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I agree that part of the motivation for people supporting zoning is to preserve or increase their property values. But I think that people that spend a huge chu

I agree that part of the motivation for people supporting zoning is to preserve or increase their property values. But I think that people that spend a huge chunk of change on a house should care about preserving the neighborhood they bought into. As an extreme case, without zoning, what if each home lot on your street were turned into a high rise residential or commercial building? I don’t think any homeowner expects nothing to change, but they bought a house hoping that it continues to have a similar quality of life going forward. It’s not all about money. Peace and quiet is important to people, for example. Lack of traffic is important to people. Having one neighbor on each side rather than 100 is important to people.

Retric 11y ago
If every house around you is turned into a high-rise then your property values are going to shoot up massively. So, cash out and move. The real question is why can 1x people living in an area decide that 99x people get to move there or not. In the end Mixed use walkable communities are much better for both peoples health and the environment. You can always move to the middle of Montana if you don't want to live near development, but carving out the hart of city's and saying "FU I have got mine" causes worlds of problems.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Low-rise San Francisco is very pleasant, probably the most pleasant place I could imagine living. It's quite walkable and quiet in the right places. And in a place like that you can know your neighbors. Ironically, people live more segmented lives the higher buildings get. I also understand why people would want to maintain the quality of life they had when they purchased their house, even if it is at the expense of community at large. As such, there should be a significant property tax to compensate for comfort when housing costs are so high. Then again, the city and state have bizarre tax laws for property so I could be suggesting a political impossibility for all I know.
  - crzwdjk 11y ago
    Unfortunately, property tax law in California does the exact opposite. The tax can't be higher than 1% of the assessed value of the house, and that assessment can't go up by more than 2% every year as long as the house isn't sold. So the people who have been living in the neighborhood the longest and complain the most about "neighborhood character" also pay much less property tax than their neighbors. And by "much less" I mean 10-20 times less in some cases, given how much property values have gone up over the past 40 or so years.
    - scurvy 11y ago
      The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death. It also covers commercial buildings. What was originally sold as "don't tax grandma out" is obviously a power move to create a land holding elite. I'm a property owner, but I don't really like the system. I also don't like how mismanaged the property taxes here are, but that's another thread.
      - hvmonk 11y ago
        Can't agree more. The laws made in late 70s were made to benefit a specific class of people, and they are most vocal against any change which is aimed to bring equality.
      - DrScump 11y ago
        "The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death." So can rent-controlled rents, believe it or not.
    - CrowFly 11y ago
      Not quite. There are "parcel taxes" too that keep going up. And 2%/year increase isn't inconsequential.
      - e40 11y ago
        Parcel tax increases are voted on so they aren't just random increases. And I think they need 2/3 to pass.
- geebee 11y ago
  That's an excellent point. I live in an R1 neighborhood, but a buddy of mine lives in a SFH in an R2. He would technically be allowed to convert his SFH into two 3bd/2ba apartments, he could sell one of them, and profit so much that he would cover his entire mortgage with lots left over. While he'd still face permit challenges, this has been done (legally, with all required permits) on his block. However, this remains a relatively rare situation in SF. I gotta say, for a moment there, I was a tad bit jealous that he had this option. Yeah, truth is, if large sections of SF were rezoned for multi story dwellings, property owners might very well benefit, since the value of their land could substantially increase. I'm not sure how this would all work out, but it certainly seems like a possibility. This is why I think that SF's opposition to new development isn't really driven by property owners who wish to maximize the dollar value of their asset. I think it's rooted more in a very preservation minded populace (not always such a bad thing), a left-leaning hostility to "greedy" developers (not always unwarranted), and a deep suspicion of redevelopment projects that they worry will tear out the soul of a community and replace it with something corporate and soulless (plenty of that has happened). There's also a tendency to leave good enough alone (prop 13 insulates property owners from the tax burden of massively rising property values, and many people just aren't interested in more money once they're happy. If you live in a neighborhood you like just the way it is, and you can easily afford it, what do you care if you could make more money tearing down your house and building an apartment building? You're more interested in making sure that doesn't happen right next to you). In short, San Franciscans will happily vote against their own economic interests (well, their own asset value maximization) in order to "preserve" what they like about where they live. While we probably agree that the bay area needs more density, I'd be against tearing out the french quarter in New Orleans, even if that would lower the price of housing there. I personally think that the bay area actually can substantially increase density, both in SF and out, and vastly increase excellent light rail (preferably underground) without tearing down old and interesting neighborhoods, and that the city that would emerge would be a richer and more interesting one. Truth is, I put "preserve" in quotations, because one of the best qualities of San Francisco has been lost. Interesting people, with a half formed idea that is too strange or misunderstood to be funded as a thing, used to be able to move to SF and give it life. That's largely gone, because it's nearly impossible to live in SF without working so hard to pay the rent that you have no time left for things that nobody understands well enough to pay for. You do have to ask yourself what you're preserving and what you're losing. Interestingly, I actually think this will influence tech as much as the arts. There are now career paths in tech that are lucrative and are available more in SF than anywhere else, but there's certainly a wild, misunderstood, and creative side of tech that nobody will fund because they just don't understand it yet, and that requires the freedom of time to tinker. SF may lose this just as surely as it loses interesting non-tech arts and culture. In fairness, this has also happened in the vastly more dense and urban city of New York. I found this link about the galapagos art project moving to Detroit very interesting: "You can’t paint at night in your kitchen and hope to be a good artist. It doesn’t work that way… If the core competitiveness of the big apple is culture, but actually being an artist in New York City costs you a full time career in another industry, then the best and brightest – the ones our meritocracy would obviously miss the most - won’t allow their work to suffer just to be among our tall buildings." http://www.galapagosdetroit.com/whydetroit/ http://www.galapagosdetroit.com/whydetroit/ Not sure this will work, but my guess is that Patty Smith was right when she said "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city." I'm all for building more density in SF, but finding a new city sounds like good advice.
tptacek 11y ago
People are expected to care about preserving their neighborhoods. But the concerns of existing residents can't possibly be dispositive.
- crzwdjk 11y ago
  In a democracy, they end up being so, because those are the people who get to vote. One solution is to move some of the planning functions one level up in the government, so people in the Central Valley also get a say in deciding whether SF's zoning is reasonable or not. This is basically what Japan does.
  - mc32 11y ago
    Or at least a regional authority. Something like the ABAG but with authority and teeth. Otherwise we end up with local governments doing their own uncoördinated thing, so there is lots of duplication and also lots of haphazardness to development and organization, and perhaps most pernicious, lots of localization.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    That's true until residents start to accept payoffs to defect, which is what's happening in SF when wealthy outsiders pay above market to get their hands on property. Residents can do nothing and just let that keep happening, but if they do, they'll eventually end up getting priced out.
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    The opposition to density is actually happening more at the neighborhood level than the city level. Current zoning rules would allow quite a bit more density in many neighborhoods, but the approval process allows for tremendous delays if neighbors object. It's true that this could be fixed at the city level by streamlining the process. My supervisor, Scott Weiner, is pushing that, specifically for 100% affordable housing. That's not going anywhere, which demonstrates that the opposition to development is more about wanting parking, light, and views - not about affordability.
  - kansface 11y ago
raldi 11y ago
I don't mind that some homeowners seek to block new housing; that's their right, and might be in their best interest. What I mind is that SF's local media never blames these people for their role in the housing crisis, and that ostensibly progressive organizations stand by their side, even though thwarting change and enriching the establishment at the expense of newcomers is about as far from progressive as you could get.
matkam 11y ago
Relevant to this topic, Youtube channel "The School of Life" talks about this issue where people are reluctant to build, causing the housing price to go up. One Reason Homes Cost So Much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk As a follow up, the same channel offers some more ideas and broader view solutions. How to Make an Attractive City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c
rayiner 11y ago
If you want to preserve the character of the surrounding property, buy it.
jey 11y ago
Does it even really make sense to "own" land? One alternative is "Georgism", which is the idea that land is a resource collectively owned by society, but people can temporarily monopolize a piece of land by renting it from society. The rents thus collected go into the society's general fund to pay for public goods like fire stations, healthcare, universal basic income, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- davidw 11y ago
  I'm not sure I buy into the whole thing, but do see some value in land taxes over property taxes in that it is an incentive for density: if you have 10000 square meters you are taxed the same whether you build a single story ranch house with a big yard, or an apartment building. That said, how's it work out in practice? You can't tax land in downtown Portland at the same rate you tax it in Harney County, where it's mostly empty desert. But if you tax land outside cities cheaper, maybe that would encourage sprawl towards the cheaper areas?
- krapp 11y ago
  Does it make any more sense to declare that land must be "owned" by society, and that rents should be extracted from it, than that it can be owned and exploited by individuals? The difference between the two seems like semantics to me, in either case the land is still owned.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  The problem with that scheme is that a reasonable implementation of it will still greatly resemble land ownership. Say I rent a parcel of land from society and pay money each month to do so. I build a building on top and use it. Under what conditions can I keep using this land, besides paying the rent? Do I lease the land from society for a fixed term, after which the land may be freely rented to someone else? In that case what happens to the building on it that I've invested my own money into? The problem here is that land by itself is not useful but improvements in combination with the land is, but said improvements are almost always not portable. I can pack up my furniture and move out of my apartment, I can't pack up a building. So naturally we'll want some way to ensure people who have improved the land can continue using the land - which really starts resembling ownership + property tax at this point.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
"preserving the neighborhood they bought into"-That means you're condemning all but the very well to do from every moving in in the future. You've lucked out on life's lottery, to be able to own a house in San Francisco.
- rsync 11y ago
  ... which is sort of an interesting criticism, until you consider that you get a chance to "luck out" every 6-8 years or so when the real estate market crashes. There have been at least 3 such occasions since the Netscape IPO, and another on it's way. Hope you saved some money.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    While there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the growth/zoning/etc. debate, I suspect that in the January 2016 economic climate in the Bay area, no reasonably imagined housing expansion would make more than the smallest dent in housing prices. Look at Manhattan. Yes, you can't build willy-nilly whatever you want but there's certainly plenty of high-rise residential construction and housing prices are still pretty high in desirable areas.
    - danans 11y ago
      > ...and housing prices are still pretty high in desirable areas. Isn't that kind of tautological? Prices are always relatively high in desirable areas, and the high relative prices are actually a contributing factor to their desirability. What's more eye-opening is that prices in desirable areas are so high relative to above-average incomes for the area.
      - ghaff 11y ago
        "in desirable areas" basically referred to the fact that housing prices aren't necessarily particularly high in upper Manhattan. But they're pretty high where all the construction is taking place below 110th Street or whatever the appropriate dividing line is.
capkutay 11y ago
Zoning is important. The issue is that it is often abused and poorly thought out in San Francisco. For instance, Mission Bay [0] was a rail yard with no inhabitants sitting at the foot of San Francisco, just south of urban SoMa. It was a prime opportunity to make it a dense, metropolitan extension of the city with little voter backlash since there were no residents in the area. Not to mention, it is also the most accessible, commutable part of the city with 2 Caltrain stops and 2 freeway on-ramps. Instead, they made it it a low-rise biotech neighborhood with primarily 40 ft zoning. There's another development in Downtown SF (SoMa to be exact) where current residents are suing to block the transformation of a PARKING LOT into a housing/office complex with over 200 units of affordable housing[1]. The area is already dense and urban, the building itself is not out of character (there's a 400 ft hotel right next door). It also introduces a lot of much needed open space to Central SoMa. However, some residents in the area are suing, claiming that development would cast shadows on nearby parks (0.08775% and 0.167% of sunlight in winter months) and increase traffic to the area. The lawsuit will probably delay the development for years. It's just sad to see such an irrational attempt to impede the progress of a potentially great city. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco 1: http://www.5mproject.com/ http://www.5mproject.com/
- kqr2 11y ago
  Unfortunately there are many examples of this in SF. Over time, this leads to very poor land use. Other examples: 1) Balboa reservoir : people prefer to keep it as an empty parking lot http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir_many_prefer_empty_parking_lot_to_housing.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir... 2) Francisco Reservoir : although there is already a park nearby, they chose to turn this into another park http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Francisco-Reservoir-step-closer-to-becoming-5607587.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Francisco-Reservo... Current residents are unfortunately much more vocal than potential future residents or housing advocates.
guelo 11y ago
The main problem is Prop13, in other states property taxes increase and drive people out as land increases in value. In California land owners are locked in forever. OTOH, somehow California ended up with the fastest growing economy in the country. Causation? Correlation? Who knows.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > OTOH, somehow California ended up with the fastest growing economy in the country. Huh? California is decidedly middle-of-the-pack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_economic_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_economi...
  - guelo 11y ago
    Sorry, that was worded wrong. I meant that California ended up with San Francisco's economy.
erispoe 11y ago
You have a right to your private property. That right does not extend to publicly owned land or land owned by other private parties. When you buy land in the heart of a large metropolitan area in an under-developed neighborhood, it's reasonable to expect that the city will densify and grow around you. Thinking that nothing will change is the unreasonable expectation here. San Francisco has been continuously changing for 150 years, expecting the city to freeze for you as soon ay you buy a piece of property does not make sense.

Retric 11y ago

If every house around you is turned into a high-rise then your property values are going to shoot up massively. So, cash out and move. The real question is why can 1x people living in an area decide that 99x people get to move there or not. In the end Mixed use walkable communities are much better for both peoples health and the environment. You can always move to the middle of Montana if you don't want to live near development, but carving out the hart of city's and saying "FU I have got mine" causes worlds of problems.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Low-rise San Francisco is very pleasant, probably the most pleasant place I could imagine living. It's quite walkable and quiet in the right places. And in a place like that you can know your neighbors. Ironically, people live more segmented lives the higher buildings get. I also understand why people would want to maintain the quality of life they had when they purchased their house, even if it is at the expense of community at large. As such, there should be a significant property tax to compensate for comfort when housing costs are so high. Then again, the city and state have bizarre tax laws for property so I could be suggesting a political impossibility for all I know.
- crzwdjk 11y ago
  Unfortunately, property tax law in California does the exact opposite. The tax can't be higher than 1% of the assessed value of the house, and that assessment can't go up by more than 2% every year as long as the house isn't sold. So the people who have been living in the neighborhood the longest and complain the most about "neighborhood character" also pay much less property tax than their neighbors. And by "much less" I mean 10-20 times less in some cases, given how much property values have gone up over the past 40 or so years.
  - scurvy 11y ago
    The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death. It also covers commercial buildings. What was originally sold as "don't tax grandma out" is obviously a power move to create a land holding elite. I'm a property owner, but I don't really like the system. I also don't like how mismanaged the property taxes here are, but that's another thread.
    - hvmonk 11y ago
      Can't agree more. The laws made in late 70s were made to benefit a specific class of people, and they are most vocal against any change which is aimed to bring equality.
    - DrScump 11y ago
      "The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death." So can rent-controlled rents, believe it or not.
  - CrowFly 11y ago
    Not quite. There are "parcel taxes" too that keep going up. And 2%/year increase isn't inconsequential.
    - e40 11y ago
      Parcel tax increases are voted on so they aren't just random increases. And I think they need 2/3 to pass.
geebee 11y ago
That's an excellent point. I live in an R1 neighborhood, but a buddy of mine lives in a SFH in an R2. He would technically be allowed to convert his SFH into two 3bd/2ba apartments, he could sell one of them, and profit so much that he would cover his entire mortgage with lots left over. While he'd still face permit challenges, this has been done (legally, with all required permits) on his block. However, this remains a relatively rare situation in SF. I gotta say, for a moment there, I was a tad bit jealous that he had this option. Yeah, truth is, if large sections of SF were rezoned for multi story dwellings, property owners might very well benefit, since the value of their land could substantially increase. I'm not sure how this would all work out, but it certainly seems like a possibility. This is why I think that SF's opposition to new development isn't really driven by property owners who wish to maximize the dollar value of their asset. I think it's rooted more in a very preservation minded populace (not always such a bad thing), a left-leaning hostility to "greedy" developers (not always unwarranted), and a deep suspicion of redevelopment projects that they worry will tear out the soul of a community and replace it with something corporate and soulless (plenty of that has happened). There's also a tendency to leave good enough alone (prop 13 insulates property owners from the tax burden of massively rising property values, and many people just aren't interested in more money once they're happy. If you live in a neighborhood you like just the way it is, and you can easily afford it, what do you care if you could make more money tearing down your house and building an apartment building? You're more interested in making sure that doesn't happen right next to you). In short, San Franciscans will happily vote against their own economic interests (well, their own asset value maximization) in order to "preserve" what they like about where they live. While we probably agree that the bay area needs more density, I'd be against tearing out the french quarter in New Orleans, even if that would lower the price of housing there. I personally think that the bay area actually can substantially increase density, both in SF and out, and vastly increase excellent light rail (preferably underground) without tearing down old and interesting neighborhoods, and that the city that would emerge would be a richer and more interesting one. Truth is, I put "preserve" in quotations, because one of the best qualities of San Francisco has been lost. Interesting people, with a half formed idea that is too strange or misunderstood to be funded as a thing, used to be able to move to SF and give it life. That's largely gone, because it's nearly impossible to live in SF without working so hard to pay the rent that you have no time left for things that nobody understands well enough to pay for. You do have to ask yourself what you're preserving and what you're losing. Interestingly, I actually think this will influence tech as much as the arts. There are now career paths in tech that are lucrative and are available more in SF than anywhere else, but there's certainly a wild, misunderstood, and creative side of tech that nobody will fund because they just don't understand it yet, and that requires the freedom of time to tinker. SF may lose this just as surely as it loses interesting non-tech arts and culture. In fairness, this has also happened in the vastly more dense and urban city of New York. I found this link about the galapagos art project moving to Detroit very interesting: "You can’t paint at night in your kitchen and hope to be a good artist. It doesn’t work that way… If the core competitiveness of the big apple is culture, but actually being an artist in New York City costs you a full time career in another industry, then the best and brightest – the ones our meritocracy would obviously miss the most - won’t allow their work to suffer just to be among our tall buildings." http://www.galapagosdetroit.com/whydetroit/ http://www.galapagosdetroit.com/whydetroit/ Not sure this will work, but my guess is that Patty Smith was right when she said "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city." I'm all for building more density in SF, but finding a new city sounds like good advice.

tptacek 11y ago

People are expected to care about preserving their neighborhoods. But the concerns of existing residents can't possibly be dispositive.

crzwdjk 11y ago
In a democracy, they end up being so, because those are the people who get to vote. One solution is to move some of the planning functions one level up in the government, so people in the Central Valley also get a say in deciding whether SF's zoning is reasonable or not. This is basically what Japan does.
- mc32 11y ago
  Or at least a regional authority. Something like the ABAG but with authority and teeth. Otherwise we end up with local governments doing their own uncoördinated thing, so there is lots of duplication and also lots of haphazardness to development and organization, and perhaps most pernicious, lots of localization.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's true until residents start to accept payoffs to defect, which is what's happening in SF when wealthy outsiders pay above market to get their hands on property. Residents can do nothing and just let that keep happening, but if they do, they'll eventually end up getting priced out.
- jim-greer 11y ago
  The opposition to density is actually happening more at the neighborhood level than the city level. Current zoning rules would allow quite a bit more density in many neighborhoods, but the approval process allows for tremendous delays if neighbors object. It's true that this could be fixed at the city level by streamlining the process. My supervisor, Scott Weiner, is pushing that, specifically for 100% affordable housing. That's not going anywhere, which demonstrates that the opposition to development is more about wanting parking, light, and views - not about affordability.
- kansface 11y ago

raldi 11y ago

I don't mind that some homeowners seek to block new housing; that's their right, and might be in their best interest. What I mind is that SF's local media never blames these people for their role in the housing crisis, and that ostensibly progressive organizations stand by their side, even though thwarting change and enriching the establishment at the expense of newcomers is about as far from progressive as you could get.

matkam 11y ago

Relevant to this topic, Youtube channel "The School of Life" talks about this issue where people are reluctant to build, causing the housing price to go up. One Reason Homes Cost So Much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk As a follow up, the same channel offers some more ideas and broader view solutions. How to Make an Attractive City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c

rayiner 11y ago

If you want to preserve the character of the surrounding property, buy it.

jey 11y ago

Does it even really make sense to "own" land? One alternative is "Georgism", which is the idea that land is a resource collectively owned by society, but people can temporarily monopolize a piece of land by renting it from society. The rents thus collected go into the society's general fund to pay for public goods like fire stations, healthcare, universal basic income, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

davidw 11y ago
I'm not sure I buy into the whole thing, but do see some value in land taxes over property taxes in that it is an incentive for density: if you have 10000 square meters you are taxed the same whether you build a single story ranch house with a big yard, or an apartment building. That said, how's it work out in practice? You can't tax land in downtown Portland at the same rate you tax it in Harney County, where it's mostly empty desert. But if you tax land outside cities cheaper, maybe that would encourage sprawl towards the cheaper areas?
krapp 11y ago
Does it make any more sense to declare that land must be "owned" by society, and that rents should be extracted from it, than that it can be owned and exploited by individuals? The difference between the two seems like semantics to me, in either case the land is still owned.
potatolicious 11y ago
The problem with that scheme is that a reasonable implementation of it will still greatly resemble land ownership. Say I rent a parcel of land from society and pay money each month to do so. I build a building on top and use it. Under what conditions can I keep using this land, besides paying the rent? Do I lease the land from society for a fixed term, after which the land may be freely rented to someone else? In that case what happens to the building on it that I've invested my own money into? The problem here is that land by itself is not useful but improvements in combination with the land is, but said improvements are almost always not portable. I can pack up my furniture and move out of my apartment, I can't pack up a building. So naturally we'll want some way to ensure people who have improved the land can continue using the land - which really starts resembling ownership + property tax at this point.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

"preserving the neighborhood they bought into"-That means you're condemning all but the very well to do from every moving in in the future. You've lucked out on life's lottery, to be able to own a house in San Francisco.

rsync 11y ago
... which is sort of an interesting criticism, until you consider that you get a chance to "luck out" every 6-8 years or so when the real estate market crashes. There have been at least 3 such occasions since the Netscape IPO, and another on it's way. Hope you saved some money.
- ghaff 11y ago
  While there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the growth/zoning/etc. debate, I suspect that in the January 2016 economic climate in the Bay area, no reasonably imagined housing expansion would make more than the smallest dent in housing prices. Look at Manhattan. Yes, you can't build willy-nilly whatever you want but there's certainly plenty of high-rise residential construction and housing prices are still pretty high in desirable areas.
  - danans 11y ago
    > ...and housing prices are still pretty high in desirable areas. Isn't that kind of tautological? Prices are always relatively high in desirable areas, and the high relative prices are actually a contributing factor to their desirability. What's more eye-opening is that prices in desirable areas are so high relative to above-average incomes for the area.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      "in desirable areas" basically referred to the fact that housing prices aren't necessarily particularly high in upper Manhattan. But they're pretty high where all the construction is taking place below 110th Street or whatever the appropriate dividing line is.

capkutay 11y ago

Zoning is important. The issue is that it is often abused and poorly thought out in San Francisco. For instance, Mission Bay [0] was a rail yard with no inhabitants sitting at the foot of San Francisco, just south of urban SoMa. It was a prime opportunity to make it a dense, metropolitan extension of the city with little voter backlash since there were no residents in the area. Not to mention, it is also the most accessible, commutable part of the city with 2 Caltrain stops and 2 freeway on-ramps. Instead, they made it it a low-rise biotech neighborhood with primarily 40 ft zoning. There's another development in Downtown SF (SoMa to be exact) where current residents are suing to block the transformation of a PARKING LOT into a housing/office complex with over 200 units of affordable housing[1]. The area is already dense and urban, the building itself is not out of character (there's a 400 ft hotel right next door). It also introduces a lot of much needed open space to Central SoMa. However, some residents in the area are suing, claiming that development would cast shadows on nearby parks (0.08775% and 0.167% of sunlight in winter months) and increase traffic to the area. The lawsuit will probably delay the development for years. It's just sad to see such an irrational attempt to impede the progress of a potentially great city. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco 1: http://www.5mproject.com/ http://www.5mproject.com/

kqr2 11y ago
Unfortunately there are many examples of this in SF. Over time, this leads to very poor land use. Other examples: 1) Balboa reservoir : people prefer to keep it as an empty parking lot http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir_many_prefer_empty_parking_lot_to_housing.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir... 2) Francisco Reservoir : although there is already a park nearby, they chose to turn this into another park http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Francisco-Reservoir-step-closer-to-becoming-5607587.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Francisco-Reservo... Current residents are unfortunately much more vocal than potential future residents or housing advocates.

guelo 11y ago

The main problem is Prop13, in other states property taxes increase and drive people out as land increases in value. In California land owners are locked in forever. OTOH, somehow California ended up with the fastest growing economy in the country. Causation? Correlation? Who knows.

vonmoltke 11y ago
> OTOH, somehow California ended up with the fastest growing economy in the country. Huh? California is decidedly middle-of-the-pack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_economic_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_economi...
- guelo 11y ago
  Sorry, that was worded wrong. I meant that California ended up with San Francisco's economy.

erispoe 11y ago

You have a right to your private property. That right does not extend to publicly owned land or land owned by other private parties. When you buy land in the heart of a large metropolitan area in an under-developed neighborhood, it's reasonable to expect that the city will densify and grow around you. Thinking that nothing will change is the unreasonable expectation here. San Francisco has been continuously changing for 150 years, expecting the city to freeze for you as soon ay you buy a piece of property does not make sense.