4 ms·
San Francisco and Seattle might have more affordable housing everywhere like Chicago if there were land adjacent to the city everywhere, like in Chicago. Instea
by prewett 3y ago
San Francisco and Seattle might have more affordable housing everywhere like Chicago if there were land adjacent to the city everywhere, like in Chicago. Instead, the cities are on penisulas. The only way those cities are going to be affordable is to look like Hong Kong (and even that might not do it, as in the case of Hong Kong). Needless to say, no one has accepted this.
You can't blame tech. There was tech for years, and housing filled up all the orchards and farm land south of San Francisco. Then, at some point, there stopped being farms to build on. The same thing will happen to Chicago if growth continues; people are only willing to commute so far.
- solardev 3y agoYeah, that's a fair point! Chicago is mostly filled in flat swampland. Maybe floating settlements in the Bay? If Japan can build a floating airport (Narita), can't we build a floating apartment or two?
- bcrosby95 3y agoEnvironmentalists would go nuts. And I don't blame them, considering the drawn up plan to turn the bay into a river from long ago. Once you fuck an environment, it's very time consuming and expensive to unfuck it. IIRC there's also a strict 1-for-1 policy: for every foot of land you take from the bay, you have to reclaim a foot of land for the bay elsewhere. Despite this, people will still fight it.
- solardev 3y agoI was thinking something literally floating, as opposed to an infilled island. Like a carrier or cargo ship sized apartment complex. Multi family houseboat :)
- callalex 3y agoHuge portions of San Francisco are already man-made infill.
- tivert 3y ago> Maybe floating settlements in the Bay? If Japan can build a floating airport (Narita), can't we build a floating apartment or two? I think you mean Haneda airport; and it's not floating, it's built on landfill (apparently the literal garbage kind): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneda_Airport#Domestic_era_(1978%E2%80%932010) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneda_Airport#Domestic_era_(1...: > The Transport Ministry released an expansion plan for Haneda in 1983 under which it would be expanded onto new landfill in Tokyo Bay with the aim of increasing capacity, reducing noise and making use of the large amount of garbage generated by Tokyo. In July 1988, a new 3,000-metre (9,800 ft) runway opened on the landfill. In September 1993, the old airport terminal was replaced by a new West Passenger Terminal, nicknamed "Big Bird", which was built farther out on the landfill. New C (parallel) and B (cross) runways were completed in March 1997 and March 2000 respectively.[12] > ....The fourth runway (05/23), which is called D Runway,[33] was also completed in 2010, having been constructed via land reclamation to the south of the existing airfield.
- solardev 3y agoOops! Good catch. I was actually thinking of Kansai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport), which like Haneda is an artificial island, not a floating airport. I misremembered. Thanks for the correction!
- abeppu 3y agoI don't think the physical peninsula is a good explanation -- prices in San Jose, the East Bay and Bellevue aren't "affordable" by a lot of measures.
- solardev 3y agoThose are still part of the greater San Francisco/Seattle metro areas though. As in like no one variable might explain everything, but compounding tech money with the limits of geography might just be a double whammy. And the BART isn't very good and Caltrain has limited coverage, so proximity still matters a lot. And Seattle has atrocious transit. In Chicago, living in the suburbs isn't so bad because the trains are so good (relatively). And then add rampant NIMBYism on top of that, especially from people who bought in early, and it's a disaster for subsequent generations of would-be residents.
- abeppu 3y ago> San Francisco and Seattle might have more affordable housing everywhere like Chicago if there were land adjacent to the city everywhere, like in Chicago. Sure, there can be lots of factors. But the original comment was about adjacent land -- which is present in the East Bay, South Bay, Eastside etc. If your statement is now "these places might have more affordable housing if they had different geographies, demographics, regional economies, public policy, infrastructure investments and history", then I agree with the statement, it says almost nothing.
- solardev 3y agoHeh, that's fair enough.