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Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop

Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it even that pleasant. Much of SV looks like it did in the 1970s, and you have to sit in a half hour plus of traffic if you want to do anything. I think we would be in pretty good shape if maybe we didn’t go to the extremes, but took a housing model more like Paris, London, or Amsterdam. We can limit heights, but still build dense and create a place people really want to live in.

stevenwoo 9y ago
Mountain View has done a decent job on the streets near me on San Antonio with a lot of three-four story apartments/retail going up versus say Palo Alto or Los Altos right next door. The mall going under around the same time helped of course.
prawn 9y ago
On my first trip to Hong Kong (decades ago, as a teenager) I remember my family stayed in a hotel with a shopping centre on the lower levels. You took an elevator down from your room that literally opened out into a supermarket, food court, department store, etc. I remember thinking it was awesome. Add other facilities within enjoyable walking distance and you're laughing, for those keen to live with that density.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I don’t see why people think HK is a bad model, sure Kowloon walled City was bad, but modern HK is quite nice. I also got the impression that Dubai wasn’t very walkable, but I’ve never been there.
  - dlwdlw 9y ago
    It takes time to build up a high density culture. Thicker skin, a bit more aloofness, etc.. many run counter to what is considered "good" in sparser area.
    - ShorsHammer 9y ago
      I've seen people run to strangers aid in the biggest cities on earth. Perhaps "aloofness" is just more acceptable to some.
      - fnord123 9y ago
        In my experience in London, the people living in the centre are not aloof, but it's the commuters who switch off their brains on the train or in the car and forget to switch it back on when they're in town. But that's an extremely broad brush, so don't take the categorization to heart.
        naravara 9y ago
        In DC the natives are plenty friendly. It’s the suburban transplants who moved here from elsewhere who tend to be wrapped up in themselves.
      - s0rce 9y ago
        I found this wasn't universal. Grew up in relatively unfriendly (especially for a Canadian city) Toronto and then moved to Chicago, found people were much more outgoing and friendly in the midwest, even in the city. In the bay area now and it seems like spending too much time driving with other angry drivers (from themselves spending too much time driving) makes everyone irritable.
  - lisper 9y ago
    I've travelled all over the world and lived in LA for 22 years. Dubai is the least walkable city I've ever seen by a wide margin. It would hold that title even if the weather did not already make it feel like hell on earth.
jsolson 9y ago
If by mixed do you just mean residential over retail? Is the Bay Area actually opposed to that?
- pkaye 9y ago
  Not sure about Mountain View but I've seen a bunch of new complexes in San Jose and Santa Clara with the residential over retail construction.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  yes, it's opposed but it's not usually for that reason, more often has to do with height or traffic. two recent examples: - adjacent to Millbrae BART/Caltrain https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/millbrae-station-project-draws-community-ire/article_f00f6358-0190-11e8-a734-6f2b5bdb2c6b.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/millbrae-station-p... - adjacent to Hayward Park Caltrain in San Mateo https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/major-mixed-use-housing-proposed-for-san-mateo/article_d9171ca4-e476-11e7-be8a-77367bc1a1a4.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/major-mixed-use-ho...
- DrScump 9y ago
  The "Two Worlds" development on El Camino in Mountain View, which is residential over ground-floor retail, is at least 30 years old.
- refurb 9y ago
  I'd be worried you'd never fill the retail on the ground level. The small neighborhoods that have the retail/residential buildings have a ton of vacancies even now due to high rents.
- pchristensen 9y ago
  Financing development is a big constraint - loans that conform to existing types can be resold. This is why strip malls, industrial parks, malls, and housing developments look the same all over America. If a developer wants to build a multistory, mixed use development, they have to negotiate exceptional financing as well as zoning variances. Even if a city greatly loosened single use zoning, it would still probably be slow and expensive to redevelop.
andys627 9y ago
Lots of our streetcar suburbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb) are walkable and low density. A key aspect of auto-dependence/sprawl is separation of uses (think big box commercial w/large parking lots vs numerous small commercial spaces throughout neighborhood). More central areas of Portland, OR are good examples (eg: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ladd's+Addition,+Portland,+OR https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ladd's+Addition,+Portland,...).
gnopgnip 9y ago
It is difficult to find developers that are experienced with building housing in the bay area, and experienced with building mixed use housing, and the location is suitable for mixed use.
deepGem 9y ago
Some of the recent developments in Bangalore are heading in this direction. Mixed use is absolutely one of the better approaches to provide a good lifestyle to people. The sad drawback is that you get isolated and will lose the belongingness to the city as a whole. This is not a big deal in the short term, but in the long term, a set of isolated societies isn't that harmonious for the society. By isolated I don't mean walled, but a natural preference to just be within your conclave. What might rather work is super fast door to door transit, which in the present is quite unrealistic. Congestion creeps in pretty fast.
- xapata 9y ago
  What I find worst about modern city life is not having a relationship with my neighbors. I'd much prefer a neighborhood where everything I want is within a 5-minute walk.
  - ido 9y ago
    Being in a modern city doesn't prevent you from having relationships with your neighbours. We live in a dense mixed-used neighbourhood in Berlin, in a 4 stories apartment building and have good contact with most of our neighbours.
    - xapata 9y ago
      The key is mixed-use. If you're in a large block of apartment buildings, people go elsewhere for everyday things, only coming back to the neighborhood when they want to be alone.
  - kbart 9y ago
    "What I find worst about modern city life is not having a relationship with my neighbors" To each its own I guess. I used to live in a small town where everybody knew everybody and absolutely hated it. Now I live in a city where I don't know even my closest neighbors, there's no pressure to interact with them and I love it this way. Though it's a personal choice, I see some neighbors socializing in a yard all the time, looking after each others' kids etc.
Larrikin 9y ago
Personally I can't imagine a more ideal living situation than taking an elevator down in to a grocery store. Easy access to two completely different styles of grocery stores a block or two from my home has been amazing.
- what_ever 9y ago
  There are pros and cons of each model. You probably won't see the cons until you experience it yourself for a few years. Somewhere in the middle of South Bay Suburbs and taking an elevator to grocery store would be ideal. Somewhat like European cities.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >There are pros and cons of each model. You probably won't see the cons until you experience it yourself for a few years. I'm curious what you feel the cons are. I've lived in essentially this format now in two cities in two different continents, for a while overall, and I haven't really noticed downsides, except that sometimes I would need to cross the street to go to a different "grocery store" because the one I lived above didn't stock something, luckily the bodegas/farmers markets/produce stands nearby did.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      >I'm curious what you feel the cons are. All the cons about living in an apartment/condo vs a single family home (which all basically boil down to a reduction in one's personal freedom on/in their own home).
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        Ah, I thought you meant something specific about living in an apartment/condo in an urban area with things in walking distance, vs. rural/suburban. I consider those somewhat orthogonal, but I see your point.
      - distances 9y ago
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Although nearly all of the new building in some parts has been mixed use. Sunnyvale has nearly completed replacing the old mall and town and country commercial shops with mixed apartments and commercial. Ever since Santana Row in San Jose turned out to be a huge success it seems one of the few types of development that gets approved. It will be interesting to see where it all leads. I applaud Mt. View's willingness to add 10K homes. its about a tenth of what is needed but it is a great start.
- what_ever 9y ago
  Probably not a tenth. MTV's population in 2013 was around 77k. Adding 100k homes would get the city to s standstill. As much as I want more housing here so I can buy something myself, the infrastructure is nowhere close to handle that right now.
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    If I understand your comment you are equating more houses to more traffic. (the 'standstill' point). If that is the case, you may find, as I have, some interesting systemic properties in the various studies of Bay Area traffic. The part that really struck me is that traffic is more closely related to people living 'outside' a town or region than people living 'inside' a region. The analysis postulates a model like this: Lets say you have a single large employer in a city, and no housing. Then every person who goes to work comes from somewhere else to get to the employer, then leaves to go back to where they live. This pattern was exacerbated in the 60's when new cities were all work and the communities around them were 'bedroom' communities. That leads to arterials to the city that get massively clogged during rush hour (and greatly reduced night life / commerce because no one lives there). Now consider the opposite extreme, you have a large employer or industry and everyone who works there lives in the same town. Now you get short rush hours because people near to the employer can get there easily by walking or biking, people further away can drive but the drive is short. Additionally because there aren't any employees coming in from out of town there is no traffic on the roads between the town and other towns that is commute related. I am not saying that any place is at either extreme, but in the Silicon Valley area (aka the 'south bay') it is believed that an imbalance exists between available housing and jobs, and further that the imbalance contributes to congestion on the freeways and arterials throughout the various cities. Many of the cities are building additional housing and doing it near transit so that it maximizes the choices the residents have for how they want to travel. There are however some cities that are not so convinced, Cupertino comes to mind, which continues to add office space without adding housing. This is forcing more people to drive through Cupertino to get to work.
fyfy18 9y ago
Outside of the downtown areas, a lot of Dubai is like this too (low rise developments). From one side of the city to the other is more than 60km / 40 miles, so there is a lot of urban sprawl. IMO Dubai is a pretty poor example of what cities should aim for, as you can’t get to a lot of places without a car. Public transport is good to the main tourist areas of the city, but if you want to go somewhere slightly further afield you need to walk (good luck doing that in the summer) or take a taxi.
SenHeng 9y ago
Grass is always greener on the other side. Having lived and grown up in ultra-dense urban cities like Hongkong, Singapore and Tokyo, I very much prefer somewhere with a little more breathing space. Though not to the extent of American suburbs. The European cities are probably a good balance.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  HK and Singapore I get, but I didn’t find most parts of Tokyo to be very dense at all. More continuous low and mid-rise density (but not high rise density) levels like Europe.
- bluGill 9y ago
  If you want breathing space get out to real space. I own 8 acres in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs don't give you enough space to enjoy the rural lifestyle, but you are spread out too much to enjoy the advantages of living in the city. Of course there are not that many affordable lots with land near any jobs.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I roll my eyes at a lot of the urban infatuation but I mostly agree. I've always felt that conventional suburbs brought together the worst of urban environments (you're in fairly close proximity with others) with the worst of rural living (you have to drive everywhere). I live in an exurb on a fair bit of land. If I were to live somewhere different it would probably be in a city or at least a town center of some sort.
nkoren 9y ago
This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard to do it right -- high-density mixed-use development produces a very virtuous feedback loop.
- ac29 9y ago
  Major European cities have had centuries to develop, and were built in large part before automobiles existed, which necessitated density and walkability. Silicon Valley, by contrast, was largely agricultural or undeveloped even 50-60 years ago, and development of suburban housing represented a significant increase in density (and automobile transportation was cheap and fast then, so relatively low density housing made sense). Now, we are left with the problem that the suburbs aren't going anywhere for the most part, due to lack of political will, and lack of a reasonable market-based solution -- single family homes are often in the $1-1.5 million range for ~1/8 acre lots in less desirable areas, and redeveloping even a relatively small subdivision would be extremely expensive, even if you could get everyone to sell (they wouldn't), and get permission from the city. Redevelopment is limited right now to the commercial corridors, such as El Camino Blvd, and existing commercial/industrial/business districts, all of which are undergoing pretty heavy redevelopment in much of Santa Clara County. Transportation infrastructure including both public transportation and public roads are also undergoing multi-billion dollar improvements, though some of the work may take a decade or more to complete. source: I have lived in the Silicon Valley area for over 30 years -- its changing faster now than at any point I can remember.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    That is exactly why urban planning needs to be from the top down, at least for high level activities. Arranging for an entire area to be re-developed at once is a top down planning activity. Conversely, the precise details of what goes in to an area should be 'bottom up', but within zoning policies similar to how Japan does it. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845
dredmorbius 9y ago
Masdar City, also in UAE, aims to be environmental and walkable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City Robert Llewellyn's profile is optimistic, but gives the basic vision and much technical basis. https://youtube.com/watch?v=NIaz61zpLfs https://youtube.com/watch?v=NIaz61zpLfs
bkcreate 9y ago
Its a little bit of hyperbole to say it still looks like the 70s when there used to still be a lot of orchards back then. They never could have anticipated this growth
- dionidium 9y ago
  >They never could have anticipated this growth That's silly. San Francisco isn't the first city to boom. Detroit added more than a million people between 1910 and 1930. Brooklyn added a half a million people per decade in the early 1900s. And neither of those cities look like Midtown Manhattan or Tokyo or whatever else SF residents seem to imagine is required to support fast growth. They did it by building vast areas of multi-story mid-density mixed-use developments. There is zero mystery here, both about what was clearly starting to happen in the SFBA 30 years ago and what should have been done about it.
  - AskewEgret 9y ago
    In less than 50 years, Chicago went from a town of fewer than 5000 to the second largest city in America, with well over 1 million residents, yet during that period: a) Skyscrapers didn't exist until the end of the period b) Mass transit as we know it didn't exist until the end of the period c) Half the city burned down in a single fire, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless My grandfather told me that his commute from Santa Clara to Lockheed in Sunnyvale involved mostly driving past orchards all through the 1960s and into the 1970s. He left the area in the 1980s, saying that traffic and livability had become too much of a problem. It's been decades of intentionally not addressing the problems - nobody can reasonably claim to not have known or anticipated.
    - ac29 9y ago
      >Nobody can reasonably claim to not have known or anticipated. Suggesting that people could have predicted the dot-com boom of the 90s or the tech/startup driven boom of the past 15 years (and that it would be so heavily focused in the Bay Area) seems a little far fetched. It might seem obvious now that it has already happened, but in the 60s and 70s I don't see how you could have known (the industries driving development then were Defence and Manufacturing, both nearly nonexistent now). Plenty of areas in the US were increasing in density and economic development during that time, only one of them became Silicon Valley.
radarsat1 9y ago
Honestly, after visiting the bay area, this is among my top reasons for not wanting to move there. It is so beautiful, and yet.. for someone coming from a city lifestyle, it just doesn't seem.. livable. At all. I got lost walking to my meeting from the train station in Mountain View, and people didn't even know how to give me walking directions to where I needed to go. It was crazy. It wasn't that far by a straight line on the map, so I figured whatever I'll skip the taxi, but I had no idea what I was getting into. I finally had to ask a bunch of cyclists and it turned out I had to walk about a kilometer along a raised highway to get to the bridge and then cross several insane intersections. At lunch I was driven to a burger place a couple of km away. Ok. I get it. You need a car to live there. That just doesn't sound nice to me, frankly, and I don't know if I could convert to that way of living.
- kaycebasques 9y ago
  I’ve lived up and down the peninsula and haven’t relied on a car in 10 years. Thanks to a mix of choosing strategic locations, biking, BART, Caltrain, Lyft, Zipcar / Getaround, and friends with cars. Anecdotal, I know, but just chiming in to say it’s definitely possible.
  - dionidium 9y ago
    It's possible everywhere. The last two places I lived in St. Louis had Walk Scores in the 90s. If you prioritize it, you can get it. (But obviously some places have a lot more of it than others.)
    - nugi 9y ago
      Not everywhere. I live a whopping 30 minutes from the city line and no uber, no bus, no train, etc. There is a local who will drive you to the airport, and thats it. You overgeneralizing city centric viewpoint is not applicable to MOST of the world. We still need cars, and gas ones at that. Hell, I am one of the few with ACCESS to "high speed" (1.2mb) internet. I am on a major highway, not some obscure hole either.
DataWorker 9y ago
I disagree. People want to be here despite the cost of living, the crowding and transit. Mixed use is a scam. Nobody that works in the shops at Santana Row can even approach having the income to live there. The whole justification for these strip malls with million dollar apartments above them is s farce. And it’s the only plan some local cities have for accommodating future growth (which the citizens don’t want in the first place.)
- primordialsoup 9y ago
  You picked a luxury shopping street as your example. I live in an apartment complex which also has trader joes and starbucks and a few other restaurants. I walk to those places every now and then. Now imagine scaling this up a bit more.
- freehunter 9y ago
  You're contradicting yourself several times here. People want to live in SV despite all the downsides you've mentioned, which drives housing prices to such an insane level that local workers can't afford to live there, so the cities plan for more growth by building more density and more mixed-use neighborhoods to increase housing density. All of the above is true, which you've mentioned. You then say that citizens don't want higher density living, but if citizens want more affordable housing in a housing crunch, the way to do that is to increase density. And if you want shorter commute times, the way to do that is to increase density. And if you want workers to be able to afford housing, the way to do that is to push higher income citizens into more expensive housing, freeing up the more affordable housing for those who actually need it. You can't complain about the cost of living and then refuse to increase density. Keeping density and new construction low during a housing crunch is how you get insane housing prices.
ascagnel_ 9y ago
Mimic cities like Boston or Vancouver that grew along mass transit lines: commercial frontage (with apartments or small office space them) on major avenues that feature dedicated mass transit (either dedicated bus lanes or light rail), and then radiate out apartments and homes a few blocks. The mass transit can take you into a city core, but still be within a walking distance of various types of housing.

stevenwoo 9y ago

Mountain View has done a decent job on the streets near me on San Antonio with a lot of three-four story apartments/retail going up versus say Palo Alto or Los Altos right next door. The mall going under around the same time helped of course.

prawn 9y ago

On my first trip to Hong Kong (decades ago, as a teenager) I remember my family stayed in a hotel with a shopping centre on the lower levels. You took an elevator down from your room that literally opened out into a supermarket, food court, department store, etc. I remember thinking it was awesome. Add other facilities within enjoyable walking distance and you're laughing, for those keen to live with that density.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I don’t see why people think HK is a bad model, sure Kowloon walled City was bad, but modern HK is quite nice. I also got the impression that Dubai wasn’t very walkable, but I’ve never been there.
- dlwdlw 9y ago
  It takes time to build up a high density culture. Thicker skin, a bit more aloofness, etc.. many run counter to what is considered "good" in sparser area.
  - ShorsHammer 9y ago
    I've seen people run to strangers aid in the biggest cities on earth. Perhaps "aloofness" is just more acceptable to some.
    - fnord123 9y ago
      In my experience in London, the people living in the centre are not aloof, but it's the commuters who switch off their brains on the train or in the car and forget to switch it back on when they're in town. But that's an extremely broad brush, so don't take the categorization to heart.
      - naravara 9y ago
        In DC the natives are plenty friendly. It’s the suburban transplants who moved here from elsewhere who tend to be wrapped up in themselves.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      I found this wasn't universal. Grew up in relatively unfriendly (especially for a Canadian city) Toronto and then moved to Chicago, found people were much more outgoing and friendly in the midwest, even in the city. In the bay area now and it seems like spending too much time driving with other angry drivers (from themselves spending too much time driving) makes everyone irritable.
- lisper 9y ago
  I've travelled all over the world and lived in LA for 22 years. Dubai is the least walkable city I've ever seen by a wide margin. It would hold that title even if the weather did not already make it feel like hell on earth.

jsolson 9y ago

If by mixed do you just mean residential over retail? Is the Bay Area actually opposed to that?

pkaye 9y ago
Not sure about Mountain View but I've seen a bunch of new complexes in San Jose and Santa Clara with the residential over retail construction.
kevinburke 9y ago
yes, it's opposed but it's not usually for that reason, more often has to do with height or traffic. two recent examples: - adjacent to Millbrae BART/Caltrain https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/millbrae-station-project-draws-community-ire/article_f00f6358-0190-11e8-a734-6f2b5bdb2c6b.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/millbrae-station-p... - adjacent to Hayward Park Caltrain in San Mateo https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/major-mixed-use-housing-proposed-for-san-mateo/article_d9171ca4-e476-11e7-be8a-77367bc1a1a4.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/major-mixed-use-ho...
DrScump 9y ago
The "Two Worlds" development on El Camino in Mountain View, which is residential over ground-floor retail, is at least 30 years old.
refurb 9y ago
I'd be worried you'd never fill the retail on the ground level. The small neighborhoods that have the retail/residential buildings have a ton of vacancies even now due to high rents.
pchristensen 9y ago
Financing development is a big constraint - loans that conform to existing types can be resold. This is why strip malls, industrial parks, malls, and housing developments look the same all over America. If a developer wants to build a multistory, mixed use development, they have to negotiate exceptional financing as well as zoning variances. Even if a city greatly loosened single use zoning, it would still probably be slow and expensive to redevelop.

andys627 9y ago

Lots of our streetcar suburbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb) are walkable and low density. A key aspect of auto-dependence/sprawl is separation of uses (think big box commercial w/large parking lots vs numerous small commercial spaces throughout neighborhood). More central areas of Portland, OR are good examples (eg: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ladd's+Addition,+Portland,+OR https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ladd's+Addition,+Portland,...).

gnopgnip 9y ago

It is difficult to find developers that are experienced with building housing in the bay area, and experienced with building mixed use housing, and the location is suitable for mixed use.

deepGem 9y ago

Some of the recent developments in Bangalore are heading in this direction. Mixed use is absolutely one of the better approaches to provide a good lifestyle to people. The sad drawback is that you get isolated and will lose the belongingness to the city as a whole. This is not a big deal in the short term, but in the long term, a set of isolated societies isn't that harmonious for the society. By isolated I don't mean walled, but a natural preference to just be within your conclave. What might rather work is super fast door to door transit, which in the present is quite unrealistic. Congestion creeps in pretty fast.

xapata 9y ago
What I find worst about modern city life is not having a relationship with my neighbors. I'd much prefer a neighborhood where everything I want is within a 5-minute walk.
- ido 9y ago
  Being in a modern city doesn't prevent you from having relationships with your neighbours. We live in a dense mixed-used neighbourhood in Berlin, in a 4 stories apartment building and have good contact with most of our neighbours.
  - xapata 9y ago
    The key is mixed-use. If you're in a large block of apartment buildings, people go elsewhere for everyday things, only coming back to the neighborhood when they want to be alone.
- kbart 9y ago
  "What I find worst about modern city life is not having a relationship with my neighbors" To each its own I guess. I used to live in a small town where everybody knew everybody and absolutely hated it. Now I live in a city where I don't know even my closest neighbors, there's no pressure to interact with them and I love it this way. Though it's a personal choice, I see some neighbors socializing in a yard all the time, looking after each others' kids etc.

Larrikin 9y ago

Personally I can't imagine a more ideal living situation than taking an elevator down in to a grocery store. Easy access to two completely different styles of grocery stores a block or two from my home has been amazing.

what_ever 9y ago
There are pros and cons of each model. You probably won't see the cons until you experience it yourself for a few years. Somewhere in the middle of South Bay Suburbs and taking an elevator to grocery store would be ideal. Somewhat like European cities.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >There are pros and cons of each model. You probably won't see the cons until you experience it yourself for a few years. I'm curious what you feel the cons are. I've lived in essentially this format now in two cities in two different continents, for a while overall, and I haven't really noticed downsides, except that sometimes I would need to cross the street to go to a different "grocery store" because the one I lived above didn't stock something, luckily the bodegas/farmers markets/produce stands nearby did.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    >I'm curious what you feel the cons are. All the cons about living in an apartment/condo vs a single family home (which all basically boil down to a reduction in one's personal freedom on/in their own home).
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      Ah, I thought you meant something specific about living in an apartment/condo in an urban area with things in walking distance, vs. rural/suburban. I consider those somewhat orthogonal, but I see your point.
    - distances 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Although nearly all of the new building in some parts has been mixed use. Sunnyvale has nearly completed replacing the old mall and town and country commercial shops with mixed apartments and commercial. Ever since Santana Row in San Jose turned out to be a huge success it seems one of the few types of development that gets approved. It will be interesting to see where it all leads. I applaud Mt. View's willingness to add 10K homes. its about a tenth of what is needed but it is a great start.

what_ever 9y ago
Probably not a tenth. MTV's population in 2013 was around 77k. Adding 100k homes would get the city to s standstill. As much as I want more housing here so I can buy something myself, the infrastructure is nowhere close to handle that right now.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  If I understand your comment you are equating more houses to more traffic. (the 'standstill' point). If that is the case, you may find, as I have, some interesting systemic properties in the various studies of Bay Area traffic. The part that really struck me is that traffic is more closely related to people living 'outside' a town or region than people living 'inside' a region. The analysis postulates a model like this: Lets say you have a single large employer in a city, and no housing. Then every person who goes to work comes from somewhere else to get to the employer, then leaves to go back to where they live. This pattern was exacerbated in the 60's when new cities were all work and the communities around them were 'bedroom' communities. That leads to arterials to the city that get massively clogged during rush hour (and greatly reduced night life / commerce because no one lives there). Now consider the opposite extreme, you have a large employer or industry and everyone who works there lives in the same town. Now you get short rush hours because people near to the employer can get there easily by walking or biking, people further away can drive but the drive is short. Additionally because there aren't any employees coming in from out of town there is no traffic on the roads between the town and other towns that is commute related. I am not saying that any place is at either extreme, but in the Silicon Valley area (aka the 'south bay') it is believed that an imbalance exists between available housing and jobs, and further that the imbalance contributes to congestion on the freeways and arterials throughout the various cities. Many of the cities are building additional housing and doing it near transit so that it maximizes the choices the residents have for how they want to travel. There are however some cities that are not so convinced, Cupertino comes to mind, which continues to add office space without adding housing. This is forcing more people to drive through Cupertino to get to work.

fyfy18 9y ago

Outside of the downtown areas, a lot of Dubai is like this too (low rise developments). From one side of the city to the other is more than 60km / 40 miles, so there is a lot of urban sprawl. IMO Dubai is a pretty poor example of what cities should aim for, as you can’t get to a lot of places without a car. Public transport is good to the main tourist areas of the city, but if you want to go somewhere slightly further afield you need to walk (good luck doing that in the summer) or take a taxi.

SenHeng 9y ago

Grass is always greener on the other side. Having lived and grown up in ultra-dense urban cities like Hongkong, Singapore and Tokyo, I very much prefer somewhere with a little more breathing space. Though not to the extent of American suburbs. The European cities are probably a good balance.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
HK and Singapore I get, but I didn’t find most parts of Tokyo to be very dense at all. More continuous low and mid-rise density (but not high rise density) levels like Europe.
bluGill 9y ago
If you want breathing space get out to real space. I own 8 acres in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs don't give you enough space to enjoy the rural lifestyle, but you are spread out too much to enjoy the advantages of living in the city. Of course there are not that many affordable lots with land near any jobs.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I roll my eyes at a lot of the urban infatuation but I mostly agree. I've always felt that conventional suburbs brought together the worst of urban environments (you're in fairly close proximity with others) with the worst of rural living (you have to drive everywhere). I live in an exurb on a fair bit of land. If I were to live somewhere different it would probably be in a city or at least a town center of some sort.

nkoren 9y ago

This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard to do it right -- high-density mixed-use development produces a very virtuous feedback loop.

ac29 9y ago
Major European cities have had centuries to develop, and were built in large part before automobiles existed, which necessitated density and walkability. Silicon Valley, by contrast, was largely agricultural or undeveloped even 50-60 years ago, and development of suburban housing represented a significant increase in density (and automobile transportation was cheap and fast then, so relatively low density housing made sense). Now, we are left with the problem that the suburbs aren't going anywhere for the most part, due to lack of political will, and lack of a reasonable market-based solution -- single family homes are often in the $1-1.5 million range for ~1/8 acre lots in less desirable areas, and redeveloping even a relatively small subdivision would be extremely expensive, even if you could get everyone to sell (they wouldn't), and get permission from the city. Redevelopment is limited right now to the commercial corridors, such as El Camino Blvd, and existing commercial/industrial/business districts, all of which are undergoing pretty heavy redevelopment in much of Santa Clara County. Transportation infrastructure including both public transportation and public roads are also undergoing multi-billion dollar improvements, though some of the work may take a decade or more to complete. source: I have lived in the Silicon Valley area for over 30 years -- its changing faster now than at any point I can remember.
- mjevans 9y ago
  That is exactly why urban planning needs to be from the top down, at least for high level activities. Arranging for an entire area to be re-developed at once is a top down planning activity. Conversely, the precise details of what goes in to an area should be 'bottom up', but within zoning policies similar to how Japan does it. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845

dredmorbius 9y ago

Masdar City, also in UAE, aims to be environmental and walkable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City Robert Llewellyn's profile is optimistic, but gives the basic vision and much technical basis. https://youtube.com/watch?v=NIaz61zpLfs https://youtube.com/watch?v=NIaz61zpLfs

bkcreate 9y ago

Its a little bit of hyperbole to say it still looks like the 70s when there used to still be a lot of orchards back then. They never could have anticipated this growth

dionidium 9y ago
>They never could have anticipated this growth That's silly. San Francisco isn't the first city to boom. Detroit added more than a million people between 1910 and 1930. Brooklyn added a half a million people per decade in the early 1900s. And neither of those cities look like Midtown Manhattan or Tokyo or whatever else SF residents seem to imagine is required to support fast growth. They did it by building vast areas of multi-story mid-density mixed-use developments. There is zero mystery here, both about what was clearly starting to happen in the SFBA 30 years ago and what should have been done about it.
- AskewEgret 9y ago
  In less than 50 years, Chicago went from a town of fewer than 5000 to the second largest city in America, with well over 1 million residents, yet during that period: a) Skyscrapers didn't exist until the end of the period b) Mass transit as we know it didn't exist until the end of the period c) Half the city burned down in a single fire, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless My grandfather told me that his commute from Santa Clara to Lockheed in Sunnyvale involved mostly driving past orchards all through the 1960s and into the 1970s. He left the area in the 1980s, saying that traffic and livability had become too much of a problem. It's been decades of intentionally not addressing the problems - nobody can reasonably claim to not have known or anticipated.
  - ac29 9y ago
    >Nobody can reasonably claim to not have known or anticipated. Suggesting that people could have predicted the dot-com boom of the 90s or the tech/startup driven boom of the past 15 years (and that it would be so heavily focused in the Bay Area) seems a little far fetched. It might seem obvious now that it has already happened, but in the 60s and 70s I don't see how you could have known (the industries driving development then were Defence and Manufacturing, both nearly nonexistent now). Plenty of areas in the US were increasing in density and economic development during that time, only one of them became Silicon Valley.

radarsat1 9y ago

Honestly, after visiting the bay area, this is among my top reasons for not wanting to move there. It is so beautiful, and yet.. for someone coming from a city lifestyle, it just doesn't seem.. livable. At all. I got lost walking to my meeting from the train station in Mountain View, and people didn't even know how to give me walking directions to where I needed to go. It was crazy. It wasn't that far by a straight line on the map, so I figured whatever I'll skip the taxi, but I had no idea what I was getting into. I finally had to ask a bunch of cyclists and it turned out I had to walk about a kilometer along a raised highway to get to the bridge and then cross several insane intersections. At lunch I was driven to a burger place a couple of km away. Ok. I get it. You need a car to live there. That just doesn't sound nice to me, frankly, and I don't know if I could convert to that way of living.

kaycebasques 9y ago
I’ve lived up and down the peninsula and haven’t relied on a car in 10 years. Thanks to a mix of choosing strategic locations, biking, BART, Caltrain, Lyft, Zipcar / Getaround, and friends with cars. Anecdotal, I know, but just chiming in to say it’s definitely possible.
- dionidium 9y ago
  It's possible everywhere. The last two places I lived in St. Louis had Walk Scores in the 90s. If you prioritize it, you can get it. (But obviously some places have a lot more of it than others.)
  - nugi 9y ago
    Not everywhere. I live a whopping 30 minutes from the city line and no uber, no bus, no train, etc. There is a local who will drive you to the airport, and thats it. You overgeneralizing city centric viewpoint is not applicable to MOST of the world. We still need cars, and gas ones at that. Hell, I am one of the few with ACCESS to "high speed" (1.2mb) internet. I am on a major highway, not some obscure hole either.

DataWorker 9y ago

I disagree. People want to be here despite the cost of living, the crowding and transit. Mixed use is a scam. Nobody that works in the shops at Santana Row can even approach having the income to live there. The whole justification for these strip malls with million dollar apartments above them is s farce. And it’s the only plan some local cities have for accommodating future growth (which the citizens don’t want in the first place.)

primordialsoup 9y ago
You picked a luxury shopping street as your example. I live in an apartment complex which also has trader joes and starbucks and a few other restaurants. I walk to those places every now and then. Now imagine scaling this up a bit more.
freehunter 9y ago
You're contradicting yourself several times here. People want to live in SV despite all the downsides you've mentioned, which drives housing prices to such an insane level that local workers can't afford to live there, so the cities plan for more growth by building more density and more mixed-use neighborhoods to increase housing density. All of the above is true, which you've mentioned. You then say that citizens don't want higher density living, but if citizens want more affordable housing in a housing crunch, the way to do that is to increase density. And if you want shorter commute times, the way to do that is to increase density. And if you want workers to be able to afford housing, the way to do that is to push higher income citizens into more expensive housing, freeing up the more affordable housing for those who actually need it. You can't complain about the cost of living and then refuse to increase density. Keeping density and new construction low during a housing crunch is how you get insane housing prices.

ascagnel_ 9y ago

Mimic cities like Boston or Vancouver that grew along mass transit lines: commercial frontage (with apartments or small office space them) on major avenues that feature dedicated mass transit (either dedicated bus lanes or light rail), and then radiate out apartments and homes a few blocks. The mass transit can take you into a city core, but still be within a walking distance of various types of housing.