5 ms·

Bay Area quality of life isn't great. Endless strip malls, hardly any culture vs Europe. It's pretty shit.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
It is better than many other parts of the world tho’...I do agree that Europe wins in some respects. American comfort and quality of life does come from over consumption. We consume(and are wasteful too) at 350 million people more than the 1.3 billion Indians. So yea..there is that..but surely we can have a middle ground between wasteful sprawl and high density, bumper to bumper trafficker life style. Our local art gallery and indie coffee shops have closed down due to no foot traffic as home-office-home commute begins at 6.30 to 9,00 and then 2.00-7.30 pm. They use side streets and clog arterial infra city roads due to various traffic apps suggesting short cuts. The local mission that used to press olives every year from the olive trees in their property won’t do it anymore because they sold the land to build more condos. The community college wants to sell its land to build apartments and they aren’t even student housing. Everyone is in the speculative high density market rate housing game. Cities have no identity and they are nothing but bedroom communities where people come back to eat and sleep before getting up to go back to work again battling traffic. Are high density cities worth this zombie existence? That’s what Bay Area is becoming.. I hope it isn’t so!
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  You have things 100% backwards. High density should mean improved public transport because the economic incentives will shift to favor it strongly. Low density sprawl is a huge factor in traffic because it pulls people apart. You can't walk anywhere because you have to live more than half an hour walk from the local shop, the local butcher, florist, cafe, gallery. Zombie existence? The low density shit hole that is the Bay Area is a zombie existence. European lifestyle with its much higher density and much better road traffic is the antithesis of zombie existence.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    Right. I agree that it should improve public transport and infrastructure. But it hasn’t in the Bay Area. We vote for propositions and bond measures every election cycle only for the state to disappoint us again and again. The end result is high density without community benefits and infrastructure improvements. Case in point, I can’t go out to get a bottle of milk between 2.00-7.00 because of traffic. People are cutting through residential roads due to traffic apps diverting them away from freeways which are clogged anyways. There are no shops within a mile of most homes. There are shopping hubs and then there are residential developments. Due to greed, Bay Area cities (ABAG is the name of the org) has zoned everything residential and there are no shops, no green spaces, no parks..no parking and no public transport! Just homes and homes and more high density homes to extract as much property taxes as possible. So these are not even affordable homes but expensive million dollar homes. These tax dollars go to improve other areas in California that is not as well off as Bay Area. Hence the awfulness of our region. You’d think as a cash cow we would get some benefits for shouldering the economy of this state massively, but no...we are just a place where Sacramento can milk and milk and milk more for taxes. You’d think they’d improve other parts of California. So obviously something is off..if this is a repeating pattern, then perhaps we must correct our assumptions about the benefits of high density vis a vis sustainability and quality of life. The data doesn’t deliver the promised benefits. In the Bay Area, we don’t have low density sprawl. We have high to medium density already and most land is built out. We have a public transportation problem with both intra and inter city gridlocks. The solution is to build outside and developing the public transport system to connect the hubs in the state. They have already wasted millions and millions on this with no impact except creating unsupported high density dwellings leading to more traffic woes. Fifty years is ridiculous. Most of us won’t be alive and our children would already be burdened with debt before they are born. In China, roads and bridges and homes are built in months. Not even years. Here the bureaucracy of big govt makes any project going like one is rowing a boat through a creek of molasses. So how do we fix this? Certainly not by handing over more tax dollars to Sacramento every time they come up with another hare brained scheme. I mean..even this post here..check the article. They only know that they need 100 billion. No plan. No ideas as to how to collect it. No way for us to perform due diligence. Fool me once etc.

It is better than many other parts of the world tho’...I do agree that Europe wins in some respects. American comfort and quality of life does come from over consumption. We consume(and are wasteful too) at 350 million people more than the 1.3 billion Indians. So yea..there is that..but surely we can have a middle ground between wasteful sprawl and high density, bumper to bumper trafficker life style. Our local art gallery and indie coffee shops have closed down due to no foot traffic as home-office-home commute begins at 6.30 to 9,00 and then 2.00-7.30 pm. They use side streets and clog arterial infra city roads due to various traffic apps suggesting short cuts. The local mission that used to press olives every year from the olive trees in their property won’t do it anymore because they sold the land to build more condos. The community college wants to sell its land to build apartments and they aren’t even student housing. Everyone is in the speculative high density market rate housing game. Cities have no identity and they are nothing but bedroom communities where people come back to eat and sleep before getting up to go back to work again battling traffic. Are high density cities worth this zombie existence? That’s what Bay Area is becoming.. I hope it isn’t so!

pertymcpert 7y ago
You have things 100% backwards. High density should mean improved public transport because the economic incentives will shift to favor it strongly. Low density sprawl is a huge factor in traffic because it pulls people apart. You can't walk anywhere because you have to live more than half an hour walk from the local shop, the local butcher, florist, cafe, gallery. Zombie existence? The low density shit hole that is the Bay Area is a zombie existence. European lifestyle with its much higher density and much better road traffic is the antithesis of zombie existence.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  Right. I agree that it should improve public transport and infrastructure. But it hasn’t in the Bay Area. We vote for propositions and bond measures every election cycle only for the state to disappoint us again and again. The end result is high density without community benefits and infrastructure improvements. Case in point, I can’t go out to get a bottle of milk between 2.00-7.00 because of traffic. People are cutting through residential roads due to traffic apps diverting them away from freeways which are clogged anyways. There are no shops within a mile of most homes. There are shopping hubs and then there are residential developments. Due to greed, Bay Area cities (ABAG is the name of the org) has zoned everything residential and there are no shops, no green spaces, no parks..no parking and no public transport! Just homes and homes and more high density homes to extract as much property taxes as possible. So these are not even affordable homes but expensive million dollar homes. These tax dollars go to improve other areas in California that is not as well off as Bay Area. Hence the awfulness of our region. You’d think as a cash cow we would get some benefits for shouldering the economy of this state massively, but no...we are just a place where Sacramento can milk and milk and milk more for taxes. You’d think they’d improve other parts of California. So obviously something is off..if this is a repeating pattern, then perhaps we must correct our assumptions about the benefits of high density vis a vis sustainability and quality of life. The data doesn’t deliver the promised benefits. In the Bay Area, we don’t have low density sprawl. We have high to medium density already and most land is built out. We have a public transportation problem with both intra and inter city gridlocks. The solution is to build outside and developing the public transport system to connect the hubs in the state. They have already wasted millions and millions on this with no impact except creating unsupported high density dwellings leading to more traffic woes. Fifty years is ridiculous. Most of us won’t be alive and our children would already be burdened with debt before they are born. In China, roads and bridges and homes are built in months. Not even years. Here the bureaucracy of big govt makes any project going like one is rowing a boat through a creek of molasses. So how do we fix this? Certainly not by handing over more tax dollars to Sacramento every time they come up with another hare brained scheme. I mean..even this post here..check the article. They only know that they need 100 billion. No plan. No ideas as to how to collect it. No way for us to perform due diligence. Fool me once etc.