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These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where the buildings are tall and the density is high. I have no sympathy for these self i

These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where the buildings are tall and the density is high. I have no sympathy for these self inflicted wounds.

tux1968 8y ago
Well, they're not seen as wounds by the people who are causing the problem, they're seen as victories.
timr 8y ago
"These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where the buildings are tall and the density is high." I lived in Japan, and I live in New York. Tokyo is mostly low-rise buildings. Outside of a few areas in the center of Tokyo, the city is a sprawling mass of 1-5 story buildings. The vast majority of New York (outside of Manhattan) is the same. Even in Manhattan, most of the residential neighborhoods are under ten stories. Silicon valley can clearly stand to increase density, but it doesn't help to misrepresent what density looks like.
- pkaye 8y ago
  A lot of the new housing I've seen in SV has been 3 story condos, townhouses and apartments. Is what is being proposed higher density than this or just more of it?
  - timr 8y ago
    I can't possibly generalize across all of the bay area, let alone the entire state of California. I can speak with confidence about SF: the eastern third of the city (the part everyone always wants to "build up") is already pretty dense, by any standard. Building skyscrapers is not making housing cheaper, just taller. Meanwhile, the western two-thirds (the parts nobody ever talks about) are like McMansion suburbia. The general problem with this debate on HN is that everyone gets fixated on a select few areas where 20-something nerdbros want to live and go drinking (e.g. the Mission), and imagines turning it into some vision of Tokyo out of Blade Runner, when the real solution is that we should be building more 3 story condos in Sunnyvale. If you wanted to make the bay area resemble Tokyo as it actually exists, you'd cover every flat part of the bay in 1-5 story buildings, and connect it all by excellent transit. It has little to do with skyscrapers, as such.
    - epistasis 8y ago
      I'm not sure where you're seeing that type of discussion on HN. But this bill was precisely the thing that would have opened up the Avenues in SF without touching the eastern side very much. And totally agreed on 4/5 stories everywhere; those are what can be built with less expensive wood construction, and what really increase density. High rises and sky scrapers are usually brought up by the NIMBYs as a straw man to argue against.
      - timr 8y ago
        "I'm not sure where you're seeing that type of discussion on HN." Everywhere. The comment I originally replied to (upthread) has a delusional vision of New York and Tokyo, and "the problem" is (ostensibly) that the bay doesn't look like that. Any facts that are inconvenient to this narrative will be downvoted into invisibility. "But this bill was precisely the thing that would have opened up the Avenues in SF without touching the eastern side very much." While I sympathize with the stated goals, this bill was little more than grandstanding by Weiner. It never had a prayer of becoming law. You probably couldn't pass a rule like this in San Francisco itself, let alone the entire state.
        epistasis 8y ago
        If I'm understanding you, the "delusional" part was calling Tokyo buildings "tall"? What you describe Tokyo as, 4-5 story buildings, IS tall by local Bay Area standards. In fact, to those who harangue planning commissions and set zoning standards, 4-5 stories is horrifyingly tall, and something that is fought against. You are not downvoted because you are inconvenient to the narrative, but because you seem to be misunderstanding the discussion. Similarly, you seem to misunderstand this: > You probably couldn't pass a rule like this in San Francisco itself, let alone the entire state. because passing a bill in San Francisco is orders of magnitude more challenging than passing it at the State level. Local decision makers are incredibly vulnerable to small voting blocs, whereas State lawmakers are more free to serve the entire community rather than a few special interests. And that's what happened last year when Jerry Brown pushed hard on more housing and a ton of affordable housing bills were passed. Impossible at the local level, but possible at the state level. Calling this "grandstanding" is kind of an outrageous interpretation too. It seems to reveal a huge bias. Do you think he didn't want this? Did you think that it wasn't an honest attempt? He sacrificed a ton to rounds of amendments, and it was still a close committee vote.
  - philca 8y ago
    Indeed it looks like there are more and more buildings, dare I say of course housing is a problem, but imho the infrastructure is more an issue, the roads are terrible, completely packed the local tramway is more than 45 years old and it shows, the question become more who want to invest with such poor infrastructures.
    - pkaye 8y ago
      Yes infrastructure is a big issue. Many long time residents in my city are complaining about the traffic. Cars are diverting on the local streets to get around the traffic in Fremont for example. Mission blvd between 880 and 680 is under consideration to be made an underpass to reduce red lights but then expectation is it will take 10 years taking into account design, approvals, funding and construction.
    - DrScump 8y ago
      What "local tramway" is 45 years old? VTA light rail barely started 30 years ago. And I wouldn't say the trams look worn, primarily because hardly anyone rides them.
      - philca 8y ago
        You are correct VTA is 30 years old, not really efficient The cost to carry one passenger round trip, $11.74, is 83 percent more than the U.S. average. Speed in San Jose 10mph and an utterly disappointment for the creators. I was thinking more about BART that have a speed of 55mph, and have questionable trains. I really think the infrastructure is an issue, it takes a bit more than a decade to build an exit at the Oakland bridge, roads are packed traffic is getting worst, roads are aged, most concrete (very noisy) not asphalt.
oppositelock 8y ago
I'm a home owner and YIMBY here who shows up at city council meetings in support of more housing. You would be shocked just how horribly selfish existing home owners are. Very common statements are that "I bought here because I liked the town and I don't want it to change", or "I have my house already, I don't want more people here", etc. It's awful. We're slowly losing everyone in Mountain View except dual tech income people who won the stock option lottery, houses are out of reach for most everyone. What does get built via ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) mandates is generally rental housing, and rents are astronomical. This kind of short sightedness is disgusting, and people don't seem to realize that nice, high density areas didn't just spring up in their dense form, they were allowed to evolve over time. CA also has a lot of red tape anyone can invoke on any construction project to drown it in bureaucracy for years. The only people willing to fight against the bureaucracy are giant developers who develop large lots into cookie cutter developments. It's a giant mess driven by greed and stupidity.
- majormajor 8y ago
  So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change. Why is one group more "horribly selfish" than the other? Especially if you think there's a bubble, you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem. Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Especially given an area that's kind of a natural disaster SPOF.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    Because the same people that complain about new people were once new people. Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. And since they don't get to control where people move in the United States, they don't actually get to stop change. Change still happens whether they want it or not. Nobody has the right to stop others from interacting, or renting, or anything like that.
zkms 8y ago
The sole purpose of those boards existing is to inflict those very wounds, which are not "self-inflicted" because the people who compose those boards are homeowners and the people hurt by the wounds tend not to be. Homeowners benefit from the ability to obstruct/delay/deny others from building more housing, because it makes them a frighteningly huge amount of money by making their property worth more. Morally yes, these people ought to be told to go pound sand; the very fact that there's legal authority to prevent dense/tall housing from being built is abhorrent, but it's the function of those boards (and everything else is secondary) -- to "increase property value" by artificially restricting what other people can do with their own property.
- st26 8y ago
  Is it abhorrent that the owners in a neighborhood can choose to come together as a collective and influence the neighborhood they all live in? If yes, is it also abhorrent when a group of workers at a company band together to influence the working conditions they all work under?
  - epistasis 8y ago
    This is shifting the question from an interesting one to an uninteresting one. Collective influence is not abhorrent, but the direction that they influence things certainly can be. When segregated neighborhoods collectively influenced which races could buy houses, was that abhorrent? I think we would all agree. When neighborhoods for neighborhoods watch groups, or clean up a playground, or build community by throwing block parties, they are doing great, not abhorrent things. Conspiring to keep others out is usually abhorrent though.
    - rofrol 8y ago
      It was a good question. Workers want good working conditions, home owners good living conditions.
  - zkms 8y ago
    > Is it abhorrent that the owners in a neighborhood can choose to come together as a collective and influence the neighborhood they all live in? Nothing wrong with it! If some people in a neighbourhood want to buy up a parcel of land to prevent housing from being built there, there's nothing wrong with that. The issue sorta crops up when you start dictating what (structurally-sound) buildings others get to build on their own land. If you want to reject private property altogether and go to some centrally-planned economic system then you've got a lot of work to do because even the fucking USSR was better at building housing than US cities are today.

These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where the buildings are tall and the density is high. I have no sympathy for these self inflicted wounds.

tux1968 8y ago

Well, they're not seen as wounds by the people who are causing the problem, they're seen as victories.

timr 8y ago

"These boards should all take a field trip to places like NYC and Tokyo where the buildings are tall and the density is high." I lived in Japan, and I live in New York. Tokyo is mostly low-rise buildings. Outside of a few areas in the center of Tokyo, the city is a sprawling mass of 1-5 story buildings. The vast majority of New York (outside of Manhattan) is the same. Even in Manhattan, most of the residential neighborhoods are under ten stories. Silicon valley can clearly stand to increase density, but it doesn't help to misrepresent what density looks like.

pkaye 8y ago
A lot of the new housing I've seen in SV has been 3 story condos, townhouses and apartments. Is what is being proposed higher density than this or just more of it?
- timr 8y ago
  I can't possibly generalize across all of the bay area, let alone the entire state of California. I can speak with confidence about SF: the eastern third of the city (the part everyone always wants to "build up") is already pretty dense, by any standard. Building skyscrapers is not making housing cheaper, just taller. Meanwhile, the western two-thirds (the parts nobody ever talks about) are like McMansion suburbia. The general problem with this debate on HN is that everyone gets fixated on a select few areas where 20-something nerdbros want to live and go drinking (e.g. the Mission), and imagines turning it into some vision of Tokyo out of Blade Runner, when the real solution is that we should be building more 3 story condos in Sunnyvale. If you wanted to make the bay area resemble Tokyo as it actually exists, you'd cover every flat part of the bay in 1-5 story buildings, and connect it all by excellent transit. It has little to do with skyscrapers, as such.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    I'm not sure where you're seeing that type of discussion on HN. But this bill was precisely the thing that would have opened up the Avenues in SF without touching the eastern side very much. And totally agreed on 4/5 stories everywhere; those are what can be built with less expensive wood construction, and what really increase density. High rises and sky scrapers are usually brought up by the NIMBYs as a straw man to argue against.
    - timr 8y ago
      "I'm not sure where you're seeing that type of discussion on HN." Everywhere. The comment I originally replied to (upthread) has a delusional vision of New York and Tokyo, and "the problem" is (ostensibly) that the bay doesn't look like that. Any facts that are inconvenient to this narrative will be downvoted into invisibility. "But this bill was precisely the thing that would have opened up the Avenues in SF without touching the eastern side very much." While I sympathize with the stated goals, this bill was little more than grandstanding by Weiner. It never had a prayer of becoming law. You probably couldn't pass a rule like this in San Francisco itself, let alone the entire state.
      - epistasis 8y ago
        If I'm understanding you, the "delusional" part was calling Tokyo buildings "tall"? What you describe Tokyo as, 4-5 story buildings, IS tall by local Bay Area standards. In fact, to those who harangue planning commissions and set zoning standards, 4-5 stories is horrifyingly tall, and something that is fought against. You are not downvoted because you are inconvenient to the narrative, but because you seem to be misunderstanding the discussion. Similarly, you seem to misunderstand this: > You probably couldn't pass a rule like this in San Francisco itself, let alone the entire state. because passing a bill in San Francisco is orders of magnitude more challenging than passing it at the State level. Local decision makers are incredibly vulnerable to small voting blocs, whereas State lawmakers are more free to serve the entire community rather than a few special interests. And that's what happened last year when Jerry Brown pushed hard on more housing and a ton of affordable housing bills were passed. Impossible at the local level, but possible at the state level. Calling this "grandstanding" is kind of an outrageous interpretation too. It seems to reveal a huge bias. Do you think he didn't want this? Did you think that it wasn't an honest attempt? He sacrificed a ton to rounds of amendments, and it was still a close committee vote.
- philca 8y ago
  Indeed it looks like there are more and more buildings, dare I say of course housing is a problem, but imho the infrastructure is more an issue, the roads are terrible, completely packed the local tramway is more than 45 years old and it shows, the question become more who want to invest with such poor infrastructures.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    Yes infrastructure is a big issue. Many long time residents in my city are complaining about the traffic. Cars are diverting on the local streets to get around the traffic in Fremont for example. Mission blvd between 880 and 680 is under consideration to be made an underpass to reduce red lights but then expectation is it will take 10 years taking into account design, approvals, funding and construction.
  - DrScump 8y ago
    What "local tramway" is 45 years old? VTA light rail barely started 30 years ago. And I wouldn't say the trams look worn, primarily because hardly anyone rides them.
    - philca 8y ago
      You are correct VTA is 30 years old, not really efficient The cost to carry one passenger round trip, $11.74, is 83 percent more than the U.S. average. Speed in San Jose 10mph and an utterly disappointment for the creators. I was thinking more about BART that have a speed of 55mph, and have questionable trains. I really think the infrastructure is an issue, it takes a bit more than a decade to build an exit at the Oakland bridge, roads are packed traffic is getting worst, roads are aged, most concrete (very noisy) not asphalt.

oppositelock 8y ago

I'm a home owner and YIMBY here who shows up at city council meetings in support of more housing. You would be shocked just how horribly selfish existing home owners are. Very common statements are that "I bought here because I liked the town and I don't want it to change", or "I have my house already, I don't want more people here", etc. It's awful. We're slowly losing everyone in Mountain View except dual tech income people who won the stock option lottery, houses are out of reach for most everyone. What does get built via ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) mandates is generally rental housing, and rents are astronomical. This kind of short sightedness is disgusting, and people don't seem to realize that nice, high density areas didn't just spring up in their dense form, they were allowed to evolve over time. CA also has a lot of red tape anyone can invoke on any construction project to drown it in bureaucracy for years. The only people willing to fight against the bureaucracy are giant developers who develop large lots into cookie cutter developments. It's a giant mess driven by greed and stupidity.

majormajor 8y ago
So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change. Why is one group more "horribly selfish" than the other? Especially if you think there's a bubble, you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem. Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Especially given an area that's kind of a natural disaster SPOF.
- epistasis 8y ago
  Because the same people that complain about new people were once new people. Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. And since they don't get to control where people move in the United States, they don't actually get to stop change. Change still happens whether they want it or not. Nobody has the right to stop others from interacting, or renting, or anything like that.

zkms 8y ago

The sole purpose of those boards existing is to inflict those very wounds, which are not "self-inflicted" because the people who compose those boards are homeowners and the people hurt by the wounds tend not to be. Homeowners benefit from the ability to obstruct/delay/deny others from building more housing, because it makes them a frighteningly huge amount of money by making their property worth more. Morally yes, these people ought to be told to go pound sand; the very fact that there's legal authority to prevent dense/tall housing from being built is abhorrent, but it's the function of those boards (and everything else is secondary) -- to "increase property value" by artificially restricting what other people can do with their own property.

st26 8y ago
Is it abhorrent that the owners in a neighborhood can choose to come together as a collective and influence the neighborhood they all live in? If yes, is it also abhorrent when a group of workers at a company band together to influence the working conditions they all work under?
- epistasis 8y ago
  This is shifting the question from an interesting one to an uninteresting one. Collective influence is not abhorrent, but the direction that they influence things certainly can be. When segregated neighborhoods collectively influenced which races could buy houses, was that abhorrent? I think we would all agree. When neighborhoods for neighborhoods watch groups, or clean up a playground, or build community by throwing block parties, they are doing great, not abhorrent things. Conspiring to keep others out is usually abhorrent though.
  - rofrol 8y ago
    It was a good question. Workers want good working conditions, home owners good living conditions.
- zkms 8y ago
  > Is it abhorrent that the owners in a neighborhood can choose to come together as a collective and influence the neighborhood they all live in? Nothing wrong with it! If some people in a neighbourhood want to buy up a parcel of land to prevent housing from being built there, there's nothing wrong with that. The issue sorta crops up when you start dictating what (structurally-sound) buildings others get to build on their own land. If you want to reject private property altogether and go to some centrally-planned economic system then you've got a lot of work to do because even the fucking USSR was better at building housing than US cities are today.