Most repliers are missing the point. I'm not arguing for turning the city into suburbs. Nobody is arguing for this, I'm arguing against turning the suburbs into a city, which is what most of these development fights are about.
Say I like suburbs. I move into a suburb. I expect a suburban life when I do that. My neighbors expect a suburban life. Now developers want to roll in and stack apartment buildings all over the place. If we argue against this, we're apparently terrible NIMBYs, opponents of affordable housing and stooges of the wealthy landed elite.
I'll turn the argument around. If you want to pack yourselves into cities, go move into cities. Go build more dense apartments in the cities. Why are the aesthetic preferences of suburban dwellers invalid and the aesthetic preferences of city dwellers valid?
If we argue against this, we're apparently terrible NIMBYs, opponents of affordable housing and stooges of the wealthy landed elite.
Yes, exactly. You are putting your aesthetic preferences above the property rights of landowners to do what they want with their own property as well as the ability of other people to find affordable housing. You're also (in most cases) using the power of the state to push up the value of your home and put money in your pocket.
This isn't really up for debate. That is literally what you are doing (in this theoretical scenario).
Now, maybe doing that is good. Maybe that is ok. Maybe those values are fine. But you have to confront the reality here.
Why are the aesthetic preferences of suburban dwellers invalid and the aesthetic preferences of city dwellers valid?
The aesthetic preferences of no one are valid. If someone wants to buy a plot of land in the middle of NYC and build a single family home on it they are free to do so as long as they have the cash.
Property rights have limits. You can't open a stinky pig farm or a loud car repair shop on your property. One of the purposes of local government is for local people to band together to set the ground rules for what's allowed in their local community. Within limits of course--people shouldn't be able to exclude based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
There are lots of communities. If you don't like the rules of one of them, try one of the many others. How is it that residents agreeing they don't want something around is a bad use of the "power of the state," yet coming in and forcing the locals to accept something they don't want around is an acceptable use of the power of the state?
The government isn't forcing locals to accept anything. If no local landowners want to build denser housing no one is forcing them to do it. You've mischaracterized what is going on here.
The default mode of government should be to get out of the way unless there is a super compelling interest to do otherwise. I don't believe that the desire of people to live in unchanging suburbs is all that compelling. We living in a country with a growing and urbanizing population. These changes might make some people sad. Tough.
> Within limits of course--people shouldn't be able to exclude based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
California statistics indicates that artificially constraining housing supply has created housing costs that in effect limits access to the rare opportunities found here to blacks and latinos as well as the poor.
It makes it almost impossible to grow up with lower middle class parents or work in a low-pay low-skilled position, and mingling with the tech crowd to work your way up.
* A snapshot of more recent U.S. Census migration numbers shows that nearly three-quarters of those who have left California for other states since 2007 earn less than $50k a year.
* San Francisco's African American population has declined from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to 6.1%
* 41 percent of San Franciscans spend 30 to 50 percent on rent, despite a lot of rent control for longer-tenure residents and a population average income being $104k as well as median $77k
* low skilled entry level jobs are moved elsewhere https://www.google.com.tw/amp/s/www.wired.com/2016/03/those-.. https://www.google.com.tw/amp/s/www.wired.com/2016/03/those-....
I understand that this might not be the intended consequence for all people fighting for the current zoning rules, but due to its effects on blacks and latinos as well as the poor I find the effects immoral.
Anyone supporting these policies knowing this has the right to do so, but not while at the same time claiming they fight for diversity and the dispossessed.
We aren't prioritizing the "aesthetic preference" of the suburbs over the city. We're prioritizing the rights of those who own the real estate in question over those who don't, but live nearby.
The aesthetic of suburbia is exclusion. That's what makes it less valid. It's reaping the benefits of access to the city while minimizing the number of others who can do the same. There's nothing wrong with liking solitude, but there's everything wrong with insisting that we preserve your solitude on the most central/best connected land, no matter the cost to everyone else.
SF's unoccupied blocks are pretty much built out by now. Everywhere with preexisting residents is the same: I came here because I liked the neighborhood as it is, it can never be allowed to change.
Cities aren't plopped down out of the sky fully formed. They're living organisms, built by expanding iteratively and incrementally. The city that's already been built is full. For more people to live in city, we need to make more of it. Aside from a fire or earthquake providing a clean slate, intensifying the suburbs with the best access is essentially the only way that happens.
This would be fine, except that economic growth is increasingly accruing to a handful of cities whose zoning is a big Keep Out sign.
Have you ever been to Los Angeles (the actual city in question)? It is a city of suburbs. Excepting the metaphorical postage stamp of downtown and some highrise development along a few corridors, Los Angeles is basically 4 million people packed into a little less than 500 square miles of nothing but single-family home "suburban" development. Nobody living in Los Angeles believes that they live in a suburb, they believe that they live in a low-density city.
Hmm, where do cities come from? Did all the big cities stand right where they are now when the humans first came to the planet?
Cities grow when people go there and settle down. When cities grow, the suburbs turn into parts of the cities and new suburbs come into being. That is called progress.
If you really love suburbs, like GP says, move into a new suburb. Do not try to hinder progress.
In the SFBA, the land use issues with suburbs are that most of them are building far more office space than housing and thus the jobs-housing balance is out of whack. A suburb like cupertino, that’s builds office space for 12k workers (the Apple campus), and then received payroll taxes for those 12k workers, needs to accept that they also must build living quarters for and provide social services to those 12k workers, as opposed to the status quo, where they floist the responsibility and costs onto neighboring communities while hoarding the benefits (taxes from large commercial spaces).
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> I'll turn the argument around. If you want to pack yourselves into cities, go move into cities.
The similar situation would be: you want to live in a dense urban neighborhood, but instead of moving to the city, you get a law passed that requires any new buildings in your suburban neighborhood to be a mid-rise condo. It's not a question of whose aesthetic preferences are more valid, but whether it's legitimate to invoke aesthetic preferences to limit peoples' property rights.