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Bad zoning prevents price signals from leading to increased density and thus increased supply in areas of high demand. San Francisco should look like Hong Kong
by api 3y ago
Bad zoning prevents price signals from leading to increased density and thus increased supply in areas of high demand.
San Francisco should look like Hong Kong or Tokyo. If you want a quaint small town move to a quaint small town. World cities are not small towns and trying to contain them to preserve their “character” just leads to affordability crises and homelessness among other problems.
If Detroit suddenly became a hot place to live and it wasn’t upzoned the same problems would start happening there.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoHong Kong is more expensive than San Francisco. Is your claim that Hong Kong zoning prevents affordable housing? It doesn’t get much better across the bay in Shenzhen either (if you are buying rather than renting, as is true with most mainland cities). My point is that, with few exceptions, housing is always expensive in places that are popular. If you want affordable housing, turn your city into Cleveland, don’t turn it into Hong Kong.
- 2devnull 3y agoAgree a little bit. But also, it seems like there are many powerful people in San Francisco, people like Nancy Palosi, and they don’t want, the city from becoming Mumbai or Hong Kong or whatever it is you think it should be. You seem to want to limit wealthy people like her from participating in the political in a way that protects their interests. Even if you can somehow prevent individuals from impacting politics, groups like the California Coastal Commission will still pop up to represent nearly identical interests to those of individual landowners. The environment matters to poor folks too.
- sumeno 3y agoYeah, we really need to go out of our way to make sure Nancy Pelosi has a say in our political process. What if one of the most powerful politicians alive doesn't get to make this particular decision? She'll be so disenfranchised!