the Central Subway.