10 ms·

I don't get why this is surprising. The goal of nearly all of these regulations is, effectively, to prevent housing from being built. They reduce supply, while

by mabbo 10y ago

I don't get why this is surprising. The goal of nearly all of these regulations is, effectively, to prevent housing from being built. They reduce supply, while demand is increasing. This is basic economics. Compare this to Toronto. Housing is getting more expensive here, yes, but not at nearly the same rate. Demand is increasing because of high immigration, but supply is being allowed to increase as well- and mostly in the up direction. There's a condo over on College street that just opened, 60 floors or more I believe. An 80+ twin tower condo is I think now approved by the city over on King. The main strip of North York must be averaging 25-30 stories tall, and it's 15km from downtown! If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build.

dmix 10y ago
Toronto had a massive building boom [1] over the last 5-7 years that far outpaced Chicago, NYC, and Huston (something like #1 Toronto had 150 buildings v the closest #2 was 40 in Chicago being built). The construction on the hundreds of condos are just starting to be completed and condo prices actually went down for the first time in forever while housing prices continue to rise. SF housing crisis is entirely self-created. If it wasn't for zoning limitations they'd be one of the top 5 fastest growing city in North America no doubt. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/130-highrise-building-projects-in-toronto-lead-north-america-1.2504776 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/130-highrise-building-projec...
- tostitos1979 10y ago
  I recall reading somewhere that the downtown core actually has less condos than needed. TO should have built more apparently. They built a lot of condos further away and those condos are the ones that are decreasing/not going up. Also, since there are a lot of Toronto folks on this thread ... what are you folks doing if you don't own anything already? Prices are at an all time high but there is a general fear that if you don't buy now, you will be locked out forever. A data point there are condos in Gibson Square in North York for north of 650K. Seems insane but that is what the market is I suppose.
  - nibs 10y ago
    Renting. People with the resources borrow money from family for down payments. People without borrow money from secondary lenders. My downtown condo up $50k/15% over the past 18 months but friends outside the core are flat or down.
  - dmix 10y ago
    I'd personally invest money in businesses or building businesses. IMO real estate is for people without specialized technical talent (outside of handyman style work) or lots of extra cash needing a safe place to hold it. Regarding my living situation it makes more sense for me to rent, everyone I know who buys a house has spent tons of time and money fixing up their place. I'd rather invest those resources into a startup or consulting. Buying a condo might make sense at some point but I'm not really into condo living. If I go that route I'd want one with a pool and gym - which means a lot of extra condo fees, so I don't know if that ultimately makes financial sense. I'd be curious to see the numbers on that though.
  - kitcar 10y ago
    What you read likely has to do with multi-individual/family focused dwellings. Toronto is currently overbuilt for single bed rooms, but under-built for units suitable for families. Anyways, as far as what to do - Patience. Most people in Toronto who have good/great credit have mortgages w/~2.4% interest rate and 5 or less year term. What that means is that a ~1% increase in rates would increase their annual interest expense by ~50%. Considering that the average house price is $1MM in the GTA, let's say the average downpayment is 20% (it's actually lower from what I've read...), and you're looking at a situation where if rates go up just 1%, the average new home owner is going to need to come up with an additional $8K / year after tax, so ~$11-16K before tax, in order to not default on their mortgage. With wages being as stagnant as they are in Canada, and the average Canadian being more in debt than they have ever been in the history of the country(1), you can imagine that there will at least be a couple of people who will no longer be able to afford the houses they are in and need to sell it off. 1)http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canadians-debt-burden-still-growing-hits-record-in-fourth-quarter/article29172712/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ca...
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > Toronto had a massive building boom [1] over the last 5-7 years that far outpaced Chicago, NYC, and Huston (something like #1 Toronto had 150 buildings v the closest #2 was 40 in Chicago being built) South Florida gets ignored in articles like that, because the cities are so physically small[1]. As of December 2014, South Florida as a whole had built 20 new towers, started construction on 80 more, and had yet another 200 in some sort of planning or presale stage[2]. That is what you want to look at for an example of skyrocketing population density in land-constrained areas. [1] The largest city in South Florida is Miami, which is only 36sqmi. In contrast, Toronto is 244sqmi). [2] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article4816320.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article4...
  - mabbo 10y ago
    I was going to reply that hey, that 244sqmi is the greater toronto area (GTA), but then I checked the wiki page, and well I'll be damned that's just the city itself. The GTA is 676 sqmi. What's really interesting is that the 244sqmi is full. There is room for maybe one or two more subdivision of houses, and then the only option is up (or another amalgamation with the neighbours, because that went so well last time).
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      Yeah, I checked to make sure I had the wright number before I posted. I don't have a good number for the tri-county core of South Florida, but I'd guess it is not much larger than the GTA. We hit the point of "no way but up" about 20 years ago. There are a few holdout family ranches, but other than that there is nowhere left to build that doesn't involve tearing down something else first. In some parts of my home county the school board has had to start cannibalizing parts of public parks in order to build new schools to support the population.
      - mabbo 10y ago
        The Toronto school board got clever: you tear down the school, build a 20-story building on top but the bottom 3 floors are a school and the other 17 are condos that you sell or rent. The board keeps their school in the area that needs it (minus a few tough years without it) and they make a profit selling or renting the condos!
kbenson 10y ago
> If California wants to lower their housing prices That's the rub, after you've constrained supply and inflated prices, there's a vested interest of those who've seen their values increase and those who bought at high values to not let them drop. This is especially important for those that bought at a high value, as if the worth of their house drops, then they can find themselves in a position where they owe much more than the house is worth. We've seen this situation before, not too long ago. It's not pretty. AFAICT, the trick is to manage growth effectively in an area through restrictions and incentives so that you try to stabilize house prices as much as possible (like the economy), such as tracking inflation and/or some other indicators. If you enact regulations that suppress new housing when demographics call for more of it, you need to offset that with incentives. The worst thing that can happen is that a group will wrest disproportionate control over housing policy for an extended period, and then the policies they enact through self interest spiral out of control and make the situation worse for everyone.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Why can't you just live in the house? I mean it sucks when your investment doesn't work out, but at least you have a roof over your head. Isn't that all you really need (unless you're some kind of real estate mogul, in which case it's hard to feel bad since it's just business then).
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    It works as long as you maintain the income you had when you qualified for the loan. The problem is that real-estate downturns are heavily correlated with economic downturns and job losses. The bloodbath isn't people with stable jobs suddenly wanting out of their homes because they're underwater (although you do sometimes get that too), it's people who buy a house they can barely afford and then lose their job.
  - danhak 10y ago
    Real estate is usually leveraged. You don't simply get to keep living in a house if you are insolvent and owe more on the property than it is worth. See also: 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
mjevans 10y ago
They don't really need 50 story buildings, at least not a lot. What they DO need is to replace a lot of the single resident housing units with multiple-dwelling-units. Nice condos probably wouldn't be too bad. Better would be high-density mixed commercial / residential areas ringed by parks and with good transit connections.
- davidw 10y ago
  Yes, much of Europe provides an adequate supply of housing. It's not done via massive skyscrapers, but lots of 2/3/4 story buildings that make effective use of space.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    "Adequate" is being nice In the end, skyscrapers, while having problems, allow for bigger units (on average) in comparison to Europe
    - hx87 10y ago
      Adequate in Western Europe is adequate in the Bay Area or NYC. We're not talking about Hong Kong or Tokyo here.
      - uola 10y ago
        The unsurprising problem is that the bay area isn't one of the European cities that grew dense and people therefore like to take as an example. It's very like that if the bay area want to grow significantly it has to do so with a business district on mostly vacant land.
- dmix 10y ago
  I'd love if Toronto had more 5-story apartment buildings. I don't want to live in a giant condo having to take long elevators and pay expensive condo fees. But I hear it's nearly impossible to get regulatory approval to have those built here, it's either big high rise condos or nothing. Montreal's plateau has a nice arrangement. Plenty of 3-5 story houses built in the 1950-60s broken up into multiple apartments making it the highest density area in Canada. Rent is super cheap ($450/m got me a large bachelor unit a few years back that would have been around >$1000 in Toronto).
DashRattlesnake 10y ago
> If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. Or lots and lots of 3-6 story apartment buildings. IIRC, New York has achieved its very high population density that way.
narrator 10y ago
>If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. The thing about California is that people who live in the nicer parts of California are not trying to get anywhere. They are not trying to get richer, they are not trying to work hard to get somewhere else, they've made it. They don't need opportunity that comes with growth. They like their lifestyle, their open spaces and their prop 13 and they're going to keep it that way. Right now, there are huge amounts of very valuable land that are owned by open space trusts that will never be developed even though they are collectively worth billions. The point I'm trying to make is that, especially for people who live well in Northern and Southern California, there are some things that are more important than making another hundred million dollars and limiting development is one of them.
- intopieces 10y ago
  I look for you, or someone like you, in ever thread about California housing. It's the person who refuses to let the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme go unchecked. This is not about supply and demand. The politicians who deal with land-use regulation didn't "fail econ 101" as the assertion usually goes. The fact is, we are dealing with many different groups of people whose interests cannot be sufficiently explained by economics. It's more abstract than that. So let's please stop repeat "it's just simple supply and demand" like it somehow illuminates the issue to a degree not previously seen.
  - hx87 10y ago
    I'm confused. > It's the person who refuses to let the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme go unchecked. So the parent poster wants to debunk the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme? > This is not about supply and demand. So you're disagreeing with the parent poster, and saying that it's not about supply and demand, and thus implying that the parent poster said it's about supply and demand? Well, which one is it?
  - jtuente 10y ago
    That's still supply and demand though. You're simply giving a reason that isn't government regulation for more buildings that aren't going up.
m0llusk 10y ago
This does not follow. Regulating what types of building can be built does not inherently limit the total volume of buildings that can be built. Barcelona and Paris are mostly under ten stories and house a very large population with considerable efficiency. Currently most buildings in San Francisco are one or two stories tall. The real problem with regulations is much more difficult to characterize. How much money and expertise does it take to negotiate building regulations? How much time does it take or might it take? The article calls out limits to how much residential or office space can be built over a specified time as particularly damaging. Many developers highlight the ability for NIMBYs to draw out environmental hearings until projects get stressed and fail. Towers might be helpful in some cases, but are absolutely not needed. Indeed, research into the Bay Area suggests that the entire area functions as a unit. Because of the distribution of the population this means that the long hindered expansion of suburban downtowns is more relevant and critical to regional housing demand than what is going on in urban cores. Suburban cores do not need big towers, just the usual expansion. Large developments brought about by economic forces tend to be boxy and incrementally larger than existing buildings. Tall towers get built to house egos, not families or business operations.
- mabbo 10y ago
  I don't disagree with you that tall towers aren't the only way, but the overall point is the same: density must increase. There's very a fixed amount of land, and a growing population so homes / sqmi must increase to meet demand. Paris had hundreds of years of wanting high density because it pre-dates the age of cars. America (and Canada) were built assuming everyone would drive everywhere, low-density. If you say "Well, we'll slowly allow slightly taller buildings", you won't solve the problem quickly enough- that will take decades. Someone needs to have the willpower to tell the NIMBY's "sorry, yes in your back yard" and designate some area of town that is allowed to grow. Make a 5-10 year plan to add 50,000-100,000 residents to a 10x10 block area. Plan it to be a nice area you'd want to live in- the lower 2-3 floors of all buildings must be commercial. The owners who live there now will suddenly find they have good offers from developers who want to buy their homes and tear them down. And then repeat process until housing prices reflect sanity.
FT_intern 10y ago
I can sympathize with the families in Palo Alto/Menlo Park/etc. who have spent $$$ settling down, but I would be in favor of building tall apartment buildings around SF and SJ. IMO, the nuance here is to allow large apartment buildings in the cities, while enforcing stricter building requirements in the family oriented suburbs.
jseliger 10y ago
I don't get why this is surprising. The goal of nearly all of these regulations is, effectively, to prevent housing from being built People don't understand basic economics and like blaming everyone from transplants to foreigners to "greedy" developers to the rich to the poor to outsider corporations. The power of denial and ignorance is real. It leads people like me to write pieces like this: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu..., but education is slow and always a step behind instinct. People who already own property are also incentivized to prevent more units from being developed.
whyenot 10y ago
> If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. Develop all that open space on the peninsula, the east bay hills and the Marin headlands. Not only will it increase housing supply, but by removing all that space used for recreation, the bay area will become a less desirable place to live, and demand will also go down. According to basic economics, it's a win-win!
- khuey 10y ago
  The point of building dense cities is to not pave over the open space.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  I wonder why San Quentin has not been bulldozed yet. It is a blight sitting on prime Bay-front real estate.
sprakshu 10y ago
So I'm from Winnipeg. Not exactly a big city, and a very very sprawling one at that. There's maybe 15 or 20 high rise buildings downtown and the tallest one is (iirc) 32 storeys. I live in SF now. I consider this a 'large metro area'. Last year I spent a week in Vancouver and my mind was blown. There were condo towers _everywhere_ downtown. Meanwhile, the city population of Vancouver is SMALLER than Winnipeg, and the metro area hosts half the population of SF over a 5x larger land area (according to wikipedia). Yet there's condo towers all over the place there, and relatively few here. WTF. That's a kind of result that you only get with 40+ years of anti-growth politics

by mabbo 10y ago

dmix 10y ago

Toronto had a massive building boom [1] over the last 5-7 years that far outpaced Chicago, NYC, and Huston (something like #1 Toronto had 150 buildings v the closest #2 was 40 in Chicago being built). The construction on the hundreds of condos are just starting to be completed and condo prices actually went down for the first time in forever while housing prices continue to rise. SF housing crisis is entirely self-created. If it wasn't for zoning limitations they'd be one of the top 5 fastest growing city in North America no doubt. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/130-highrise-building-projects-in-toronto-lead-north-america-1.2504776 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/130-highrise-building-projec...

tostitos1979 10y ago
I recall reading somewhere that the downtown core actually has less condos than needed. TO should have built more apparently. They built a lot of condos further away and those condos are the ones that are decreasing/not going up. Also, since there are a lot of Toronto folks on this thread ... what are you folks doing if you don't own anything already? Prices are at an all time high but there is a general fear that if you don't buy now, you will be locked out forever. A data point there are condos in Gibson Square in North York for north of 650K. Seems insane but that is what the market is I suppose.
- nibs 10y ago
  Renting. People with the resources borrow money from family for down payments. People without borrow money from secondary lenders. My downtown condo up $50k/15% over the past 18 months but friends outside the core are flat or down.
- dmix 10y ago
  I'd personally invest money in businesses or building businesses. IMO real estate is for people without specialized technical talent (outside of handyman style work) or lots of extra cash needing a safe place to hold it. Regarding my living situation it makes more sense for me to rent, everyone I know who buys a house has spent tons of time and money fixing up their place. I'd rather invest those resources into a startup or consulting. Buying a condo might make sense at some point but I'm not really into condo living. If I go that route I'd want one with a pool and gym - which means a lot of extra condo fees, so I don't know if that ultimately makes financial sense. I'd be curious to see the numbers on that though.
- kitcar 10y ago
  What you read likely has to do with multi-individual/family focused dwellings. Toronto is currently overbuilt for single bed rooms, but under-built for units suitable for families. Anyways, as far as what to do - Patience. Most people in Toronto who have good/great credit have mortgages w/~2.4% interest rate and 5 or less year term. What that means is that a ~1% increase in rates would increase their annual interest expense by ~50%. Considering that the average house price is $1MM in the GTA, let's say the average downpayment is 20% (it's actually lower from what I've read...), and you're looking at a situation where if rates go up just 1%, the average new home owner is going to need to come up with an additional $8K / year after tax, so ~$11-16K before tax, in order to not default on their mortgage. With wages being as stagnant as they are in Canada, and the average Canadian being more in debt than they have ever been in the history of the country(1), you can imagine that there will at least be a couple of people who will no longer be able to afford the houses they are in and need to sell it off. 1)http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canadians-debt-burden-still-growing-hits-record-in-fourth-quarter/article29172712/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ca...
vonmoltke 10y ago
> Toronto had a massive building boom [1] over the last 5-7 years that far outpaced Chicago, NYC, and Huston (something like #1 Toronto had 150 buildings v the closest #2 was 40 in Chicago being built) South Florida gets ignored in articles like that, because the cities are so physically small[1]. As of December 2014, South Florida as a whole had built 20 new towers, started construction on 80 more, and had yet another 200 in some sort of planning or presale stage[2]. That is what you want to look at for an example of skyrocketing population density in land-constrained areas. [1] The largest city in South Florida is Miami, which is only 36sqmi. In contrast, Toronto is 244sqmi). [2] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article4816320.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article4...
- mabbo 10y ago
  I was going to reply that hey, that 244sqmi is the greater toronto area (GTA), but then I checked the wiki page, and well I'll be damned that's just the city itself. The GTA is 676 sqmi. What's really interesting is that the 244sqmi is full. There is room for maybe one or two more subdivision of houses, and then the only option is up (or another amalgamation with the neighbours, because that went so well last time).
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    Yeah, I checked to make sure I had the wright number before I posted. I don't have a good number for the tri-county core of South Florida, but I'd guess it is not much larger than the GTA. We hit the point of "no way but up" about 20 years ago. There are a few holdout family ranches, but other than that there is nowhere left to build that doesn't involve tearing down something else first. In some parts of my home county the school board has had to start cannibalizing parts of public parks in order to build new schools to support the population.
    - mabbo 10y ago
      The Toronto school board got clever: you tear down the school, build a 20-story building on top but the bottom 3 floors are a school and the other 17 are condos that you sell or rent. The board keeps their school in the area that needs it (minus a few tough years without it) and they make a profit selling or renting the condos!

kbenson 10y ago

> If California wants to lower their housing prices That's the rub, after you've constrained supply and inflated prices, there's a vested interest of those who've seen their values increase and those who bought at high values to not let them drop. This is especially important for those that bought at a high value, as if the worth of their house drops, then they can find themselves in a position where they owe much more than the house is worth. We've seen this situation before, not too long ago. It's not pretty. AFAICT, the trick is to manage growth effectively in an area through restrictions and incentives so that you try to stabilize house prices as much as possible (like the economy), such as tracking inflation and/or some other indicators. If you enact regulations that suppress new housing when demographics call for more of it, you need to offset that with incentives. The worst thing that can happen is that a group will wrest disproportionate control over housing policy for an extended period, and then the policies they enact through self interest spiral out of control and make the situation worse for everyone.

jdavis703 10y ago
Why can't you just live in the house? I mean it sucks when your investment doesn't work out, but at least you have a roof over your head. Isn't that all you really need (unless you're some kind of real estate mogul, in which case it's hard to feel bad since it's just business then).
- nostrademons 10y ago
  It works as long as you maintain the income you had when you qualified for the loan. The problem is that real-estate downturns are heavily correlated with economic downturns and job losses. The bloodbath isn't people with stable jobs suddenly wanting out of their homes because they're underwater (although you do sometimes get that too), it's people who buy a house they can barely afford and then lose their job.
- danhak 10y ago
  Real estate is usually leveraged. You don't simply get to keep living in a house if you are insolvent and owe more on the property than it is worth. See also: 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

mjevans 10y ago

They don't really need 50 story buildings, at least not a lot. What they DO need is to replace a lot of the single resident housing units with multiple-dwelling-units. Nice condos probably wouldn't be too bad. Better would be high-density mixed commercial / residential areas ringed by parks and with good transit connections.

davidw 10y ago
Yes, much of Europe provides an adequate supply of housing. It's not done via massive skyscrapers, but lots of 2/3/4 story buildings that make effective use of space.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  "Adequate" is being nice In the end, skyscrapers, while having problems, allow for bigger units (on average) in comparison to Europe
  - hx87 10y ago
    Adequate in Western Europe is adequate in the Bay Area or NYC. We're not talking about Hong Kong or Tokyo here.
    - uola 10y ago
      The unsurprising problem is that the bay area isn't one of the European cities that grew dense and people therefore like to take as an example. It's very like that if the bay area want to grow significantly it has to do so with a business district on mostly vacant land.
dmix 10y ago
I'd love if Toronto had more 5-story apartment buildings. I don't want to live in a giant condo having to take long elevators and pay expensive condo fees. But I hear it's nearly impossible to get regulatory approval to have those built here, it's either big high rise condos or nothing. Montreal's plateau has a nice arrangement. Plenty of 3-5 story houses built in the 1950-60s broken up into multiple apartments making it the highest density area in Canada. Rent is super cheap ($450/m got me a large bachelor unit a few years back that would have been around >$1000 in Toronto).

DashRattlesnake 10y ago

> If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. Or lots and lots of 3-6 story apartment buildings. IIRC, New York has achieved its very high population density that way.

narrator 10y ago

>If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. The thing about California is that people who live in the nicer parts of California are not trying to get anywhere. They are not trying to get richer, they are not trying to work hard to get somewhere else, they've made it. They don't need opportunity that comes with growth. They like their lifestyle, their open spaces and their prop 13 and they're going to keep it that way. Right now, there are huge amounts of very valuable land that are owned by open space trusts that will never be developed even though they are collectively worth billions. The point I'm trying to make is that, especially for people who live well in Northern and Southern California, there are some things that are more important than making another hundred million dollars and limiting development is one of them.

intopieces 10y ago
I look for you, or someone like you, in ever thread about California housing. It's the person who refuses to let the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme go unchecked. This is not about supply and demand. The politicians who deal with land-use regulation didn't "fail econ 101" as the assertion usually goes. The fact is, we are dealing with many different groups of people whose interests cannot be sufficiently explained by economics. It's more abstract than that. So let's please stop repeat "it's just simple supply and demand" like it somehow illuminates the issue to a degree not previously seen.
- hx87 10y ago
  I'm confused. > It's the person who refuses to let the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme go unchecked. So the parent poster wants to debunk the 'it's simple supply and demand' meme? > This is not about supply and demand. So you're disagreeing with the parent poster, and saying that it's not about supply and demand, and thus implying that the parent poster said it's about supply and demand? Well, which one is it?
- jtuente 10y ago
  That's still supply and demand though. You're simply giving a reason that isn't government regulation for more buildings that aren't going up.

m0llusk 10y ago

This does not follow. Regulating what types of building can be built does not inherently limit the total volume of buildings that can be built. Barcelona and Paris are mostly under ten stories and house a very large population with considerable efficiency. Currently most buildings in San Francisco are one or two stories tall. The real problem with regulations is much more difficult to characterize. How much money and expertise does it take to negotiate building regulations? How much time does it take or might it take? The article calls out limits to how much residential or office space can be built over a specified time as particularly damaging. Many developers highlight the ability for NIMBYs to draw out environmental hearings until projects get stressed and fail. Towers might be helpful in some cases, but are absolutely not needed. Indeed, research into the Bay Area suggests that the entire area functions as a unit. Because of the distribution of the population this means that the long hindered expansion of suburban downtowns is more relevant and critical to regional housing demand than what is going on in urban cores. Suburban cores do not need big towers, just the usual expansion. Large developments brought about by economic forces tend to be boxy and incrementally larger than existing buildings. Tall towers get built to house egos, not families or business operations.

mabbo 10y ago
I don't disagree with you that tall towers aren't the only way, but the overall point is the same: density must increase. There's very a fixed amount of land, and a growing population so homes / sqmi must increase to meet demand. Paris had hundreds of years of wanting high density because it pre-dates the age of cars. America (and Canada) were built assuming everyone would drive everywhere, low-density. If you say "Well, we'll slowly allow slightly taller buildings", you won't solve the problem quickly enough- that will take decades. Someone needs to have the willpower to tell the NIMBY's "sorry, yes in your back yard" and designate some area of town that is allowed to grow. Make a 5-10 year plan to add 50,000-100,000 residents to a 10x10 block area. Plan it to be a nice area you'd want to live in- the lower 2-3 floors of all buildings must be commercial. The owners who live there now will suddenly find they have good offers from developers who want to buy their homes and tear them down. And then repeat process until housing prices reflect sanity.

FT_intern 10y ago

I can sympathize with the families in Palo Alto/Menlo Park/etc. who have spent $$$ settling down, but I would be in favor of building tall apartment buildings around SF and SJ. IMO, the nuance here is to allow large apartment buildings in the cities, while enforcing stricter building requirements in the family oriented suburbs.

jseliger 10y ago

I don't get why this is surprising. The goal of nearly all of these regulations is, effectively, to prevent housing from being built People don't understand basic economics and like blaming everyone from transplants to foreigners to "greedy" developers to the rich to the poor to outsider corporations. The power of denial and ignorance is real. It leads people like me to write pieces like this: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu..., but education is slow and always a step behind instinct. People who already own property are also incentivized to prevent more units from being developed.

whyenot 10y ago

> If California wants to lower their housing prices, they need to have supply match demand. To do that, they need 50 story buildings. A lot of them. And they need to start soon, because they take years to build. Develop all that open space on the peninsula, the east bay hills and the Marin headlands. Not only will it increase housing supply, but by removing all that space used for recreation, the bay area will become a less desirable place to live, and demand will also go down. According to basic economics, it's a win-win!

khuey 10y ago
The point of building dense cities is to not pave over the open space.
cpeterso 10y ago
I wonder why San Quentin has not been bulldozed yet. It is a blight sitting on prime Bay-front real estate.

sprakshu 10y ago

So I'm from Winnipeg. Not exactly a big city, and a very very sprawling one at that. There's maybe 15 or 20 high rise buildings downtown and the tallest one is (iirc) 32 storeys. I live in SF now. I consider this a 'large metro area'. Last year I spent a week in Vancouver and my mind was blown. There were condo towers _everywhere_ downtown. Meanwhile, the city population of Vancouver is SMALLER than Winnipeg, and the metro area hosts half the population of SF over a 5x larger land area (according to wikipedia). Yet there's condo towers all over the place there, and relatively few here. WTF. That's a kind of result that you only get with 40+ years of anti-growth politics