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Paradise on Earth and home to the world’s brightest-future industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to

by raldi 5y ago

Paradise on Earth and home to the world’s brightest-future industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming from much less eco-friendly places.

eganist 5y ago
> Paradise on Earth and home to the nation’s fastest-growing industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming here from much less eco-friendly places. Are you in agreement with changing zoning laws to accommodate many more high rises e.g in norcal and around the bay? (I'm presuming your location from your bio. Correct me if I'm wrong) (I live near DC. DC itself has a height restriction that dates back to the building of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo, and I quite wish DC's height restrictions would change at the very least in its residential areas, but people are NIMBYing the heck out of that too)
- bombcar 5y ago
  I’m in favor of higher density and I’d have no problem tying it to practical mass transit - thus encouraging developers to work to expand mass transit so they can redevelop land to higher density.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Unfortunately countless coastal communities will happily watch their children flee so that they can keep their "beach bungalow vibe" or whatever other delusion they have. Meanwhile we will keep building huge roads and parking lots to accomodate their lifestyle.
    - JPKab 5y ago
      My father doesn't live in California, but he's one of those baby boomers that drives me crazy with this kind of crap. There are no jobs or industry anywhere near where we grew up but people like him make sure that stays a reality and then he has the nerve to complain about how I live so far away. He's the ultimate NIMBY. He and others like him all truly believe that as soon as their house was completed no further changes can ever allow to happen or else it will ruin the landscape. It's not just hypocritical it's outright selfish.
      - StandardFuture 5y ago
        > it's outright selfish. Yes, but aren't we all to at least some degree? "Self-focused" is perhaps an easier adjective to digest? The reality is that the boomers dominated politics (local and national) up until now. That starts to change inside this decade. So we are going to see dramatic shifts by 2030 and we will see if that is for the better or the worse.
- raldi 5y ago
  No need for highrises; just take all the places where 40' single-family houses are allowed, and allow 40' multifamily houses.
  - eganist 5y ago
    Why no need for highrises?
    - raldi 5y ago
      Most of California, even the densest regions like the city of San Francisco, are covered in a sea of single-family houses. This is primarily because in the 1970's, all other kinds of housing were banned. See, for instance, the map at: http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ If we allowed four-story apartment buildings again like we used to, the state's population could easily double in size without even having to raise a single height limit anywhere. (However, I should mention that I, for one, think six-story apartments are where it's at.)
      - clairity 5y ago
        in LA, the limit in the early 1900s was 13 stories/150’ [0], so many of the older tall-ish buildings in downtown and along the wilshire corridor are a uniform height. it’s quite pleasing actually. i’d support a bill allowing all mixed-use buildings to be 13 stories/150’ by default, and taller along transit corridors. and all residential to be 4+1 by right, and bigger within 1/2 mile of a transit corridor. CA politicians don’t even let such bills get to vote oftentimes, but vote them down when they do. i’d be down to put them on the ballot as a voter proposition instead. [0]: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-brief-history-of-skyscrapers-in-the-city-of-angels https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-...
        sagarm 5y ago
        Politics is the art of the possible, and a bill that made those changes is highly unlikely to pass. San Francisco's state senator Scott Weiner has been leading in he charge. A few good bills have gotten through, but opposition from LA has been a serious hurdle to upzoning.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rhacker 5y ago
What about water? Garbage? Electricity? Fuel? Also what about the people that would inevitably arrive from your invitation that want to build plastic plants like in MO? Point is I think you're hand-waving all the bad because of what it is today.
- raldi 5y ago
  You're acting like when you prevent people from coming here, they vanish into thin air, rather than go live somewhere else that's worse for the planet. For instance, city families use far less water per capita than rural and suburban families, and they produce fewer "capitas". https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised-for-using-least-water-in-5870159.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised... And compare "water used in California to produce almonds exported to other countries" versus "water used for all SF/LA homes and businesses" below: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports_v3.gif https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports... Similarly, when you take people from elsewhere in the country and move them to places like San Francisco, their consumption of fuel and electricity go down, as does their production of garbage.
  - david38 5y ago
    The majority of water problems come not from a few entities consuming massive amounts of water. Why we allow growing almond trees in an arid climate is beyond me. After that, you have smaller but water intensive businesses. Being suburban doesn’t mean you waste water. I live in the suburbs and our water use is minimal. I use water saving shower heads, I turn off the water during most of the shower. In fact, the water never runs for more than two minutes. I wash my car extremely rarely. I don’t water a lawn. I only water a couple of small potted plants. I have water saving toilets.
    - raldi 5y ago
      There are always going to be outliers (people in cities who use a lot of water, and people outside who don't), but on average you will always find that city families tend to use less water than non-city families. In other words, public policies that divert people away from cities tend to increase water consumption (and harm the environment by just about any other metric you can name.)
throwitaway1235 5y ago
California was a paradise in 1970. Today it's much closer to hell. In my opinion.
- Elof 5y ago
  Do you live in California?
- raldi 5y ago
  It's not for everyone, but I stand by my assertion that 100,000,000 feel otherwise and would choose to live here if we allowed the housing supply to meet demand.
- epistasis 5y ago
  California is paradise, still, except for the exclusion which leads to high prices, and the car-dependent city design which leads to traffic and misery. There's one trick to solve both these at once, while simultaneously helping the environment: more mixed-use walkable housing close to job centers.
  - herbst 5y ago
    How is it paradise then? When I think paradise I don't see homeless and traffic issues normally.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      Amazing people, amazing environment, amazing opportunity to contribute to the world. I am fortunate enough to be able to live close to work, and I usually bike otherwise, so traffic is only a problem if there's an emergency. So I'm lucky, I guess, it really is my paradise. I'm not upset by homeless people when I see them, I am upset by the choices of some selfish wealthy people. Homelessness and traffic are policy choices that we've made because the last generation, the one in power that refuses to see the errors of their philosophy and refuses to budge an inch, consciously made the decision that after a population boom, they wanted to keep people out. Which results in the long commutes, which causes even more traffic.
cauliflower2718 5y ago
Fire season is more like hell on earth than paradise, unfortunately.
- _jal 5y ago
  In retrospect, replacing fall with live-action Dante's Inferno was suboptimal.
- raldi 5y ago
  The primary reason we have a fire season at all is that we don't let people build housing in California's existing cities and towns, and so instead they sprawl out into fire-prone areas requiring long-distance power lines. https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermix https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermi...
  - tryonenow 5y ago
    Actually I think the real reason is that PG&E has ≈100 year old power lines with components that are well past their service life and regularly arc/fail causing fires. But there doesn't appear to be any accountability for their lack of maintenance. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-hooks-on-camp-fire-power-line-released/2190709/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-...
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    A lot of places have long-distance power lines. They don't all burn up on a regular basis. So, no, that can't be it. (That being said, yes, it would be better if power generation were decentralized, and California seems like the right place to do just that.)
    - raldi 5y ago
      Did you read the link? It’s specifically when the power lines run through fire-prone land, and also when the trees/brush interact with houses. The plants spread flames rapidly, and the buildings act as torches, keeping the fire going long after nature would’ve burned up.
thaumaturgy 5y ago
I'm usually a huge cheerleader for most things California, but I think this comment is missing some important considerations. Namely, people don't just need housing, they also need food, energy, water, transportation, waste management, employment, education, health care, and space for recreation. Every new home that goes up requires a lot of infrastructure to support a healthy population. And people don't want to be evenly distributed throughout the state. There's still plenty of space in Fresno! But, many of the people who live there wish they lived somewhere else. Lots of people all want to live in the same places; doing some math based off 2010 census numbers, the San Francisco Bay Area currently has an average population density of about 912 people per square mile [1]. That may be getting asymptotically close to the carrying capacity for those areas for people who want to live suburban lifestyles. California might be able to carry 80 million people, twice its current population, but that will require solving California's population distribution problem -- making some undesirable places a lot more desirable. [1]: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm, includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.
- raldi 5y ago
  Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27082295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27082295
  - thaumaturgy 5y ago
    No argument from me that higher density population centers tend to be better for the global environment, but that wasn't my point.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Density makes it easier to build the infrastructure to support population growth. Distribution makes it more expensive to build that infrastructure. Thus inreasing distribution hinders rather than helps the ability of California to support a larger population. That seems to directly contradict the points you were making.
Guest42 5y ago
Another issue I see is empty houses and 85-percent filled apartment complexes.
scottrogowski 5y ago
I agree so strongly with this sentiment. There is always such a defeatist attitude on these threads that assumes California is somehow full and unchangeable. Outside of the three metro areas, it's basically empty! Separately, in the metro areas, there's a lot of room for infill density. Three years back, I made the rational choice to leave because I could barely see a way to home ownership - not to mention having a family and sending children to a good school. California can solve all of it's problems if it wanted to. I think the problem is the number of people in California who have barely left the state and view the rest of the country as this underdeveloped backwater. Food for thought, California currently: - Is tied for the 3rd highest unemployment rate https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm - Has the 5th highest Gini coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_... - Has the LOWEST high school graduation rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school-graduation-rates-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school... The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  California needs to drastically ramp up water availability from new sources. Otherwise there isn't much point to the rest of this conversation.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    It won't take much water to support more people, and adding more people might even reduce water demand. Getting rid of old fixtures with née construction drastically reduces water demand. Replacing single family lawns with multi family and shared lawns typically allows far more people to live on the same amount of land and at the same time use less water. Even as my town's population has grown, water use has dropped: PDF, page 25: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual-water-resources-report https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual... The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come. The water rights system in this state are absurd, and we use water in terrible ways because of it. We need to reign in the farmers, who have been abusing aquifers and living without thought for the next generation. And we probably need to start taxing water rights, based on the water rights value.
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
As a native Californian I would argue a place like Hawaii is much closer to paradise on earth.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Hawaii has a lot of problems also. It looks nice on a postcard, and some of it is very nice. But it has a lot of problems.
eloff 5y ago
Yes, this is basically a testament to bad government and failure to address the housing problem. It turns out if you make homes unaffordable, people leave and look for a place where they can afford to live. Who knew?
john_moscow 5y ago
I grew up in a high population density area with 3 generation sharing the same apartment because that was the way to go. It is far from being a bright future one would want. Constant conflicts in the family because the grandparents want to watch TV, parents need to rest after work, and the child wants to study. Constantly hearing your neighbors when they want to have a party, or do some renovation. Trashed up common spaces because some guys just don't give a damn and will throw trash, or literally pee on the staircase, and you are forced to share some area with them. I grew up with the biggest dream of escaping that hell and it was one of the main reasons I immigrated to the West, where having your own private house was still affordable for most people. Now, through unwise fiscal policies and excessive centralization, the entire generation is completely priced out of it. But instead of seeking to change these policies, push for decentralization, and be able to afford freedom and independence, they seek to blame those who was born in a luckier time and want to force everybody to live in a concrete box. I don't think it's the right way.
- raldi 5y ago
  It sounds like you’re mixing up density and crowding: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    Density has a limit. It's easy to postpone the problem by replacing 2-storey houses with 20-storey high rises, but it won't work for long. Once enough people move in and demand catches up with the supply, you're back to square one, but with much less private space for everyone. Decentralization, on the other hand, is limited by the supply of land, that is fairly plentiful in the U.S. And it incentivizes taking care of your property, saving and paying off your mortgage (other than just giving money to the landlord). It would also create local jobs for owner-operated businesses related to construction and infrastructure maintenance, instead of corporate drones maintaining corporate-owned apartment towers.
    - raldi 5y ago
Hypx_ 5y ago
That's a bit of a stretch. You would to rethink how American society works for that to happen. Everything from water use and automotive dependency would have be reconsidered. And since this is earthquake country construction is relatively expensive. It doesn't take much math to realize that building enough housing for a 60M population increase would cost around $10T. So while this is an theoretical exercise but in reality it is very very hard to see happening under any short-term circumstances.
- raldi 5y ago
  Why would one need to rethink how society works? This is how all cities grew until single-family-houses-only zoning swept the United States in the 1970s. And if Tokyo can build skyscrapers, I don’t see why earthquakes would keep California from replacing 40’ SFHs with 40’ multifamily buildings.
  - Hypx_ 5y ago
    Japan has a much better mass transit system and a culture that does not embrace the automobile like the US has. Plus, Japan has far more access to fresh water that California does. And Tokyo doesn't have that many skyscrapers. In fact, for a city of its size it has surprisingly few. Even if we could magically upgrade every SFH to a multi-family building we'll have very unlivable cities with infrastructure falling well short of comfortably supporting the resulting population. So a realistic and worthwhile path to 100M would be a long and very expensive process.
    - raldi 5y ago
      I agree that we'd have to move away from the idea of every household owning a car, but there are plenty of American cities to look to as an example. Not only did New York somehow find a way to do it, but San Francisco itself was great at it until it decided in the 1970's to make illegal the kind of growth it had been doing continuously since its inception.
    - sagarm 5y ago
      In SF pre-pandemic, it was already true that a minority of people drove themselves to work. Drivers are just much more visible. A bus can transport as many people as an entire block's worth of vehicles.
herbst 5y ago
How is it paradise? Really just wondering as I totally can't see that from afar. I see expensive housing, a lot of poor and homeless, drug issues totally out of control,... Even the tech thing is argueable. Sure most unlucrative unicorns are there, but there are cool and serious startups all around the world.
- raldi 5y ago
  https://redd.it/an79j2 https://redd.it/an79j2 Never gets too hot, never gets too cold, doesn't rain at all for half the year, you can grow just about anything in your garden, there's natural beauty all around and you get get out there quickly and easily to enjoy it — beaches, snowy mountains, hiking, rolling hills...
  - herbst 5y ago
    There are places in Spain just like that. Only that they are not overpopulated already. That's not exclusive to California, rather available several times on that line around the globe.
    - raldi 5y ago
      I agree that there are places like this in Europe, but generally in Europe, they allow four-to-six-story multifamily housing in their cities. What part of Spain looks like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco#/media/File:Sunset_District_Drone_Shot_07APR2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco...
      - herbst 5y ago
        That looks like a human mass production farm. I don't think any place in Europe looks like this. We have mixed areas to decrease traffic and inequality, these kind of housing farms are pretty much non existent
        raldi 5y ago
svnt 5y ago
Right? Libertarian property development has no problems that have been repeatedly demonstrated throughout history! Why didn’t the people who study and work in housing policy just realize that? And you can throw some savior complex in on top — nothing but California housing to save the world from China’s emissions. And sure those less eco-friendly places would cease reproducing to replace their lost members? Utopia is a philosophical concept, like paradise, like perfect.
- raldi 5y ago
  If you have a point to make, please come out and make it. Sarcasm is lazy and neither educates nor persuades.

by raldi 5y ago

eganist 5y ago

> Paradise on Earth and home to the nation’s fastest-growing industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming here from much less eco-friendly places. Are you in agreement with changing zoning laws to accommodate many more high rises e.g in norcal and around the bay? (I'm presuming your location from your bio. Correct me if I'm wrong) (I live near DC. DC itself has a height restriction that dates back to the building of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo, and I quite wish DC's height restrictions would change at the very least in its residential areas, but people are NIMBYing the heck out of that too)

bombcar 5y ago
I’m in favor of higher density and I’d have no problem tying it to practical mass transit - thus encouraging developers to work to expand mass transit so they can redevelop land to higher density.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Unfortunately countless coastal communities will happily watch their children flee so that they can keep their "beach bungalow vibe" or whatever other delusion they have. Meanwhile we will keep building huge roads and parking lots to accomodate their lifestyle.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    My father doesn't live in California, but he's one of those baby boomers that drives me crazy with this kind of crap. There are no jobs or industry anywhere near where we grew up but people like him make sure that stays a reality and then he has the nerve to complain about how I live so far away. He's the ultimate NIMBY. He and others like him all truly believe that as soon as their house was completed no further changes can ever allow to happen or else it will ruin the landscape. It's not just hypocritical it's outright selfish.
    - StandardFuture 5y ago
      > it's outright selfish. Yes, but aren't we all to at least some degree? "Self-focused" is perhaps an easier adjective to digest? The reality is that the boomers dominated politics (local and national) up until now. That starts to change inside this decade. So we are going to see dramatic shifts by 2030 and we will see if that is for the better or the worse.
raldi 5y ago
No need for highrises; just take all the places where 40' single-family houses are allowed, and allow 40' multifamily houses.
- eganist 5y ago
  Why no need for highrises?
  - raldi 5y ago
    Most of California, even the densest regions like the city of San Francisco, are covered in a sea of single-family houses. This is primarily because in the 1970's, all other kinds of housing were banned. See, for instance, the map at: http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ If we allowed four-story apartment buildings again like we used to, the state's population could easily double in size without even having to raise a single height limit anywhere. (However, I should mention that I, for one, think six-story apartments are where it's at.)
    - clairity 5y ago
      in LA, the limit in the early 1900s was 13 stories/150’ [0], so many of the older tall-ish buildings in downtown and along the wilshire corridor are a uniform height. it’s quite pleasing actually. i’d support a bill allowing all mixed-use buildings to be 13 stories/150’ by default, and taller along transit corridors. and all residential to be 4+1 by right, and bigger within 1/2 mile of a transit corridor. CA politicians don’t even let such bills get to vote oftentimes, but vote them down when they do. i’d be down to put them on the ballot as a voter proposition instead. [0]: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-brief-history-of-skyscrapers-in-the-city-of-angels https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-...
      - sagarm 5y ago
        Politics is the art of the possible, and a bill that made those changes is highly unlikely to pass. San Francisco's state senator Scott Weiner has been leading in he charge. A few good bills have gotten through, but opposition from LA has been a serious hurdle to upzoning.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rhacker 5y ago

What about water? Garbage? Electricity? Fuel? Also what about the people that would inevitably arrive from your invitation that want to build plastic plants like in MO? Point is I think you're hand-waving all the bad because of what it is today.

raldi 5y ago
You're acting like when you prevent people from coming here, they vanish into thin air, rather than go live somewhere else that's worse for the planet. For instance, city families use far less water per capita than rural and suburban families, and they produce fewer "capitas". https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised-for-using-least-water-in-5870159.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised... And compare "water used in California to produce almonds exported to other countries" versus "water used for all SF/LA homes and businesses" below: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports_v3.gif https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/LA-vs-Exports... Similarly, when you take people from elsewhere in the country and move them to places like San Francisco, their consumption of fuel and electricity go down, as does their production of garbage.
- david38 5y ago
  The majority of water problems come not from a few entities consuming massive amounts of water. Why we allow growing almond trees in an arid climate is beyond me. After that, you have smaller but water intensive businesses. Being suburban doesn’t mean you waste water. I live in the suburbs and our water use is minimal. I use water saving shower heads, I turn off the water during most of the shower. In fact, the water never runs for more than two minutes. I wash my car extremely rarely. I don’t water a lawn. I only water a couple of small potted plants. I have water saving toilets.
  - raldi 5y ago
    There are always going to be outliers (people in cities who use a lot of water, and people outside who don't), but on average you will always find that city families tend to use less water than non-city families. In other words, public policies that divert people away from cities tend to increase water consumption (and harm the environment by just about any other metric you can name.)

throwitaway1235 5y ago

California was a paradise in 1970. Today it's much closer to hell. In my opinion.

Elof 5y ago
Do you live in California?
raldi 5y ago
It's not for everyone, but I stand by my assertion that 100,000,000 feel otherwise and would choose to live here if we allowed the housing supply to meet demand.
epistasis 5y ago
California is paradise, still, except for the exclusion which leads to high prices, and the car-dependent city design which leads to traffic and misery. There's one trick to solve both these at once, while simultaneously helping the environment: more mixed-use walkable housing close to job centers.
- herbst 5y ago
  How is it paradise then? When I think paradise I don't see homeless and traffic issues normally.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    Amazing people, amazing environment, amazing opportunity to contribute to the world. I am fortunate enough to be able to live close to work, and I usually bike otherwise, so traffic is only a problem if there's an emergency. So I'm lucky, I guess, it really is my paradise. I'm not upset by homeless people when I see them, I am upset by the choices of some selfish wealthy people. Homelessness and traffic are policy choices that we've made because the last generation, the one in power that refuses to see the errors of their philosophy and refuses to budge an inch, consciously made the decision that after a population boom, they wanted to keep people out. Which results in the long commutes, which causes even more traffic.

cauliflower2718 5y ago

Fire season is more like hell on earth than paradise, unfortunately.

_jal 5y ago
In retrospect, replacing fall with live-action Dante's Inferno was suboptimal.
raldi 5y ago
The primary reason we have a fire season at all is that we don't let people build housing in California's existing cities and towns, and so instead they sprawl out into fire-prone areas requiring long-distance power lines. https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermix https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermi...
- tryonenow 5y ago
  Actually I think the real reason is that PG&E has ≈100 year old power lines with components that are well past their service life and regularly arc/fail causing fires. But there doesn't appear to be any accountability for their lack of maintenance. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-hooks-on-camp-fire-power-line-released/2190709/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-...
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  A lot of places have long-distance power lines. They don't all burn up on a regular basis. So, no, that can't be it. (That being said, yes, it would be better if power generation were decentralized, and California seems like the right place to do just that.)
  - raldi 5y ago
    Did you read the link? It’s specifically when the power lines run through fire-prone land, and also when the trees/brush interact with houses. The plants spread flames rapidly, and the buildings act as torches, keeping the fire going long after nature would’ve burned up.

thaumaturgy 5y ago

I'm usually a huge cheerleader for most things California, but I think this comment is missing some important considerations. Namely, people don't just need housing, they also need food, energy, water, transportation, waste management, employment, education, health care, and space for recreation. Every new home that goes up requires a lot of infrastructure to support a healthy population. And people don't want to be evenly distributed throughout the state. There's still plenty of space in Fresno! But, many of the people who live there wish they lived somewhere else. Lots of people all want to live in the same places; doing some math based off 2010 census numbers, the San Francisco Bay Area currently has an average population density of about 912 people per square mile [1]. That may be getting asymptotically close to the carrying capacity for those areas for people who want to live suburban lifestyles. California might be able to carry 80 million people, twice its current population, but that will require solving California's population distribution problem -- making some undesirable places a lot more desirable. [1]: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm, includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.

raldi 5y ago
Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27082295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27082295
- thaumaturgy 5y ago
  No argument from me that higher density population centers tend to be better for the global environment, but that wasn't my point.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Density makes it easier to build the infrastructure to support population growth. Distribution makes it more expensive to build that infrastructure. Thus inreasing distribution hinders rather than helps the ability of California to support a larger population. That seems to directly contradict the points you were making.

Guest42 5y ago

Another issue I see is empty houses and 85-percent filled apartment complexes.

scottrogowski 5y ago

I agree so strongly with this sentiment. There is always such a defeatist attitude on these threads that assumes California is somehow full and unchangeable. Outside of the three metro areas, it's basically empty! Separately, in the metro areas, there's a lot of room for infill density. Three years back, I made the rational choice to leave because I could barely see a way to home ownership - not to mention having a family and sending children to a good school. California can solve all of it's problems if it wanted to. I think the problem is the number of people in California who have barely left the state and view the rest of the country as this underdeveloped backwater. Food for thought, California currently: - Is tied for the 3rd highest unemployment rate https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm - Has the 5th highest Gini coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_... - Has the LOWEST high school graduation rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school-graduation-rates-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school... The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
California needs to drastically ramp up water availability from new sources. Otherwise there isn't much point to the rest of this conversation.
- epistasis 5y ago
  It won't take much water to support more people, and adding more people might even reduce water demand. Getting rid of old fixtures with née construction drastically reduces water demand. Replacing single family lawns with multi family and shared lawns typically allows far more people to live on the same amount of land and at the same time use less water. Even as my town's population has grown, water use has dropped: PDF, page 25: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual-water-resources-report https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual... The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come. The water rights system in this state are absurd, and we use water in terrible ways because of it. We need to reign in the farmers, who have been abusing aquifers and living without thought for the next generation. And we probably need to start taxing water rights, based on the water rights value.

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

As a native Californian I would argue a place like Hawaii is much closer to paradise on earth.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Hawaii has a lot of problems also. It looks nice on a postcard, and some of it is very nice. But it has a lot of problems.

eloff 5y ago

Yes, this is basically a testament to bad government and failure to address the housing problem. It turns out if you make homes unaffordable, people leave and look for a place where they can afford to live. Who knew?

john_moscow 5y ago

I grew up in a high population density area with 3 generation sharing the same apartment because that was the way to go. It is far from being a bright future one would want. Constant conflicts in the family because the grandparents want to watch TV, parents need to rest after work, and the child wants to study. Constantly hearing your neighbors when they want to have a party, or do some renovation. Trashed up common spaces because some guys just don't give a damn and will throw trash, or literally pee on the staircase, and you are forced to share some area with them. I grew up with the biggest dream of escaping that hell and it was one of the main reasons I immigrated to the West, where having your own private house was still affordable for most people. Now, through unwise fiscal policies and excessive centralization, the entire generation is completely priced out of it. But instead of seeking to change these policies, push for decentralization, and be able to afford freedom and independence, they seek to blame those who was born in a luckier time and want to force everybody to live in a concrete box. I don't think it's the right way.

raldi 5y ago
It sounds like you’re mixing up density and crowding: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg
- john_moscow 5y ago
  Density has a limit. It's easy to postpone the problem by replacing 2-storey houses with 20-storey high rises, but it won't work for long. Once enough people move in and demand catches up with the supply, you're back to square one, but with much less private space for everyone. Decentralization, on the other hand, is limited by the supply of land, that is fairly plentiful in the U.S. And it incentivizes taking care of your property, saving and paying off your mortgage (other than just giving money to the landlord). It would also create local jobs for owner-operated businesses related to construction and infrastructure maintenance, instead of corporate drones maintaining corporate-owned apartment towers.
  - raldi 5y ago

Hypx_ 5y ago

That's a bit of a stretch. You would to rethink how American society works for that to happen. Everything from water use and automotive dependency would have be reconsidered. And since this is earthquake country construction is relatively expensive. It doesn't take much math to realize that building enough housing for a 60M population increase would cost around $10T. So while this is an theoretical exercise but in reality it is very very hard to see happening under any short-term circumstances.

raldi 5y ago
Why would one need to rethink how society works? This is how all cities grew until single-family-houses-only zoning swept the United States in the 1970s. And if Tokyo can build skyscrapers, I don’t see why earthquakes would keep California from replacing 40’ SFHs with 40’ multifamily buildings.
- Hypx_ 5y ago
  Japan has a much better mass transit system and a culture that does not embrace the automobile like the US has. Plus, Japan has far more access to fresh water that California does. And Tokyo doesn't have that many skyscrapers. In fact, for a city of its size it has surprisingly few. Even if we could magically upgrade every SFH to a multi-family building we'll have very unlivable cities with infrastructure falling well short of comfortably supporting the resulting population. So a realistic and worthwhile path to 100M would be a long and very expensive process.
  - raldi 5y ago
    I agree that we'd have to move away from the idea of every household owning a car, but there are plenty of American cities to look to as an example. Not only did New York somehow find a way to do it, but San Francisco itself was great at it until it decided in the 1970's to make illegal the kind of growth it had been doing continuously since its inception.
  - sagarm 5y ago
    In SF pre-pandemic, it was already true that a minority of people drove themselves to work. Drivers are just much more visible. A bus can transport as many people as an entire block's worth of vehicles.

herbst 5y ago

How is it paradise? Really just wondering as I totally can't see that from afar. I see expensive housing, a lot of poor and homeless, drug issues totally out of control,... Even the tech thing is argueable. Sure most unlucrative unicorns are there, but there are cool and serious startups all around the world.

raldi 5y ago
https://redd.it/an79j2 https://redd.it/an79j2 Never gets too hot, never gets too cold, doesn't rain at all for half the year, you can grow just about anything in your garden, there's natural beauty all around and you get get out there quickly and easily to enjoy it — beaches, snowy mountains, hiking, rolling hills...
- herbst 5y ago
  There are places in Spain just like that. Only that they are not overpopulated already. That's not exclusive to California, rather available several times on that line around the globe.
  - raldi 5y ago
    I agree that there are places like this in Europe, but generally in Europe, they allow four-to-six-story multifamily housing in their cities. What part of Spain looks like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco#/media/File:Sunset_District_Drone_Shot_07APR2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco...
    - herbst 5y ago
      That looks like a human mass production farm. I don't think any place in Europe looks like this. We have mixed areas to decrease traffic and inequality, these kind of housing farms are pretty much non existent
      - raldi 5y ago

svnt 5y ago

Right? Libertarian property development has no problems that have been repeatedly demonstrated throughout history! Why didn’t the people who study and work in housing policy just realize that? And you can throw some savior complex in on top — nothing but California housing to save the world from China’s emissions. And sure those less eco-friendly places would cease reproducing to replace their lost members? Utopia is a philosophical concept, like paradise, like perfect.

raldi 5y ago
If you have a point to make, please come out and make it. Sarcasm is lazy and neither educates nor persuades.