4 ms·

The core brokenness of SF is the idea that if they can just exclude the right people, the city will be better. It's the core problem of pretty much every issue

The core brokenness of SF is the idea that if they can just exclude the right people, the city will be better. It's the core problem of pretty much every issue it has. Instead of building a city on exclusion, it needs to be accepting again, become a city that wants to welcome every human.

more_corn 3y ago
Nobody gets excluded in sf. Except by high rents.
- nemomarx 3y ago
  Keeping housing stock low is the big exclusion - it's just on class grounds instead of other things.
- wyclif 3y ago
  Nobody gets excluded except for people with jobs. The people who are the cogs in the machines that keep some of your fave technology companies operating.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Huge swathes of the population are excluded from SF that would love to live there, as you note, by the high rents. But the high rents come from locals explicitly deciding that they don't want more people, and blocking housing. And that leads to lots of scapegoating of particular classes of people based on group characteristics, in order to justify the exclusion. Whether it's people moving from the Midwest, or people in tech, or (when my wife lived in the inner subset) all those people at UCSF. There's a huge amount of "othering" in SF that people use to justify their need to keep people out. And I would say that it's far more prevalent and accepted than anti-immigrant bias in the Midwest, for example. There are way too many people in SF that try to be "cool" by distancing themselves from all those people that arrived in the city after them. The core problem is the idea that a city is for the people that were born there, rather than cities are for everyone.
threatofrain 3y ago
SF is very dense, only behind NY in the US. It's quite a bit denser than Tokyo and London. If SF wants to build then we need a massive public works project for London-class public transportation. Which does not exist anywhere in the US.
- epistasis 3y ago
  SF is not very dense. It could legalize Paris level of densities everywhere in its very small footprint. The entire western side is low density sprawl. It has a very tiny land area, there absolutely no reason all this very tiny land area can not have moderate density like in Pairs. As the city then develops, it could use the increased tax levels to build subways to replace bus lines. It could start making more effective use of its streets, banning storage of personal vehicles that obstruct traffic, for example. Greater population and better transit need to happen at the same time, not one before the other.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    SF is very dense because Paris and Tokyo are considered much larger jurisdictions. They aren't very fair comparisons anyways, where the latter are more the more the size of the entire Bay Area. Not everyone can live in SF, obviously.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      SF should worry about trying to house the number of people that want to live in SF, a solvable problem. The idea that "everyone" want to live in SF is ridiculous, almost no one, relative to everyone, wants to live in SF. Equally ridiculous is the idea that SF has allowed enough people to live there. > SF is very dense because Paris and Tokyo are considered much larger jurisdictions. I can't fully parse what you mean here, but it seems that the reality is exactly the opposite of what you intend, given the rest of you comment.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago

more_corn 3y ago

Nobody gets excluded in sf. Except by high rents.

nemomarx 3y ago
Keeping housing stock low is the big exclusion - it's just on class grounds instead of other things.
wyclif 3y ago
Nobody gets excluded except for people with jobs. The people who are the cogs in the machines that keep some of your fave technology companies operating.
epistasis 3y ago
Huge swathes of the population are excluded from SF that would love to live there, as you note, by the high rents. But the high rents come from locals explicitly deciding that they don't want more people, and blocking housing. And that leads to lots of scapegoating of particular classes of people based on group characteristics, in order to justify the exclusion. Whether it's people moving from the Midwest, or people in tech, or (when my wife lived in the inner subset) all those people at UCSF. There's a huge amount of "othering" in SF that people use to justify their need to keep people out. And I would say that it's far more prevalent and accepted than anti-immigrant bias in the Midwest, for example. There are way too many people in SF that try to be "cool" by distancing themselves from all those people that arrived in the city after them. The core problem is the idea that a city is for the people that were born there, rather than cities are for everyone.

threatofrain 3y ago

SF is very dense, only behind NY in the US. It's quite a bit denser than Tokyo and London. If SF wants to build then we need a massive public works project for London-class public transportation. Which does not exist anywhere in the US.

epistasis 3y ago
SF is not very dense. It could legalize Paris level of densities everywhere in its very small footprint. The entire western side is low density sprawl. It has a very tiny land area, there absolutely no reason all this very tiny land area can not have moderate density like in Pairs. As the city then develops, it could use the increased tax levels to build subways to replace bus lines. It could start making more effective use of its streets, banning storage of personal vehicles that obstruct traffic, for example. Greater population and better transit need to happen at the same time, not one before the other.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  SF is very dense because Paris and Tokyo are considered much larger jurisdictions. They aren't very fair comparisons anyways, where the latter are more the more the size of the entire Bay Area. Not everyone can live in SF, obviously.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    SF should worry about trying to house the number of people that want to live in SF, a solvable problem. The idea that "everyone" want to live in SF is ridiculous, almost no one, relative to everyone, wants to live in SF. Equally ridiculous is the idea that SF has allowed enough people to live there. > SF is very dense because Paris and Tokyo are considered much larger jurisdictions. I can't fully parse what you mean here, but it seems that the reality is exactly the opposite of what you intend, given the rest of you comment.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago