5 ms·
Transportation is only a part of the puzzle. Where would you fit more millions of people in downtown San Francisco? The upside of this is decentralization, not
by alecco 9y ago
Transportation is only a part of the puzzle. Where would you fit more millions of people in downtown San Francisco?
The upside of this is decentralization, not more concentration.
- paulsutter 9y agoThe result is both decentralization /and/ concentration. Streets and parking are a huge waste of space, so higher concentration will be better livability (less noise, pedestrians can own the surface, and let's face it, streets full of cars are ugly)
- samstave 9y agostreets and parking are a waste because we dont stack them or require that every building include at least three levels of parking as the bottom of each building...
- coenhyde 9y agoI'm not sure where this notion that cities run out of space comes from. We've always had high land utilization in cities. But the cities still grow, they grow by replacing low density residences with higher density residences. So forth and so forth. If a city can't grow by building up then that's most likely a zoning issue.
- dionidium 9y ago"Where would you fit more millions of people in downtown San Francisco?" What has led you to believe this is a difficult problem? The impediments to density in San Francisco are regulatory. At Brooklyn's density the city would have 1.6 million people. At Paris's density? 2.5 million. I deliberately chose those places because they're not dominated by skyscrapers. People talk about the "housing crisis" using the language of natural disasters. But this is just people deciding not to build more housing. No more or less.
- spankalee 9y agoDecentralization is not an upside, we should be _more_ concentrated, not less. It's much more efficient.
- jseliger 9y agoWhere would you fit more millions of people in downtown San Francisco? In buildings. It's really not that hard: https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housing-costs-solutions-elevators https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin... or http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/03/silicon_valley_housing_boom_there_s_no_such_thing.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/03/silicon_valle... . It's just illegal, right now, to build the buildings that people want to occupy. Make it legal and lots more people will live in SF and environs.
- m-j-fox 9y agoCould someone explain why we need more SF? It's cold and damp. Why don't we make more San Jose? I used to live in SF for the sex. Now I'm in SJ for the weather. Question: why can't we just have sex in San Jose?
- samstave 9y agoSingapore is the city to study. They build massive underground connections, malls, transport etc as they grow. They have massive setbacks to the buildings which allow for it to have a crap ton of trees and plants all between buildings... they plan to double their population and are building smartly. But, as with any city - the income disparity and the cost of living is high - but all cities need affordable labor as well as economic opportunity.