The thing is that the 200 soon-to-be residents who will move into a new apartment building won't get to vote in favour of its construction until after they've m

The thing is that the 200 soon-to-be residents who will move into a new apartment building won't get to vote in favour of its construction until after they've moved in. Furthermore, the municipality's authority to govern is derived from the democratically-elected California state government. So this appears to be a democracy of Californians telling San Francisco that they can't maintain local zoning authority if it's going to keep making it too expensive for other Californians to move there. Now perhaps you could take the position that California voters shouldn't be allowed to tell San Francisco what to do, based on the principle that only the residents of an area should have final authority over how their land is used, regardless of what their surrounding neighbours vote... but I'm sure you'd see the irony.