4 ms·

Nobody is asking San Francisco alone to do anything. Only three Bay Area jurisdictions (of 109) were ready by the Jan 31 deadline this year. Thirty-four faile

Nobody is asking San Francisco alone to do anything. Only three Bay Area jurisdictions (of 109) were ready by the Jan 31 deadline this year. Thirty-four failed to even get drafts in by the earlier deadline. By April the number of jurisdictions in compliance rose to… sixteen. And yet, here we are discussing an article about San Francisco while completely ignoring the regional picture. San Francisco has an overall population density of ~17,000 people/sq mi, Brisbane 1,600. Atherton? Under 1,500. So, yes, focusing on San Francisco as HN seems wont to do is utterly ridiculous.

smugma 3y ago
Yes, this is an article about S.F. There are other articles about Woodside trying to say its whole town is Mountain Lion habitat, Los Altos, Palo Alto, etc. Here’s a recent one (their mayor is as bad as the NIMBY SF BoS): https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/11/21/high-rise-development-proposed-for-mollie-stones-site-in-palo-alto https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/11/21/high-rise-dev...
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  And yet somehow magically HN discussion trends towards big, bad San Francisco. Go figure. For those keeping score at home: San Francisco has a population density of over 17,000 people per square mile. Woodside? 460. For all of its corruption and inaction San Francisco's already done far more than the surrounding communities.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Because densifying a major metro that's already pretty dense is totally logical. The rest of the Bay Area should be much denser too, its 83% zoned single-family. However they have a much longer road ahead building infrastructure that SF already has. Putting the density with the rest of the density is totally rational. Brooklyn has 38,000 people per square mile. Queens is 22,000 people per square mile. Manhattan is 73,000 people per square mile. Hoboken is 48,000 people per square mile. SF is not dense. SF should be the Manhattan of the Bay Area and instead it's got the density of like East LA. The problem when people pull this stat is that we should really be comparing the density of the Bay Area to other major metros - not just SF. SF is a tiny little postage stamp. It's much more comparable to one of the NY Boroughs. It's just that SF city/county is gerrymandered out of the other peninsula counties. When we do the logical and look at the SF-SJ-OAK MSA it has a population density of 700/sqmi, as compared to New York City at 29,302/sqmi. It's comparable to Augusta, GA, or Norman, OK. If we compare at the densest are in the SF-SJ-OAK MSA, San Francisco at 17,000/sqmi - to New York City's Manhattan at 73,000/sqmi - the picture looks awfully different. SF is woefully underdeveloped, and the MSA is devastatingly underdeveloped.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > For those keeping score at home: San Francisco has a population density of over 17,000 people per square mile. Woodside? 460. Also, San Francisco is a city, Woodside isn't. I thought the urbanist argument is to build densely in the cities, so that would mean in SF, not in Woodside.

smugma 3y ago

Yes, this is an article about S.F. There are other articles about Woodside trying to say its whole town is Mountain Lion habitat, Los Altos, Palo Alto, etc. Here’s a recent one (their mayor is as bad as the NIMBY SF BoS): https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/11/21/high-rise-development-proposed-for-mollie-stones-site-in-palo-alto https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/11/21/high-rise-dev...

inferiorhuman 3y ago
And yet somehow magically HN discussion trends towards big, bad San Francisco. Go figure. For those keeping score at home: San Francisco has a population density of over 17,000 people per square mile. Woodside? 460. For all of its corruption and inaction San Francisco's already done far more than the surrounding communities.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Because densifying a major metro that's already pretty dense is totally logical. The rest of the Bay Area should be much denser too, its 83% zoned single-family. However they have a much longer road ahead building infrastructure that SF already has. Putting the density with the rest of the density is totally rational. Brooklyn has 38,000 people per square mile. Queens is 22,000 people per square mile. Manhattan is 73,000 people per square mile. Hoboken is 48,000 people per square mile. SF is not dense. SF should be the Manhattan of the Bay Area and instead it's got the density of like East LA. The problem when people pull this stat is that we should really be comparing the density of the Bay Area to other major metros - not just SF. SF is a tiny little postage stamp. It's much more comparable to one of the NY Boroughs. It's just that SF city/county is gerrymandered out of the other peninsula counties. When we do the logical and look at the SF-SJ-OAK MSA it has a population density of 700/sqmi, as compared to New York City at 29,302/sqmi. It's comparable to Augusta, GA, or Norman, OK. If we compare at the densest are in the SF-SJ-OAK MSA, San Francisco at 17,000/sqmi - to New York City's Manhattan at 73,000/sqmi - the picture looks awfully different. SF is woefully underdeveloped, and the MSA is devastatingly underdeveloped.
- jjav 3y ago
  > For those keeping score at home: San Francisco has a population density of over 17,000 people per square mile. Woodside? 460. Also, San Francisco is a city, Woodside isn't. I thought the urbanist argument is to build densely in the cities, so that would mean in SF, not in Woodside.