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I spend a lot of time in all the major cities and what strikes me about the Bay Area is how geographically constrained the suburbs are. You basically get degree
by addcn 8y ago
I spend a lot of time in all the major cities and what strikes me about the Bay Area is how geographically constrained the suburbs are. You basically get degrees of freedom to the South and North (and some in the East Bay) but unlike NYC you can’t spread out in all directions.
I’ve never formally studied this in detail but my intuition says geography led to many of the Bay’s housing and transportation problem.
When viewed through that lens this superhighway of Caltrain makes sense.
Not rocket science but thought I’d share.
- filesystemdude 8y agoConstrained geography is an important part of shaping cities, but it's generally considered by geographers and urban planners to be an enormous positive.
- marcinzm 8y agoI'm curious why that's the case and under what conditions it applies. Constrained geography means that, physically, you can fit fewer people within the same commuting time which means prices should go up faster given demand than otherwise. Given an external source of demand (ie: hot area for whatever reason) that seems a bad combination for a healthy city.
- gumby 8y agoIt suppresses sprawl. If you allow people to build (an issue on the peninsula) then you can provide services more efficiently with less environmental impact.
- llukas 8y ago> that seems a bad combination for a suburb FTFY. Healthy city requires density - enough density means you got most things you need within walking distance.
- marcinzm 8y agoSure but then you get past that density into territory where the price per square foot means everyone lives in shoe boxes and/or is priced out. Higher density costs more money per square foot to build.
- jacques_chester 8y ago> I'm curious why that's the case and under what conditions it applies. Hong Kong is a small, mountainous archipelago. Tokyo-Yokohama surrounds a bay on a mountainous archipelago. Manhattan is an island. Yet these places have the most skyscrapers in the world and are amongst the richest places in history on any measure. Urban density has nonlinear effects. It relies in part on the pressure to build vertically and the ability to move many people horizontally.
- marcinzm 8y ago>Manhattan is an island Surrounded by a giant empty plain which people commute in from (as in it's population doubles during the day). And there's constant issues with wealth inequality, homelessness, living conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not the only measure by which a healthy city is defined.
- jacques_chester 8y agoI don't know if I'd describe NYC as surrounded by plains. It has the Atlantic on one side. Long Island is, you may have guessed, an island. Westchester and Suffolk are also pinched by the same rivers that constrain Manhattan. The densest parts of New Jersey that people commute from are variously constrained by the Atlantic, rivers and ports. I cannot imagine that Manhattan would be anywhere near as dense without the Hudson and East rivers cutting it off from the New York mainland, Long Island and New Jersey. > And there's constant issues with wealth inequality, homelessness, living conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not the only measure by which a healthy city is defined. What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy it so well?
- marcinzm 8y ago>What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy it so well? Now you're putting words in my mouth, just because I don't agree with your extreme must mean I hold the other end of the extreme?
- dehrmann 8y agoYou need a certain population density to make mass transit really work (think NYC subways). Having a bay in the middle of the Bay Area makes the math not work. That, and cities' unwillingness to grow.
- jacques_chester 8y agoThe causality is circular, though. Without the MTA, NYC wouldn't be nearly as dense. Construction followed the lines, not the other way around. It does help that NYC is a unified polity. If the 5 boroughs had remained independent it would be as messy as the Bay Area. The exclusion of Westchester, Suffolk, nearer Long Island and the parts of NJ out to say Seacaucus have a noticeable distortionary effect on the architecture of mass transit in the tri-state area.
- dehrmann 8y ago> The causality is circular, though. Maybe more reinforcing than circular, but I take your point. > It does help that NYC is a unified polity. It's comically bad in the Bay Area with so many local transit agencies jockeying for power. It's a miracle they were able to get a unified payment system built-out. Something that I hate about NYC is taking a taxi from Newark to NYC. Newark taxis can't pick up in NYC, so they have to drive back to Jersey.