10 ms·

You can already see this trend in the western world. In our county, we may have rezoned 1/2 of our farmland in the last few decades. It's just a pity they all

You can already see this trend in the western world. In our county, we may have rezoned 1/2 of our farmland in the last few decades. It's just a pity they all turn into housing developments. We should really be setting aside more as green space.

mc32 4y ago
In many parts of the east coast and even some in the west coast of the USA, what was once pastureland or farmland has returned to a more natural state and a naive person would not know these places were one productive agricultural lands. This is why today the USA has more forest than it did at the turn of the 1900s. But yeah, it’s sad that all the orchards from mountain view to San Jose and beyond in the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay Areas have turned into housing tracts. I also long for the peaceful orchards, vineyards and fields of corn, but alas, time marches on.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > But yeah, it’s sad that all the orchards from mountain view to San Jose and beyond in the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay Areas have turned into housing tracts. I also long for the peaceful orchards, vineyards and fields of corn, but alas, time marches on. i was under the impression no additional housing is being built and that was a major problem.
  - RationPhantoms 4y ago
    keyword is affordable housing. Mansions/million-dollar condos are still being developed.
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      This is a problem, where we effectively don’t allow multi family or cheap apartments in many areas and only allow expensive single family units. However I believe California housing supply is so far behind demand that even expensive units are desirable to alleviate pressure on less expensive units, that people might otherwise compete for.
      - x3iv130f 4y ago
        Most of the new housing I see built are 5-over-1s. Giant 6 story apartment buildings built on already busy streets. What California needs is flexible zoning to allow mixed-use medium density development connected by safe bicycling paths and public transit. Too much space is taken by automobile parking and there is too far of a distance between places people live and the grocery stores, shopping areas, and gyms they frequent.
    - bennysomething 4y ago
      There was a post on hacker news about this. Study in Finland showed it doesn't matter the type of housing, if it's luxury people move up and out of what they are currently in and the people below follow. Not surprising really, it's just supply and demand.
      - watwut 4y ago
        At some point, you run out of land with reasonable commute times.
        bombcar 4y ago
        Cities aren’t black holes that cause all job locations to collapse into a singularity. If density were allowed to grow you’d find jobs appearing in other places (and the biggest cities have this already - the jobs aren’t only in the central metro area).
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        We have the technology to stack dwellings on top of each other. If commute times become unreasonable we also have the technology to reduce it, with trams or rail. Even better build the commute infrastructure first and then the housing but Singapore and Manhattan show pretty clearly what’s possible. Shanghai didn’t have a metro system 20 years ago. Now it’s the world's biggest.
        watwut 4y ago
        But that is what falls into "affordable housing" category. Comment I reacted to said it is not needed, because people move.
        bennysomething 4y ago
        It doesn't all fall into affordable housing category, people are complaining in London about new luxury high rise apartments because they are high end and "not affordable".
  - mc32 4y ago
    People were moving in like crazy which is why Tracy and mountain house exist. Those were largely farmland some years ago. More people are moving in than housing is built. If it were just local pop growth it would have been fine.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Lack of new housing in urban areas pushes people out into more rural ones.
  - citilife 4y ago
    > i was under the impression no additional housing is being built and that was a major problem. People act like it is, the reality is different. Why do people all need to live in SF? Serious question, why? There are small towns throughout the country within 30-45 min of a major city. If you want to go further out, you can find small towns / cities everywhere. I'm currently living a fair distance from any major city and can still get literally anything I can imagine delivered. It's cheaper, taxes are cheaper, food is cheaper, fuel is cheaper, I have more land, I can see trees / stars. Yet within a brief drive I can be in the center of a major city with all it entails. San Francisco is fairly dystopian. I used to live there, walking over human waste, people getting head in the street. Naked women rolling around after a bender, a persons leg rotting off. This was my daily walk through SF to work. Now, I see cows, sit in the grass and still make more money and am away from the tragedy. I think most people think building more buildings would solve the homeless problem. The reality is that dispersing production would save the city. I.e. limiting growth and having strict policing. The homeless would leave / be swept up and arrested. The housing would be expensive, but wealthy people would still live there. Then Sacramento, San Diego, Colorado, Texas, etc. is where people would move. This would help wealth inequality (spreading the wealth) and improve mental / societal health.
    - mc32 4y ago
      Many people think "idealistically" but sometimes forget to ground it in reality. People often don't realize that the "utopia" of the Soviet Union where everyone got a guaranteed apartment, pay and a job, was in many ways behind Mexico for example (not to knock on Mexico) but in the USSR and the second world with it's then "UBI"-like system, people could afford less living space and food variety than your median person in Mexico. Often in second world economies, you were forced to live with strangers (not multi-gen families) in the same appt. You could not afford a second hand car and many luxuries were reserved for Politburo, Scientists and those in the nomenklatura. But some "thinkers" believe that if only SF and other big cities would build complexes like the USSR, except that they would look more like SoMa mid-rises than the more utilitarian Soviet Apt blocks we could fit and satisfy everyone who wants to live in SF and other large cities.
      - 4y ago
  - Aunche 4y ago
    Not enough housing is built near the city center, so more people are pressured to move to formerly rural areas.
  - graeme 4y ago
    It’s more like dense housing is illegal, only single family homes are allowed.
  - StevePerkins 4y ago
    There are some social bubble dynamics that affect the discussions you read, here and on various subreddits or other forums. 1. People believe there should more abundant affordable housing. BUT... 2. A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. And also a lot of people here hate cars, which is 50% environmentalism and 50% about despising rural life as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation (I suspect that car hate would persist even if zero-emission solar powered vehicles became the norm). Therefore, we need more affordable housing, but only in the "cool places" where I want to live. Basically, I just want my rent to go down, and cultures that I don't like to cease to exist. Or this seems to be the line of thought, if you distill it down.
    - stickyricky 4y ago
      Absolutely not. I live in a rural area. A car is a necessity but it isn't my ideology. Living in cities is a lot of fun. Living in cities built for people and not cars is life changing. No hate for anyone here or there. My car is a tool. Full stop. If provided an alternative I would take it (and have).
    - watwut 4y ago
      > A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. I have seen way more city bashing then rural people bashing here. > Therefore, we need more affordable housing, but only in the "cool places" where I want to live. The mass is moving where the jobs are. Really. There are cool places and less cool places, but the places lacking housing are the ones where people move to have work.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The rural bashing is the underlying given; how dare anyone suggest living someplace that doesn’t vote at least 90% like I do.
    - wumpus 4y ago
      > A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. That's a great way to shut down a reasonable conversation! Makes a great talking point for rural politicians, too.
  - pkaye 4y ago
    The south bay is having a lot more housing being built. Mostly multi story apartments an condos.
- jxramos 4y ago
  I heard this recently that forestlands expanded somehow through the decades. It's too bad there were no aerial views of things long ago to see this before and after.
  - mc32 4y ago
    There aren't "many" aerial photos as testament but there are quite a few panoramic photographs of towns and their surrounds with denuded hills and meadows all being farmed one way or another and today are new growth forests and grasslands. Old abandoned railroads are among the witnesses to prior industrial activity.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > has returned to a more natural state Well it's no longer managed as farmland and has young forests growing on it now. It's hard to say what would be "natural". The land on the east coast was being actively managed with controlled burning and cultivation of wild plants basically as soon as people arrived. Interestingly, there weren't indigenous earth worms then, so forests that weren't burned had deep beds of leaves. Before that there were glaciers and a totally different climate.
usrn 4y ago
We're already short on housing even with this to the degree that real wages have stagnated or shrank since the 1970s. The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Or you could build up. Even most of NYC and Paris is not THAT dense.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Apartments and houses are different things and building up never seems to really lower the pressure on the housing market.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      > Apartments and houses are different things. Sure, and so are houses with white picket fences and town houses. What's your point? > building up never seems to really lower the pressure on the housing market. You can't really find any examples measured in a vacuum. But I guess you've already made up your mind anyway.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I’d really like to see more Parisian style density. I really find it hard to believe we could triple the density of major cities and magically there’d never be empty housing. At some point demand will drop off.
- munificent 4y ago
  > We're already short on housing The US has plenty of housing. It's just not where the jobs are. With the automation of agriculture and moving manufacturing to other countries, the employment map of the US changed rapidly in the past few decades, and our physical infrastructure hasn't caught up yet. > The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth. Even with immigration, US population growth is nearly flat now: https://www.brookings.edu/research/u-s-population-growth-has-nearly-flatlined-new-census-data-shows/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/u-s-population-growth-has... Assuming current trends continue (and I see no reason they wouldn't), the US will probably be net negative relatively soon. I know so many young people who have no plans to have children because they can't afford it and don't want to bring them into a world they think will be in a worse state than the one they grew up in.

mc32 4y ago

In many parts of the east coast and even some in the west coast of the USA, what was once pastureland or farmland has returned to a more natural state and a naive person would not know these places were one productive agricultural lands. This is why today the USA has more forest than it did at the turn of the 1900s. But yeah, it’s sad that all the orchards from mountain view to San Jose and beyond in the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay Areas have turned into housing tracts. I also long for the peaceful orchards, vineyards and fields of corn, but alas, time marches on.

chasd00 4y ago
> But yeah, it’s sad that all the orchards from mountain view to San Jose and beyond in the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay Areas have turned into housing tracts. I also long for the peaceful orchards, vineyards and fields of corn, but alas, time marches on. i was under the impression no additional housing is being built and that was a major problem.
- RationPhantoms 4y ago
  keyword is affordable housing. Mansions/million-dollar condos are still being developed.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    This is a problem, where we effectively don’t allow multi family or cheap apartments in many areas and only allow expensive single family units. However I believe California housing supply is so far behind demand that even expensive units are desirable to alleviate pressure on less expensive units, that people might otherwise compete for.
    - x3iv130f 4y ago
      Most of the new housing I see built are 5-over-1s. Giant 6 story apartment buildings built on already busy streets. What California needs is flexible zoning to allow mixed-use medium density development connected by safe bicycling paths and public transit. Too much space is taken by automobile parking and there is too far of a distance between places people live and the grocery stores, shopping areas, and gyms they frequent.
  - bennysomething 4y ago
    There was a post on hacker news about this. Study in Finland showed it doesn't matter the type of housing, if it's luxury people move up and out of what they are currently in and the people below follow. Not surprising really, it's just supply and demand.
    - watwut 4y ago
      At some point, you run out of land with reasonable commute times.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Cities aren’t black holes that cause all job locations to collapse into a singularity. If density were allowed to grow you’d find jobs appearing in other places (and the biggest cities have this already - the jobs aren’t only in the central metro area).
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        We have the technology to stack dwellings on top of each other. If commute times become unreasonable we also have the technology to reduce it, with trams or rail. Even better build the commute infrastructure first and then the housing but Singapore and Manhattan show pretty clearly what’s possible. Shanghai didn’t have a metro system 20 years ago. Now it’s the world's biggest.
        watwut 4y ago
        But that is what falls into "affordable housing" category. Comment I reacted to said it is not needed, because people move.
        bennysomething 4y ago
        It doesn't all fall into affordable housing category, people are complaining in London about new luxury high rise apartments because they are high end and "not affordable".
- mc32 4y ago
  People were moving in like crazy which is why Tracy and mountain house exist. Those were largely farmland some years ago. More people are moving in than housing is built. If it were just local pop growth it would have been fine.
- legitster 4y ago
  Lack of new housing in urban areas pushes people out into more rural ones.
- citilife 4y ago
  > i was under the impression no additional housing is being built and that was a major problem. People act like it is, the reality is different. Why do people all need to live in SF? Serious question, why? There are small towns throughout the country within 30-45 min of a major city. If you want to go further out, you can find small towns / cities everywhere. I'm currently living a fair distance from any major city and can still get literally anything I can imagine delivered. It's cheaper, taxes are cheaper, food is cheaper, fuel is cheaper, I have more land, I can see trees / stars. Yet within a brief drive I can be in the center of a major city with all it entails. San Francisco is fairly dystopian. I used to live there, walking over human waste, people getting head in the street. Naked women rolling around after a bender, a persons leg rotting off. This was my daily walk through SF to work. Now, I see cows, sit in the grass and still make more money and am away from the tragedy. I think most people think building more buildings would solve the homeless problem. The reality is that dispersing production would save the city. I.e. limiting growth and having strict policing. The homeless would leave / be swept up and arrested. The housing would be expensive, but wealthy people would still live there. Then Sacramento, San Diego, Colorado, Texas, etc. is where people would move. This would help wealth inequality (spreading the wealth) and improve mental / societal health.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Many people think "idealistically" but sometimes forget to ground it in reality. People often don't realize that the "utopia" of the Soviet Union where everyone got a guaranteed apartment, pay and a job, was in many ways behind Mexico for example (not to knock on Mexico) but in the USSR and the second world with it's then "UBI"-like system, people could afford less living space and food variety than your median person in Mexico. Often in second world economies, you were forced to live with strangers (not multi-gen families) in the same appt. You could not afford a second hand car and many luxuries were reserved for Politburo, Scientists and those in the nomenklatura. But some "thinkers" believe that if only SF and other big cities would build complexes like the USSR, except that they would look more like SoMa mid-rises than the more utilitarian Soviet Apt blocks we could fit and satisfy everyone who wants to live in SF and other large cities.
    - 4y ago
- Aunche 4y ago
  Not enough housing is built near the city center, so more people are pressured to move to formerly rural areas.
- graeme 4y ago
  It’s more like dense housing is illegal, only single family homes are allowed.
- StevePerkins 4y ago
  There are some social bubble dynamics that affect the discussions you read, here and on various subreddits or other forums. 1. People believe there should more abundant affordable housing. BUT... 2. A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. And also a lot of people here hate cars, which is 50% environmentalism and 50% about despising rural life as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation (I suspect that car hate would persist even if zero-emission solar powered vehicles became the norm). Therefore, we need more affordable housing, but only in the "cool places" where I want to live. Basically, I just want my rent to go down, and cultures that I don't like to cease to exist. Or this seems to be the line of thought, if you distill it down.
  - stickyricky 4y ago
    Absolutely not. I live in a rural area. A car is a necessity but it isn't my ideology. Living in cities is a lot of fun. Living in cities built for people and not cars is life changing. No hate for anyone here or there. My car is a tool. Full stop. If provided an alternative I would take it (and have).
  - watwut 4y ago
    > A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. I have seen way more city bashing then rural people bashing here. > Therefore, we need more affordable housing, but only in the "cool places" where I want to live. The mass is moving where the jobs are. Really. There are cool places and less cool places, but the places lacking housing are the ones where people move to have work.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The rural bashing is the underlying given; how dare anyone suggest living someplace that doesn’t vote at least 90% like I do.
  - wumpus 4y ago
    > A lot of people here despise rural people, as a matter of cultural tribal affiliation. That's a great way to shut down a reasonable conversation! Makes a great talking point for rural politicians, too.
- pkaye 4y ago
  The south bay is having a lot more housing being built. Mostly multi story apartments an condos.
jxramos 4y ago
I heard this recently that forestlands expanded somehow through the decades. It's too bad there were no aerial views of things long ago to see this before and after.
- mc32 4y ago
  There aren't "many" aerial photos as testament but there are quite a few panoramic photographs of towns and their surrounds with denuded hills and meadows all being farmed one way or another and today are new growth forests and grasslands. Old abandoned railroads are among the witnesses to prior industrial activity.
ch4s3 4y ago
> has returned to a more natural state Well it's no longer managed as farmland and has young forests growing on it now. It's hard to say what would be "natural". The land on the east coast was being actively managed with controlled burning and cultivation of wild plants basically as soon as people arrived. Interestingly, there weren't indigenous earth worms then, so forests that weren't burned had deep beds of leaves. Before that there were glaciers and a totally different climate.

usrn 4y ago

We're already short on housing even with this to the degree that real wages have stagnated or shrank since the 1970s. The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Or you could build up. Even most of NYC and Paris is not THAT dense.
- usrn 4y ago
  Apartments and houses are different things and building up never seems to really lower the pressure on the housing market.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    > Apartments and houses are different things. Sure, and so are houses with white picket fences and town houses. What's your point? > building up never seems to really lower the pressure on the housing market. You can't really find any examples measured in a vacuum. But I guess you've already made up your mind anyway.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I’d really like to see more Parisian style density. I really find it hard to believe we could triple the density of major cities and magically there’d never be empty housing. At some point demand will drop off.
munificent 4y ago
> We're already short on housing The US has plenty of housing. It's just not where the jobs are. With the automation of agriculture and moving manufacturing to other countries, the employment map of the US changed rapidly in the past few decades, and our physical infrastructure hasn't caught up yet. > The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth. Even with immigration, US population growth is nearly flat now: https://www.brookings.edu/research/u-s-population-growth-has-nearly-flatlined-new-census-data-shows/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/u-s-population-growth-has... Assuming current trends continue (and I see no reason they wouldn't), the US will probably be net negative relatively soon. I know so many young people who have no plans to have children because they can't afford it and don't want to bring them into a world they think will be in a worse state than the one they grew up in.