If you look at the original plans for the 16th Street/Mission Station, you'll see it was intended to be built as part of a multi-use complex with housing, offic

If you look at the original plans for the 16th Street/Mission Station, you'll see it was intended to be built as part of a multi-use complex with housing, offices and shops. This was killed off in the wake of community opposition that it would---among other things---destroy the character of the neighborhood because of how the urban renewal projects in San Francisco of the 1970s came to be seen as threatening the very thing YIMBY seems to be trying to restore: affordable housing. The real problem seems to be that people have forgotten why certain rules were put in place. BART was largely built as a cut and fill effort; this caused very real problems for businesses along Market and Mission as it was being built since they were harder to get to. It is likely that most people in San Francisco were quite aware of another famous victim of urban renewal in Santa Monica and what it could do to the character of a neighborhood. Coupled with what was happening with the redevelopment in South of Market and the Financial District, it is understandable that voters decided to pull the brakes on this nonsense. The problem, of course, is that like tax cuts, these rules are nigh impossible to revise once in place even if the situation has changed.