4 ms·

It all comes back to money. People who've seen 20x returns on their property value want to keep the money, people who've spent $5m on a small house want to just

by ng12 10y ago

It all comes back to money. People who've seen 20x returns on their property value want to keep the money, people who've spent $5m on a small house want to justify that investment, and landlords want to keep renting their shoebox studio for $3k/mo. Arguments about neighborhood character are just trying to obscure the obvious greed.

EduardoBautista 10y ago
Just a random opinion from someone who doesn't live in SF: I like to visit SF because of the architecture. It really is what makes it unique in the United States. It would be a shame to lose that.
- tdaltonc 10y ago
  It's possible to have municipal deign standard for public facades, but still build new stuff.
- ng12 10y ago
  Nobody is asking to bulldoze the Painted Ladies or Lombard. The problem is more about the Sunset, the Richmond, Forest Hills, Excelsior -- just these huge sweeping neighborhoods which are incredibly underzoned and underdeveloped. Or the people who fight development in SOMA because it blocks part of their view.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    Sunset is the strangest place I've ever seen from the air. A totally regular grid of housing with no almost no open spaces at all. Maybe you can't see it from the air but are there even community spaces where people gather? I can't even see any shopping or restaurant areas. It's all just regular roads. I can't imagine how you could make it any more developed. There isn't an inch of breathing space is there? If you built up how would anyone get around? In higher rise places even like London there are parks and a variety of spaces and variation in the layout to get around the extra vertical density.
    - troygoode 10y ago
      I live in the Sunset. We have plenty of small parks and the Sunset runs the entire length of the enormous Golden Gate park, which stretches across half the city. There are plenty of restaurants and shops, most of which is not yet gentrified, and they just fit into the regular grid as mixed-use urban buildings (restaurant on the street level, apartments on the floor(s) above. There are no strip malls, big box stores, etc. Like much of the city, developing it further would likely mean building "up", yes. There are also an enormous number of single family homes in the Sunset, some of which could be converted into multi family apartment buildings to increase density. All that said, I'm not clear on how you'd actually accomplish the above. My family and I live here BECAUSE we wanted a single family home, a backyard, etc. SF obviously needs a vast increase in residential availability, but I'm certainly not the guy to ask about how to make it happen.
      - chrisseaton 10y ago
        I'm sure it must be nice on the ground in reality as so many people want to live there, but it looks positively dystopian on a satellite image. Hundreds and hundreds of identical crammed blocks on a rigid grid with no green spaces in them. It looks like in some places you'd have to walk six blocks to reach any kind of open space. Other big cities like London are crowded as well but at least no two streets are the same and there's always some breathing space.
- blackguardx 10y ago
  There is some good architecture in San Francisco, but there are many areas with absolutely terrible architecture. I can't imagine this proposal will produce worse architecture than what already exists.
1_2__3 10y ago
That is staggeringly presumptuous of you to claim, lacking a shred of evidence (or, for that matter, empathy).
mruniverse 10y ago
One person's greed is another person's "just trying to cover the mortgage".
tzs 10y ago
I think that is an overly simplistic view. There are plenty of people who live in a given city, or a given neighborhood in a city, because it was a good fit for the kind of place they wanted to live. In many non-tech fields jobs aren't concentrated so heavily in just a couple of cities. You can decide what you are looking for in terms of climate, commute, recreation, culture, transportation, and so on, find a city and neighborhood that has that, and then go there and find a job. These people often pick a place to live, with the intent of staying there for the rest of their working life, and raising their families there. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with greed when they oppose changes to the factors that led them to be there in the first place, especially when the people who want that change are people who came there not because they particularly wanted to live there but rather because some company they wanted to work for requires its employees to live there, and those people have no intention of staying long term. Next time I move, I'm going to be looking for a place with reasonably dark sky, good bicycling, a climate that is warm enough that I mostly don't need to turn on the heat, low enough density that if I want to listen to music or watch a movie at 3 AM I won't be bothering my neighbors (and vice versa), a decent chess within 60 miles, and good internet access. You can bet afterwards I'll vote against change that would change any of those, even if the proposed changes would raise the value of my property, because I'd be buying the property as a home, not as an investment that I can incidentally live in.

by ng12 10y ago

EduardoBautista 10y ago

Just a random opinion from someone who doesn't live in SF: I like to visit SF because of the architecture. It really is what makes it unique in the United States. It would be a shame to lose that.

tdaltonc 10y ago
It's possible to have municipal deign standard for public facades, but still build new stuff.
ng12 10y ago
Nobody is asking to bulldoze the Painted Ladies or Lombard. The problem is more about the Sunset, the Richmond, Forest Hills, Excelsior -- just these huge sweeping neighborhoods which are incredibly underzoned and underdeveloped. Or the people who fight development in SOMA because it blocks part of their view.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  Sunset is the strangest place I've ever seen from the air. A totally regular grid of housing with no almost no open spaces at all. Maybe you can't see it from the air but are there even community spaces where people gather? I can't even see any shopping or restaurant areas. It's all just regular roads. I can't imagine how you could make it any more developed. There isn't an inch of breathing space is there? If you built up how would anyone get around? In higher rise places even like London there are parks and a variety of spaces and variation in the layout to get around the extra vertical density.
  - troygoode 10y ago
    I live in the Sunset. We have plenty of small parks and the Sunset runs the entire length of the enormous Golden Gate park, which stretches across half the city. There are plenty of restaurants and shops, most of which is not yet gentrified, and they just fit into the regular grid as mixed-use urban buildings (restaurant on the street level, apartments on the floor(s) above. There are no strip malls, big box stores, etc. Like much of the city, developing it further would likely mean building "up", yes. There are also an enormous number of single family homes in the Sunset, some of which could be converted into multi family apartment buildings to increase density. All that said, I'm not clear on how you'd actually accomplish the above. My family and I live here BECAUSE we wanted a single family home, a backyard, etc. SF obviously needs a vast increase in residential availability, but I'm certainly not the guy to ask about how to make it happen.
    - chrisseaton 10y ago
      I'm sure it must be nice on the ground in reality as so many people want to live there, but it looks positively dystopian on a satellite image. Hundreds and hundreds of identical crammed blocks on a rigid grid with no green spaces in them. It looks like in some places you'd have to walk six blocks to reach any kind of open space. Other big cities like London are crowded as well but at least no two streets are the same and there's always some breathing space.
blackguardx 10y ago
There is some good architecture in San Francisco, but there are many areas with absolutely terrible architecture. I can't imagine this proposal will produce worse architecture than what already exists.

1_2__3 10y ago

That is staggeringly presumptuous of you to claim, lacking a shred of evidence (or, for that matter, empathy).

mruniverse 10y ago

One person's greed is another person's "just trying to cover the mortgage".

tzs 10y ago

I think that is an overly simplistic view. There are plenty of people who live in a given city, or a given neighborhood in a city, because it was a good fit for the kind of place they wanted to live. In many non-tech fields jobs aren't concentrated so heavily in just a couple of cities. You can decide what you are looking for in terms of climate, commute, recreation, culture, transportation, and so on, find a city and neighborhood that has that, and then go there and find a job. These people often pick a place to live, with the intent of staying there for the rest of their working life, and raising their families there. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with greed when they oppose changes to the factors that led them to be there in the first place, especially when the people who want that change are people who came there not because they particularly wanted to live there but rather because some company they wanted to work for requires its employees to live there, and those people have no intention of staying long term. Next time I move, I'm going to be looking for a place with reasonably dark sky, good bicycling, a climate that is warm enough that I mostly don't need to turn on the heat, low enough density that if I want to listen to music or watch a movie at 3 AM I won't be bothering my neighbors (and vice versa), a decent chess within 60 miles, and good internet access. You can bet afterwards I'll vote against change that would change any of those, even if the proposed changes would raise the value of my property, because I'd be buying the property as a home, not as an investment that I can incidentally live in.