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Eh. I feel like this conversation is lacking basic statistics. San Francisco: 18,451 Tokyo: 16,000 San Francisco is not all that high, but denser than Tokyo.
by graeme 10y ago
Eh. I feel like this conversation is lacking basic statistics.
San Francisco: 18,451
Tokyo: 16,000
San Francisco is not all that high, but denser than Tokyo. Cities don't need to be high to be dense. That's one of the biggest misconceptions. Most of the world's high density cities don't do so by using skyscrapers.
The actual problem? I think it comes down to two factors:
1. Almost all density in NA was built pre-car
2. So density is limited by the size of areas that were built in the pre-car area.
Taller buildings isn't necessarily the answer. Narrower streets is a larger determinant of density. But it's very hard to tear down streets, make them narrower and add new buildings.
It's especially hard to rebuild the suburbs around cities like San Francisco and make them more San Francisco-like. If the whole Bay area was built like SF, there would be no silicon valley rent crisis. Yet for some reason everyone focuses on SF.
I'm writing this in Montreal, a city built like SF. It's infuriating that this whole debate happens without people googling density stats.
How many people would have guessed that SF is denser than Tokyo, per square mile? Tokyo is bigger, and holds more people, because the Japanese have sensible zoning. But "tall buildings" is not how they do it over the whole span of the megalopolis.
- khuey 10y agoYour 16000 (people per square mile) number for Tokyo must be for the whole prefecture, because the actual city (the 23 wards) is significantly more dense. Wikipedia tells me roughly 37000.
- graeme 10y agoProbably. And the Bay Area around SF is really not dense. Around 1000, which is terrible. My main point is that SF is not the problem. It's the Bay Area.
- TheCoelacanth 10y agoThey don't need to be high, but they do need to be higher than the 2-3 stories allowed in most of SF.
- graeme 10y agoWhat is your basis for that statement? SF is the second densest city in America. With low rise buildings. It's the bay area around SF that fails to be dense. The Bay Area as a whole is around 1000.
- TheCoelacanth 10y agoThe US as a whole fails to be dense except for NYC. Compare SF to Paris and it doesn't look dense at all.
- graeme 10y agoTrue, but Paris is one of the densest cities in the world, even compared to Europe. I agree the US should be denser. I'm just wondering why all the attention is focussed on a place that, relatively speaking, is already doing a rather good job on density as far as America goes. For that matter, Paris is largely low rise. I'm generally in favour of low rise density. I'm trying to figure out why everyone ignores that model, and argues for tall buildings instead.
- TheCoelacanth 10y agoBecause most of the cities in the US are hopeless. SF is one of the few that has anything going for it.