7 ms·

High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily

High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage. Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,171.61h,76.92t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D48.55154%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,... There's nothing in this photo worth preserving.

maxsilver 10y ago
> There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. In the Midwest, if someone built that photo (exactly) it would get called a strong downtown urban design, and the builder would be praised for creating "missing middle" housing.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Well I heard there's a couple of nice towns in the midwest, like Chicago :-) Even in the most reactionary fringes of the midwest people are starting to realize that exurban sprawl isn't working. See for example http://newsok.com/article/5505468 http://newsok.com/article/5505468
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Chicago is the best city in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They have nothing to compare. I'd live there except the lack of mountains, lack of an ocean (surfing doesn't work on the Great Lakes even though they're beautiful), and freezing winters + hot humid Summer's would kill me. I can't go back to that. West coast; best coast.
lr 10y ago
Yes, it is a suburb inside of a city. And the inhabitants of that area of The City like it that way. The people who live in the Sunset and Richmond form very powerful political blocks, and you're going to have to do a lot to unseat their representatives on the Board of Supervisors.
- lr 10y ago
  Maybe start-ups can convince their employees to move to the Sunset with the singular goal of voting in a pro-growth person to the Board of Supervisors. You can do this one district at a time.
  - meddlepal 10y ago
    Or startups could just go to cheaper COL cities.
    - cag_ii 10y ago
      It's strange how far out of the way people will go to avoid the obvious.
- Decade 10y ago
  Actually, Katy Tang, the Supervisor from the Sunset, is a major proponent of building more. Unlike many of the other Supervisors, Katy Tang is actually looking out for the good of the local economy. Now, Eric Mar, the Supervisor from the Richmond. This is a man I detest.
Camillo 10y ago
Right, the notion that there is no room in SF is a complete lie. The Sunset and the Richmond could be completely razed to the ground and rebuilt at mid-rise density.
- cag_ii 10y ago
  Wow, do you read what your writing? Razing a neighborhood like some sort of conquering force?!
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    Yeah, we can't do that right? Not to well-off, straight, white people! https://hoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/image/15213/WA1947projectarea.jpg https://hoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/i... http://www.janetdelaney.com/south-of-market/ http://www.janetdelaney.com/south-of-market/ http://oaklandplanninghistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/1/1/18111613/753279502.jpg?1362649042 http://oaklandplanninghistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/1/1/181...
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      Richmond always feels distinctly Asian to me. "In the Richmond District neighborhood in San Francisco, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (50.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (10.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (6.9%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (4.5%), along with some Russian ancestry residents (4.1%), among others. In addition, 35.2% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country." http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/richmond-district/ http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/richmond-d...
      - honkhonkpants 10y ago
        You're right about that. In light of history I was using "white" to mean "not black". Over the decade we haven't seen any problem in displacing black people by the thousands to build even things that weren't worth having, like the Cypress freeway and the Western Addition.
rhino369 10y ago
But a couple 45 story buildings will mean you don't have to put up a 5 story building on every corner. Or do both and make it really affordable. You also have to consider that decreasing cost in SF will lead to increased demand.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  A 45-story building is much more expensive than 9 5-story buildings and causes localized transportation problems. You really want your housing, jobs, education, retail, and leisure spread around such that people can conduct most or all of their daily affairs on foot.
  - nerfhammer 10y ago
    If you want people to be able conduct all of your daily affairs on foot 45 story buildings are the way to go.
    - honkhonkpants 10y ago
      There are examples of that working and there are examples of shorter heights working equally well. I enjoy them both (Manhattan and Paris as examples of the two types) but what SF is doing doesn't really work for me. All the high rise residences are being built in a small area south of Market, but in the same neighborhoods there's nothing to do, nothing to eat, no public spaces. It's not very livable.
      - 3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
        I can't agree, there are lots of restaurants in SOMA as well as the city's best nightlife IMO.
        honkhonkpants 10y ago
        Nightlife I'll grant you. But I bet if you moved into the new apartments on Beale and Folsom you'd take an Uber everywhere, because there's nowhere to eat lunch on a Saturday within half a mile, and the nightlife is 1.5+ miles away.
stale2002 10y ago
The problem with building mid sized apartments everywhere, is that now you have to be involved in political fights everywhere. With high rise buildings, all you need to do is convince ONE place to build a bunch of them. Perhaps in a place such as south SOMA, which is packed with industrial warehouses that could be replaced with apartment sky scrapers. Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Agreed. I hate how people keep casually mentioning that "oh, you could just build up n% of the low-rise areas", as if convincing all those neighborhoods to go along with it and replacing all those buildings were somehow easier -- politically or otherwise -- than 20 SoMa/FiDi high-rises.
  - baddox 10y ago
    Ideally the political solution would be only a single step that allows property owners to build x-story buildings in certain zones. That shouldn't require the persuasion of every single neighborhood, because "neighborhood" shouldn't be a political unit with the ability to stop a property owner from building a structure that is permitted by the larger government's (i.e. the city's) zoning laws.
- cbhl 10y ago
  > Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced. FWIW, the city thinks that warehouses and auto body shops are an important part of its jobs plan for non-techies. Apparently it pays better than working in the service industry.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  >Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced. Well, there was a decent uproar when a large wholesale flower market was slated to be shut down.
WildUtah 10y ago
I can see the problems in that picture. +street five times too wide +snout houses with huge garages and driveways but few yards and porches +low rise housing with one floor devoted to parking in a high demand area +not nearly enough trees +no street corner retail But if you think that's bad, you should see 98% of the United States where it's much worse than the worst of San Francisco.
- 2k03kv4r5p 10y ago
  Those homes have yards, porches, and trees in the back (check the overhead view), and often rooms on the same floor as the garage (which is one car wide). This set-up is clearly not ideal but it's more efficient than the large unused front lawns present in most US suburbs.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    It's also how they do it in Montreal and parts of Europe. Check out "Avenue de Chateaubriand, Montréal, Québec H2S 2N8, Canada" . They even have alleys for pairing and the bins so those don't have to sit out on the street (there is also street parking in some areas).
rayiner 10y ago
> There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. Holy crap. Every inch of ground is covered in concrete yet it looks like less actual housing than say a rowhouse neighborhood like: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d2a119e4b03323486a5ebd/569d67a0a2bab85eade05c07/569fc515b20943c5200a8305/1454956569699/yellowhead.jpg?format=1000w http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d2a119e4b03323486a5e...

maxsilver 10y ago

> There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. In the Midwest, if someone built that photo (exactly) it would get called a strong downtown urban design, and the builder would be praised for creating "missing middle" housing.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
Well I heard there's a couple of nice towns in the midwest, like Chicago :-) Even in the most reactionary fringes of the midwest people are starting to realize that exurban sprawl isn't working. See for example http://newsok.com/article/5505468 http://newsok.com/article/5505468
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Chicago is the best city in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They have nothing to compare. I'd live there except the lack of mountains, lack of an ocean (surfing doesn't work on the Great Lakes even though they're beautiful), and freezing winters + hot humid Summer's would kill me. I can't go back to that. West coast; best coast.

lr 10y ago

Yes, it is a suburb inside of a city. And the inhabitants of that area of The City like it that way. The people who live in the Sunset and Richmond form very powerful political blocks, and you're going to have to do a lot to unseat their representatives on the Board of Supervisors.

lr 10y ago
Maybe start-ups can convince their employees to move to the Sunset with the singular goal of voting in a pro-growth person to the Board of Supervisors. You can do this one district at a time.
- meddlepal 10y ago
  Or startups could just go to cheaper COL cities.
  - cag_ii 10y ago
    It's strange how far out of the way people will go to avoid the obvious.
Decade 10y ago
Actually, Katy Tang, the Supervisor from the Sunset, is a major proponent of building more. Unlike many of the other Supervisors, Katy Tang is actually looking out for the good of the local economy. Now, Eric Mar, the Supervisor from the Richmond. This is a man I detest.

Camillo 10y ago

Right, the notion that there is no room in SF is a complete lie. The Sunset and the Richmond could be completely razed to the ground and rebuilt at mid-rise density.

cag_ii 10y ago
Wow, do you read what your writing? Razing a neighborhood like some sort of conquering force?!
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Yeah, we can't do that right? Not to well-off, straight, white people! https://hoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/image/15213/WA1947projectarea.jpg https://hoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/i... http://www.janetdelaney.com/south-of-market/ http://www.janetdelaney.com/south-of-market/ http://oaklandplanninghistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/1/1/18111613/753279502.jpg?1362649042 http://oaklandplanninghistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/1/1/181...
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Richmond always feels distinctly Asian to me. "In the Richmond District neighborhood in San Francisco, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (50.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (10.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (6.9%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (4.5%), along with some Russian ancestry residents (4.1%), among others. In addition, 35.2% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country." http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/richmond-district/ http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/richmond-d...
    - honkhonkpants 10y ago
      You're right about that. In light of history I was using "white" to mean "not black". Over the decade we haven't seen any problem in displacing black people by the thousands to build even things that weren't worth having, like the Cypress freeway and the Western Addition.

rhino369 10y ago

But a couple 45 story buildings will mean you don't have to put up a 5 story building on every corner. Or do both and make it really affordable. You also have to consider that decreasing cost in SF will lead to increased demand.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
A 45-story building is much more expensive than 9 5-story buildings and causes localized transportation problems. You really want your housing, jobs, education, retail, and leisure spread around such that people can conduct most or all of their daily affairs on foot.
- nerfhammer 10y ago
  If you want people to be able conduct all of your daily affairs on foot 45 story buildings are the way to go.
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    There are examples of that working and there are examples of shorter heights working equally well. I enjoy them both (Manhattan and Paris as examples of the two types) but what SF is doing doesn't really work for me. All the high rise residences are being built in a small area south of Market, but in the same neighborhoods there's nothing to do, nothing to eat, no public spaces. It's not very livable.
    - 3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
      I can't agree, there are lots of restaurants in SOMA as well as the city's best nightlife IMO.
      - honkhonkpants 10y ago
        Nightlife I'll grant you. But I bet if you moved into the new apartments on Beale and Folsom you'd take an Uber everywhere, because there's nowhere to eat lunch on a Saturday within half a mile, and the nightlife is 1.5+ miles away.

stale2002 10y ago

The problem with building mid sized apartments everywhere, is that now you have to be involved in political fights everywhere. With high rise buildings, all you need to do is convince ONE place to build a bunch of them. Perhaps in a place such as south SOMA, which is packed with industrial warehouses that could be replaced with apartment sky scrapers. Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced.

SilasX 10y ago
Agreed. I hate how people keep casually mentioning that "oh, you could just build up n% of the low-rise areas", as if convincing all those neighborhoods to go along with it and replacing all those buildings were somehow easier -- politically or otherwise -- than 20 SoMa/FiDi high-rises.
- baddox 10y ago
  Ideally the political solution would be only a single step that allows property owners to build x-story buildings in certain zones. That shouldn't require the persuasion of every single neighborhood, because "neighborhood" shouldn't be a political unit with the ability to stop a property owner from building a structure that is permitted by the larger government's (i.e. the city's) zoning laws.
cbhl 10y ago
> Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced. FWIW, the city thinks that warehouses and auto body shops are an important part of its jobs plan for non-techies. Apparently it pays better than working in the service industry.
hkmurakami 10y ago
>Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced. Well, there was a decent uproar when a large wholesale flower market was slated to be shut down.

WildUtah 10y ago

I can see the problems in that picture. +street five times too wide +snout houses with huge garages and driveways but few yards and porches +low rise housing with one floor devoted to parking in a high demand area +not nearly enough trees +no street corner retail But if you think that's bad, you should see 98% of the United States where it's much worse than the worst of San Francisco.

2k03kv4r5p 10y ago
Those homes have yards, porches, and trees in the back (check the overhead view), and often rooms on the same floor as the garage (which is one car wide). This set-up is clearly not ideal but it's more efficient than the large unused front lawns present in most US suburbs.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  It's also how they do it in Montreal and parts of Europe. Check out "Avenue de Chateaubriand, Montréal, Québec H2S 2N8, Canada" . They even have alleys for pairing and the bins so those don't have to sit out on the street (there is also street parking in some areas).

rayiner 10y ago

> There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. Holy crap. Every inch of ground is covered in concrete yet it looks like less actual housing than say a rowhouse neighborhood like: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d2a119e4b03323486a5ebd/569d67a0a2bab85eade05c07/569fc515b20943c5200a8305/1454956569699/yellowhead.jpg?format=1000w http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d2a119e4b03323486a5e...