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Folks are getting involved in the community planning meetings, which are a major way here for potential developments to get more visibility. In SF this week th

Folks are getting involved in the community planning meetings, which are a major way here for potential developments to get more visibility. In SF this week there's a case of a man who owns a laundromat, and would like to turn it into a 75 unit apartment building. It sounds like he met all the objective criteria and is getting stonewalled by NIMBY's due to the usual excuses: "neighborhood character" and historical value of the building. The building is a laundromat, and by all appearances fairly mundane and not at all historical. I can think of no obvious opposition a reasonable urban planner would have to this development. Yet it's being stonewalled. What undesirable side effects would it have? I grew up in New York City, which is also dense. People love living there. What's wrong with SF moving in that direction if it means accommodating all the new residents AND providing reasonably priced housing to all the current ones. Pardon the rant, this issue hits close to home for me. Edit: Re your earlier point on SF geography, earthquake proofing is a well developed tech. It will add some cost to development, but that doesn't make it infeasible. I live in a part of the city where they had to drill many many feet down to bedrock. It can be done.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
I am not familiar with the specific case you are talking about. But one of the reasons we have this mess is due to historical efforts to improve things that resulted in the elimination of a lot of affordable housing. I have seen lots of examples of zoning gone wrong and stated goals being achieved, but with unexpected costs. I don't remember it as clearly as I once did, but the Aswan Dam met all its stated goals of providing electricity and controlling flooding. But it cost vastly more to build than expected, silt build up was much faster than expected, leading to a shorter lifespan than expected, it caused a terrible schistosomiasis epidemic and farmers had to spend huge quantities on fertilizer. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding provided free fertilizer in the form of rich silt. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding is why Egypt was The Jewel of the Nile for thousands of years. They didn't recognize that the icky flooding also kept the snail population under control. The snails are the vector for schistosomiasis, a horrifying parasitic infection. Lots of efforts to fix things go sideways. It happens all the time.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I am not familiar with the specific case you are talking about. But one of the reasons we have this mess is due to historical efforts to improve things that resulted in the elimination of a lot of affordable housing. I have seen lots of examples of zoning gone wrong and stated goals being achieved, but with unexpected costs. I don't remember it as clearly as I once did, but the Aswan Dam met all its stated goals of providing electricity and controlling flooding. But it cost vastly more to build than expected, silt build up was much faster than expected, leading to a shorter lifespan than expected, it caused a terrible schistosomiasis epidemic and farmers had to spend huge quantities on fertilizer. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding provided free fertilizer in the form of rich silt. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding is why Egypt was The Jewel of the Nile for thousands of years. They didn't recognize that the icky flooding also kept the snail population under control. The snails are the vector for schistosomiasis, a horrifying parasitic infection. Lots of efforts to fix things go sideways. It happens all the time.