3 ms·

To do a proper analysis, you need to look at more than just the number of existing businesses. How many total groups attempted to open a business? How long doe

To do a proper analysis, you need to look at more than just the number of existing businesses. How many total groups attempted to open a business? How long does it take to open a business? What are the costs? Have these factors changed across time? And so on. But sure, using that as a rough heuristic, I agree it doesn’t seem likely to be the worst place to open an ice cream shop.

jacobolus 6y ago
Here is a city zoning map: https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/resources/2019-02/zoning_use_districts.pdf https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/resources/2019-02... I think the biggest problem is that like 3/4 of the city is zoned as low-density residential (pale yellow areas), only allowing detached single-family homes or – in some places – duplexes with low building height limits, and not allowing mixed uses like small ice cream shops, bodegas, bookstores, or cafés. As a result small businesses get crowded into a few streets zoned as “commercial corridors” (purple areas), and both residential and commercial rents are much higher than they would be if more parts of the city allowed construction of low-rise apartment buildings with bottom-floor storefronts (e.g. to RC3 from RH1/RH2 zoning). The real winners are large-scale property owners, who end up skimming a substantial margin from all economic activity in the city. If the rent weren’t so punishing, an extra couple months of permit bureaucracy wouldn’t be nearly the nightmare it is now, and existing small business owners wouldn’t be so desperate to protect slim profits. (A once-in-a-century pandemic still might kill many nascent businesses, but it’s hard to plan for that one.)