4 ms·

I'd personally consider overriding local single family zoning and allowing denser building the "obvious" solution. Seems like California is slowly moving in tha

I'd personally consider overriding local single family zoning and allowing denser building the "obvious" solution. Seems like California is slowly moving in that direction.

cs702 3y ago
Good point. You're right. NIMBYism stands in the way, but I agree it's the more "obvious" solution.
vorpalhex 3y ago
This gets repeated often but it's not as if housing is the only expensive part of living in a big city, and increasing density will only make those other factors MORE expensive, not less, even though it reduces (slightly, temporarily) the price of housing. California with 10% more houses is not 10% cheaper. It is slightly more expensive.
- slt2021 3y ago
  10% more people in bay area will create 10% more demand for services sector (many of which employ low wage workers) and will drive wage growth for services sector
- BorgHunter 3y ago
  What gets more expensive with increasing density? Seems like most things are cheaper with more density, because (compared to less density but equal population) there's less area that needs to be covered by roads, water mains, fire stations, transit service, etc.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    ..and you'll use 10% more electricity and 10% more water and 10% more fire/rescue calls and so on. You'll need 10% more buses. Your airport will be 10% busier. You will have 10% more people eating at restaurants... And installing a water main in a rural area is a lot cheaper than installing one in downtown NYC... and your water main needs to be bigger now too.
    - BorgHunter 3y ago
      But I said to keep population equal. Take two million people, and put a million in a city as dense as Manhattan (74,780.7/sq mi), and the other million in a city as dense as Jacksonville, Florida (1,270.73/sq mi). So New Manhattan would be 13 square miles, and New Jacksonville would be 787 square miles. It seems obvious to me that most things in New Manhattan would be more efficient and cheaper. You'd need fewer police officers to have the same patrol density. You'd have a couple larger fire stations instead of numerous smaller ones. You'd have far less utility and road infrastructure to maintain. Everyone would spend less time traveling places, because everything's so close together, and fewer people would feel like they had to purchase a personal vehicle, which means fewer and smaller parking lots to pave. You have to make other tradeoffs for this bonus, of course, and many find those tradeoffs unacceptable, which is fine. But it seems like efficiency is density's greatest strength, to me.
      - vorpalhex 3y ago
        Police officers scale as calls scale. There's some minimum threshold based on space, but if you have 50 calls at once then you need 50-70 officers. And your manhattan officer doesn't have the option of "let the angry dude kick rocks in a farm field until he gets bored and arrest him". Every fleeing perp becomes a danger to _hundreds_ of other people. Every fired pistol round has a high chance of hitting a bystander. CS gas cylinders are right out. Same for fire, except now you have a new problem. When a house in New Jacksonville burns, one option is to let it control burn. The home is a loss, but this is a safe and viable option. You can't do that in our manhattan. The entire city will be on fire. And fighting a fire on a one floor residential house is easy. Fighting a fire on a 40 floor condo structure is complicated and takes many, many more trucks - and now instead of one home being lost, we are looking at ten or more homes, even if we are successful. Water distribution to a bunch of little houses is easy if sort of requiring some piping. Distributing to a 40 floor condo building is an expert task requiring a whole mess more of complexity.
mistrial9 3y ago
these clear solution gets downvotes here -- some people say that local government is more difficult than large government precisely because of indignant individuals plus local power bases. A well-thought out density solution has been seriously investigated for decades, in difference tech contexts for hundreds of years. The American solution of suburbs with cars was founded on inexpensive private automobiles. The world is full of toxins to pay for it, but roughly zero people who benefit from it are ready to change, especially if they can claim someone else is giving orders.

I'd personally consider overriding local single family zoning and allowing denser building the "obvious" solution. Seems like California is slowly moving in that direction.

cs702 3y ago

Good point. You're right. NIMBYism stands in the way, but I agree it's the more "obvious" solution.

vorpalhex 3y ago

This gets repeated often but it's not as if housing is the only expensive part of living in a big city, and increasing density will only make those other factors MORE expensive, not less, even though it reduces (slightly, temporarily) the price of housing. California with 10% more houses is not 10% cheaper. It is slightly more expensive.

slt2021 3y ago
10% more people in bay area will create 10% more demand for services sector (many of which employ low wage workers) and will drive wage growth for services sector
BorgHunter 3y ago
What gets more expensive with increasing density? Seems like most things are cheaper with more density, because (compared to less density but equal population) there's less area that needs to be covered by roads, water mains, fire stations, transit service, etc.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  ..and you'll use 10% more electricity and 10% more water and 10% more fire/rescue calls and so on. You'll need 10% more buses. Your airport will be 10% busier. You will have 10% more people eating at restaurants... And installing a water main in a rural area is a lot cheaper than installing one in downtown NYC... and your water main needs to be bigger now too.
  - BorgHunter 3y ago
    But I said to keep population equal. Take two million people, and put a million in a city as dense as Manhattan (74,780.7/sq mi), and the other million in a city as dense as Jacksonville, Florida (1,270.73/sq mi). So New Manhattan would be 13 square miles, and New Jacksonville would be 787 square miles. It seems obvious to me that most things in New Manhattan would be more efficient and cheaper. You'd need fewer police officers to have the same patrol density. You'd have a couple larger fire stations instead of numerous smaller ones. You'd have far less utility and road infrastructure to maintain. Everyone would spend less time traveling places, because everything's so close together, and fewer people would feel like they had to purchase a personal vehicle, which means fewer and smaller parking lots to pave. You have to make other tradeoffs for this bonus, of course, and many find those tradeoffs unacceptable, which is fine. But it seems like efficiency is density's greatest strength, to me.
    - vorpalhex 3y ago
      Police officers scale as calls scale. There's some minimum threshold based on space, but if you have 50 calls at once then you need 50-70 officers. And your manhattan officer doesn't have the option of "let the angry dude kick rocks in a farm field until he gets bored and arrest him". Every fleeing perp becomes a danger to _hundreds_ of other people. Every fired pistol round has a high chance of hitting a bystander. CS gas cylinders are right out. Same for fire, except now you have a new problem. When a house in New Jacksonville burns, one option is to let it control burn. The home is a loss, but this is a safe and viable option. You can't do that in our manhattan. The entire city will be on fire. And fighting a fire on a one floor residential house is easy. Fighting a fire on a 40 floor condo structure is complicated and takes many, many more trucks - and now instead of one home being lost, we are looking at ten or more homes, even if we are successful. Water distribution to a bunch of little houses is easy if sort of requiring some piping. Distributing to a 40 floor condo building is an expert task requiring a whole mess more of complexity.

mistrial9 3y ago

these clear solution gets downvotes here -- some people say that local government is more difficult than large government precisely because of indignant individuals plus local power bases. A well-thought out density solution has been seriously investigated for decades, in difference tech contexts for hundreds of years. The American solution of suburbs with cars was founded on inexpensive private automobiles. The world is full of toxins to pay for it, but roughly zero people who benefit from it are ready to change, especially if they can claim someone else is giving orders.