California is a unique snowflake when it comes to planning and development. Mostly due to a number of issues: 1) Prop 13 allows commercial property owners to a

California is a unique snowflake when it comes to planning and development. Mostly due to a number of issues: 1) Prop 13 allows commercial property owners to avoid tax reassessment when the property is transferred (they sell the shell company owning the property rather than the property itself so the property doesn't trigger a reassessment) . This means a lot of property owners are paying 80s or 90s levels of property tax rather than the amount they should be paying under current rates thus depriving cities of revenue. 2) NIMBYs. CA and especially the Bay Area is full of people that are supportive of building more infrastructure or housing as long as it isn't built where they live. They fear that any kind of infrastructure (roads, public transit) or new development (affordable housing) will bring "the wrong sort of people" into the area and affect their property prices. Cupertino and other valley cities are notorious for not building enough housing relative to the number of office space for this reason. 3). Environment impact studies. Any proposed development needs one of these and if your plan gets sucked into the detailed version then it can take years or even decades to get the project approved. If people don't approve of your development then generally they get lawyer-ed up and file a review. This will stop most developers cold as nobody wants to spent years and potentially millions dollars in court before they can break ground. So there you have it. It generally considered to be impossible to get any large infrastructure project built in California in under 20 years. See the high speed rail project. 19 years to deliver a link between two nowhere towns (Merced and Bakersfield). China is positively rolling in the aisle with laughter.