4 ms·

Ok, but we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs. Add a new suburb in the broader Bay Area (which at this point means going al

by m-ee 5y ago

Ok, but we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs. Add a new suburb in the broader Bay Area (which at this point means going all the way to Tracy) and all the highways and Bart get more strained. You didn’t avoid fixing local infrastructure you just added a whole new town on top of it. Yes fixing infrastructure is hard but what is your alternative here?

rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs San Mateo County is 69% rural, Santa Clara County is 74% rural, Alameda County is 63% rural, Contra Costa County is 57% rural and Marin is 84% rural. There are plenty of places to put suburbs. It's just not allowed. Yes you would need to build more roads. But progressives don't like roads. And progressives don't like suburbs. If they have to choose between new roads and suburbs on one hand and a housing shortage on the other had, well visit San Francisco. You can see and smell the choices they've made.
- m-ee 5y ago
  Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land. But there is no universe in which 280, 101, or 880 can be built to handle the extra demand that would cause. They couldn't adequately handle pre-pandemic traffic. And if you stick with SFH zoning that land would be gobbled up fairly quickly and we'd be in a worse version of our current situation. There's an exceedingly obvious third choice, increase density. There's no reason for transit connected areas of a major city to be legally limited to single family zoning.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land That's exactly my point. You don't have a shortage of land in the Bay Area. You have progressives who would rather have people sleep on the street than build on that land.
    - m-ee 5y ago
      Paving over forests and wetlands to make more suburbs will not solve homelessness. I legitimately don’t understand how that seems like a more reasonable choice than infill, changing zoning, and public transit improvements within existing urban and suburban areas.
      - rufus_foreman 5y ago
        >> I legitimately don’t understand how that seems like a more reasonable choice than infill, changing zoning, and public transit improvements within existing urban and suburban areas That's called false dichotomy. If you took all the land in the bay area that people aren't allowed to build on and you allowed developers to build single family homes on all that land, that's what, a million homes? You tell me. You could do infill, zoning, transit, all that, and still build a million new houses too. It's a choice. And the choice people are making is let's do none of that, let's do precisely none of that. Which is fine, but just stop with the whining. People made choices.

by m-ee 5y ago

rufus_foreman 5y ago

>> we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs San Mateo County is 69% rural, Santa Clara County is 74% rural, Alameda County is 63% rural, Contra Costa County is 57% rural and Marin is 84% rural. There are plenty of places to put suburbs. It's just not allowed. Yes you would need to build more roads. But progressives don't like roads. And progressives don't like suburbs. If they have to choose between new roads and suburbs on one hand and a housing shortage on the other had, well visit San Francisco. You can see and smell the choices they've made.

m-ee 5y ago
Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land. But there is no universe in which 280, 101, or 880 can be built to handle the extra demand that would cause. They couldn't adequately handle pre-pandemic traffic. And if you stick with SFH zoning that land would be gobbled up fairly quickly and we'd be in a worse version of our current situation. There's an exceedingly obvious third choice, increase density. There's no reason for transit connected areas of a major city to be legally limited to single family zoning.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land That's exactly my point. You don't have a shortage of land in the Bay Area. You have progressives who would rather have people sleep on the street than build on that land.
  - m-ee 5y ago
    Paving over forests and wetlands to make more suburbs will not solve homelessness. I legitimately don’t understand how that seems like a more reasonable choice than infill, changing zoning, and public transit improvements within existing urban and suburban areas.
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      >> I legitimately don’t understand how that seems like a more reasonable choice than infill, changing zoning, and public transit improvements within existing urban and suburban areas That's called false dichotomy. If you took all the land in the bay area that people aren't allowed to build on and you allowed developers to build single family homes on all that land, that's what, a million homes? You tell me. You could do infill, zoning, transit, all that, and still build a million new houses too. It's a choice. And the choice people are making is let's do none of that, let's do precisely none of that. Which is fine, but just stop with the whining. People made choices.