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> But for the tight limits on construction in California’s Bay Area, they reckon, employment there would be about five times larger than it is. This is farcica

> But for the tight limits on construction in California’s Bay Area, they reckon, employment there would be about five times larger than it is. This is farcical. One reason people flock to the Bay Area is precisely because of the tight limits on construction. People like sprawled-out, low-density development. They like to have yards. They like spacious homes. They like to see the sky and the mountain vistas and the water. You could lift the limits on land use and densify the area like Manhattan. But there are only so many workers who will flock to a Manhattan-like locale...and those workers are already flocking to Manhattan itself. Many American workers simply do not want to live in dense environments like Manhattan. Like an earlier Economist article I think this one misses the possibility that tight controls on land use can make those places more desirable while driving some jobs elsewhere. Maybe some jobs simply do not exist due to tight Silicon Valley land controls. But other jobs simply move elsewhere, just as all finance jobs are not in NYC and London.

ejdyksen 11y ago
> They like to have yards. They like spacious homes. They like to see the sky and the mountain vistas and the water. People flock to the Bay Area to have a yard and a spacious home? The lack of those things is the reason I left! Maybe the very wealthy have yards and large houses in the Bay Area, but most everybody else is living in Manhattan-sized apartments without the benefits of living in a high density area like Manhattan (more walkability, public transit, etc).
- massysett 11y ago
  You are making my point. If you left to get more space, why would the Economist think that the place could have five times more workers if they lifted building restrictions? The Bay Area with no building restrictions would be even less desirable.
  - ejdyksen 11y ago
    The Bay Area with no building restrictions turns into Manhattan. I'd rather live in Manhattan than the Bay Area. If I'm not going to have much space, I'd rather the city be designed for that kind of life.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    If you left to get more space, why would the Economist think that the place could have five times more workers if they lifted building restrictions? Because the people attracted by the massive drop in rents would more than offset those who leave because of the increased density.
Ologn 11y ago
Manhattan is dense, but plenty of people commute every day from suburbs with yards and spacious homes. The Economist doesn't really go into transportation except for a brief mention at the end. New York has a better transportation hub than the Bay Area. At 3 AM on a weekday or weekend, I can catch trains going to New Jersey, or Long Island, or upstate New York, or Connecticut, or the subway which runs all night. In the Bay Area, the last Caltrain headed to the peninsula leaves at midnight, and there are no more trains until 5 AM! There are plenty of places to live which are a 30 minute commute from Manhattan (by subway, train, ferry etc.) Wasn't San Francisco destroyed in an earthquake in 1906? Weren't 63 people killed, and thousands injured, by the 1989 earthquakes? Instead of better public transport, the Economist suggest building up, up, up. I suggest reading this - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake - if you never saw the damage done by the 1989 earthquake. Remember the 1906 earthquake as well.
- deciplex 11y ago
  > Wasn't San Francisco destroyed in an earthquake in 1906? Weren't 63 people killed, and thousands injured, by the 1989 earthquakes? That's what happens when a populated and earthquake-prone region has poor building codes for coping with earthquakes.
breischl 11y ago
>>People like sprawled-out, low-density development. Some people like those things. Other people actively dislike and avoid those things. Certainly there are enough of the latter that the Bay Area could be much more dense than it is, and still contain mostly people that like that density.
greeneggs 11y ago
The article doesn't talk about quality of life at all, phrasing everything in terms of housing prices. > "Disbursing some of the tax revenue earned as a result of new development to landowners within a small area around that development to compensate for short-term hardship would reduce opposition to new building." With 5x as many people, traffic in the Bay Area would be 100x worse. Or, say you magically install a perfect public transportation system. Still, are you going to clear 5x as much land for parks? (No.) Where are you going to find five Muir Woods? I don't want to live in Manhattan. The basic problem is overpopulation. Even if we relaxed rules to allow denser construction, you'll just have the same problem again in a decade or two. (How much denser can you make Manhattan?) But with a lower quality of life for everyone.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  > The basic problem is overpopulation. This is farcical. The basic problem cannot possibly be overpopulation in a country with as much land per person as the United States of America. There's a contradiction here: you want a very, very active economy, but you don't want the population required to sustain that economy. You can't be rich without servants, and you can't have industries without workers. How do you propose to run tech companies with even fewer people per dollar-of-revenue than they already employ?

ejdyksen 11y ago

> They like to have yards. They like spacious homes. They like to see the sky and the mountain vistas and the water. People flock to the Bay Area to have a yard and a spacious home? The lack of those things is the reason I left! Maybe the very wealthy have yards and large houses in the Bay Area, but most everybody else is living in Manhattan-sized apartments without the benefits of living in a high density area like Manhattan (more walkability, public transit, etc).

massysett 11y ago
You are making my point. If you left to get more space, why would the Economist think that the place could have five times more workers if they lifted building restrictions? The Bay Area with no building restrictions would be even less desirable.
- ejdyksen 11y ago
  The Bay Area with no building restrictions turns into Manhattan. I'd rather live in Manhattan than the Bay Area. If I'm not going to have much space, I'd rather the city be designed for that kind of life.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  If you left to get more space, why would the Economist think that the place could have five times more workers if they lifted building restrictions? Because the people attracted by the massive drop in rents would more than offset those who leave because of the increased density.

Ologn 11y ago

Manhattan is dense, but plenty of people commute every day from suburbs with yards and spacious homes. The Economist doesn't really go into transportation except for a brief mention at the end. New York has a better transportation hub than the Bay Area. At 3 AM on a weekday or weekend, I can catch trains going to New Jersey, or Long Island, or upstate New York, or Connecticut, or the subway which runs all night. In the Bay Area, the last Caltrain headed to the peninsula leaves at midnight, and there are no more trains until 5 AM! There are plenty of places to live which are a 30 minute commute from Manhattan (by subway, train, ferry etc.) Wasn't San Francisco destroyed in an earthquake in 1906? Weren't 63 people killed, and thousands injured, by the 1989 earthquakes? Instead of better public transport, the Economist suggest building up, up, up. I suggest reading this - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake - if you never saw the damage done by the 1989 earthquake. Remember the 1906 earthquake as well.

deciplex 11y ago
> Wasn't San Francisco destroyed in an earthquake in 1906? Weren't 63 people killed, and thousands injured, by the 1989 earthquakes? That's what happens when a populated and earthquake-prone region has poor building codes for coping with earthquakes.

breischl 11y ago

>>People like sprawled-out, low-density development. Some people like those things. Other people actively dislike and avoid those things. Certainly there are enough of the latter that the Bay Area could be much more dense than it is, and still contain mostly people that like that density.

greeneggs 11y ago

The article doesn't talk about quality of life at all, phrasing everything in terms of housing prices. > "Disbursing some of the tax revenue earned as a result of new development to landowners within a small area around that development to compensate for short-term hardship would reduce opposition to new building." With 5x as many people, traffic in the Bay Area would be 100x worse. Or, say you magically install a perfect public transportation system. Still, are you going to clear 5x as much land for parks? (No.) Where are you going to find five Muir Woods? I don't want to live in Manhattan. The basic problem is overpopulation. Even if we relaxed rules to allow denser construction, you'll just have the same problem again in a decade or two. (How much denser can you make Manhattan?) But with a lower quality of life for everyone.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
> The basic problem is overpopulation. This is farcical. The basic problem cannot possibly be overpopulation in a country with as much land per person as the United States of America. There's a contradiction here: you want a very, very active economy, but you don't want the population required to sustain that economy. You can't be rich without servants, and you can't have industries without workers. How do you propose to run tech companies with even fewer people per dollar-of-revenue than they already employ?