I'm not familiar with Austin, but if it's anything like most other cities, the growth is not happening at the peripheries of the city limits. It's happening in

I'm not familiar with Austin, but if it's anything like most other cities, the growth is not happening at the peripheries of the city limits. It's happening in the inner urban core or well outside city limits at the edges of the metro, where there's nobody to object. In SF proper most development is happening in the South of Market Neighborhood, an old industrial/warehouse district walking distance from downtown. The other areas seeing substantial growth are in far eastern Contra Costa County (Antioch, Brentwood, etc) which is a 90 minute commute from downtown SF. In the Bay Area nearly all the land between downtown SF and the exurbs is either protected park/watershed land or is filled with existing low-density suburban communities who object vociferously to any new development. In San Francisco much of the city was downzoned in the 70s and 80s so that even the existing structures would be too dense, tall, or otherwise non-compliant for today's codes. That 3500 homes per year is setting a record since the mid-60s just shows how little development there has been. San Francisco has about 350000 existing homes, so that's a growth rate of 1% a year. That's only slightly above the rate of population growth nationwide, and doesn't account for the neighboring communities that have zero growth (Palo Alto, all of Marin County) or migration that would like to join the enormous economic boom going on here.