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This reminds me of those 20,000 word articles that explain why weight loss is impossible and diets don’t work. Coming to the Bay Area from living in NYC or tra

by CPLX 8y ago

This reminds me of those 20,000 word articles that explain why weight loss is impossible and diets don’t work. Coming to the Bay Area from living in NYC or traveling around Europe, you see a city full of 1-2 story single family homes, or Apple building a massive campus with literally no connection to rapid transit, and it’s like watching someone living off Mountain Dew and donuts and wondering why things aren’t going well. Like build some fucking apartment buildings and run some trains to places where the jobs and housing are. It’s not that fucking complicated.

falcolas 8y ago
It is, however, expensive. Someone has to pay for all of the real estate being condemned for the new buildings (and ideally they're paying fair market value, and not rock-bottom prices). They then have to put up the buildings themselves and improve the transit to and from the new buildings. NYC was able to do this because they did it 50, 70, 100 years ago. Today, they're just building over the same footprints as they had already carved out. Property was less expensive, and the government/companies under fewer moral constraints then.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 8y ago
  It is my understanding that zoning laws is SF prevent people from buying real estate in order to build apartment buildings, no matter how much money they offer.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    The laws do need to change first, but that wouldn't change the need to buy the land which will, based on past experiences, involve the city having to come in and force some people out.
venantius 8y ago
Better transit would go a long way, it's true. But for reasons we haven't really been able to diagnose, building new transit infrastructure -- any big infrastructure projects, really -- has become ludicrously expensive in the US. It's almost certainly still worth the investment, but the numbers are so eye-popping that it requires significant goverment subsidizing, which runs into political problems that are hard to get around in the current environment.
claydavisss 8y ago
The VTA knew Apple of Apple's construction plans for years and yet made no effort to extend light rail to the new campus. Instead they continue to make "investments" in "communities of need" since apparently wealthy tech workers are not deserving of government spending. If you dispute this, go look at how much unused transit capacity exists in East and South San Jose while places like Mountain View and Cupertino receive no attention. You can't even take the VTA to San Jose airport, because flying is also something rich people do. It got so bad that Palo Alto threatened to leave the VTA entirely. This is what happens when a transit agency stops addressing transit needs to focus on "justice". If you think anything has changed, go look at the VTA's projected plans...dumping even more government spending in places where their existing investment sits idle. Indeed, the VTA is actually reducing their commitments outside of San Jose over time...its all in their plans available for public review.
- tom_ 8y ago
  Scare quotes are rarely a good look.
jasode 8y ago
>Like build some fucking apartment buildings and run some trains to places where the jobs and housing are. It’s not that fucking complicated. Are you addressing what the author wrote because it seems like Scott Alexander says it may be more complicated than you claim. He wrote: >suppose San Francisco dectupled its housing growth for decades, until it was packed border to border with skyscrapers, and was exactly as dense as Manhattan. In a simple supply-based model, the glut of supply should make rents crash to only a few hundred dollars a month or less. But in actual Manhattan, single-bedroom apartments cost $3800 a month – even more than in San Francisco! If your theory predicts that turning a city into Manhattan will make rents plummet, then consider that turning Manhattan into Manhattan made rents much worse, and so maybe your theory is wrong.
- orblivion 8y ago
  I didn't buy this argument in particular (though the article in general was compelling). Housing follows jobs. It's not as though there are hedge funds there because a bunch of people with finance degrees decided to move to Manhattan. And even if such a network effect kicks in, there's a limit to what that industry can sustain. Also how many of those high rises are residential?
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    >even if At least read the article man. Besides it's perfectly possible that what you posit in Manhattan is true and saying that there's a limit says nothing about how close we are to it. If that limit is far off then agglomeration effects outweighing increasing supply is still a possibility far into the future. We're willing to accept that the demand curve for labor is upward sloping - that's our justification for immigration. So why is it so hard to accept even the possibility that in certain locations the demand curve for housing is also upward sloping?
- humanrebar 8y ago
  He ignores that Manhattan housing growth is also terrible. He also ignores that a lot of Manhattan workers live in other burroughs, cities, and even states.
rb808 8y ago
Wait. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, in the most economically successful region of the world. And you're saying they're doing it wrong and should be more like Europe? I think your biases are blinding your objectivity.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- epistasis 8y ago
  Being right or wrong is not a 100% thing across all subjects. It's not Apple that's responsible for building rail, for zoning for apartments, it's the city. The city itself is not responsible for Apple's success either, and many of the residents would rather that Apple had never been sited in Cupertino so they wouldn't have to deal with all those other people. That's the problem with Cupertino; a bunch of people moved there and changed it, and thought, "now that I'm here it's finally perfect and we shouldn't let anybody else in." That type of planning attitude, of "build it once and never let it change," is not something that's succeeded ever in the history of mankind. But we'll see how long it lasts this time.

by CPLX 8y ago

falcolas 8y ago

It is, however, expensive. Someone has to pay for all of the real estate being condemned for the new buildings (and ideally they're paying fair market value, and not rock-bottom prices). They then have to put up the buildings themselves and improve the transit to and from the new buildings. NYC was able to do this because they did it 50, 70, 100 years ago. Today, they're just building over the same footprints as they had already carved out. Property was less expensive, and the government/companies under fewer moral constraints then.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 8y ago
It is my understanding that zoning laws is SF prevent people from buying real estate in order to build apartment buildings, no matter how much money they offer.
- falcolas 8y ago
  The laws do need to change first, but that wouldn't change the need to buy the land which will, based on past experiences, involve the city having to come in and force some people out.

venantius 8y ago

Better transit would go a long way, it's true. But for reasons we haven't really been able to diagnose, building new transit infrastructure -- any big infrastructure projects, really -- has become ludicrously expensive in the US. It's almost certainly still worth the investment, but the numbers are so eye-popping that it requires significant goverment subsidizing, which runs into political problems that are hard to get around in the current environment.

claydavisss 8y ago

The VTA knew Apple of Apple's construction plans for years and yet made no effort to extend light rail to the new campus. Instead they continue to make "investments" in "communities of need" since apparently wealthy tech workers are not deserving of government spending. If you dispute this, go look at how much unused transit capacity exists in East and South San Jose while places like Mountain View and Cupertino receive no attention. You can't even take the VTA to San Jose airport, because flying is also something rich people do. It got so bad that Palo Alto threatened to leave the VTA entirely. This is what happens when a transit agency stops addressing transit needs to focus on "justice". If you think anything has changed, go look at the VTA's projected plans...dumping even more government spending in places where their existing investment sits idle. Indeed, the VTA is actually reducing their commitments outside of San Jose over time...its all in their plans available for public review.

tom_ 8y ago
Scare quotes are rarely a good look.

jasode 8y ago

>Like build some fucking apartment buildings and run some trains to places where the jobs and housing are. It’s not that fucking complicated. Are you addressing what the author wrote because it seems like Scott Alexander says it may be more complicated than you claim. He wrote: >suppose San Francisco dectupled its housing growth for decades, until it was packed border to border with skyscrapers, and was exactly as dense as Manhattan. In a simple supply-based model, the glut of supply should make rents crash to only a few hundred dollars a month or less. But in actual Manhattan, single-bedroom apartments cost $3800 a month – even more than in San Francisco! If your theory predicts that turning a city into Manhattan will make rents plummet, then consider that turning Manhattan into Manhattan made rents much worse, and so maybe your theory is wrong.

orblivion 8y ago
I didn't buy this argument in particular (though the article in general was compelling). Housing follows jobs. It's not as though there are hedge funds there because a bunch of people with finance degrees decided to move to Manhattan. And even if such a network effect kicks in, there's a limit to what that industry can sustain. Also how many of those high rises are residential?
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  >even if At least read the article man. Besides it's perfectly possible that what you posit in Manhattan is true and saying that there's a limit says nothing about how close we are to it. If that limit is far off then agglomeration effects outweighing increasing supply is still a possibility far into the future. We're willing to accept that the demand curve for labor is upward sloping - that's our justification for immigration. So why is it so hard to accept even the possibility that in certain locations the demand curve for housing is also upward sloping?
humanrebar 8y ago
He ignores that Manhattan housing growth is also terrible. He also ignores that a lot of Manhattan workers live in other burroughs, cities, and even states.

rb808 8y ago

Wait. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, in the most economically successful region of the world. And you're saying they're doing it wrong and should be more like Europe? I think your biases are blinding your objectivity.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
epistasis 8y ago
Being right or wrong is not a 100% thing across all subjects. It's not Apple that's responsible for building rail, for zoning for apartments, it's the city. The city itself is not responsible for Apple's success either, and many of the residents would rather that Apple had never been sited in Cupertino so they wouldn't have to deal with all those other people. That's the problem with Cupertino; a bunch of people moved there and changed it, and thought, "now that I'm here it's finally perfect and we shouldn't let anybody else in." That type of planning attitude, of "build it once and never let it change," is not something that's succeeded ever in the history of mankind. But we'll see how long it lasts this time.