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Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today
- dionidium 14y agoSee, also, Matt Yglesias on parking regulations, among other things: https://www.google.com/search?q=matt+yglesias+parking https://www.google.com/search?q=matt+yglesias+parking
- ktizo 14y agoI wonder if some enterprising soul could park up some old cruise liners and rent them out if the building regulations are that much of a problem.
- rdl 14y agoYou would probably want to put them off half moon bay and 12+ nm out, so you can get the immigration benefit as well.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoLike BlueSeed? http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/blueseed-startup-ship/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/blueseed-startup-ship/ (How do I create a link on HN again? The one place where a "help me with formatting" link would do some good - the reply page (http://i.imgur.com/R8oS8.png http://i.imgur.com/R8oS8.png) - of course doesn't have one.) (Edit: Turns out the "edit" page does have it, and shows that there really isn't a way.)
- ktizo 14y agoOooo.. that's nice, but a pricey way to do it. Buying existing liners, rafting them up and retrofitting would seem like a more achievable aim in practice. You could probably get some off Costa at the moment for less than the market rate.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI admit to knowing nothing about real estate, and even less about ocean liners, but it seems that an ocean liner - even at sub-market rates - would be ridiculously expensive to buy, and then merely ludicrously expensive to operate. Sure, you're not burning a ton of fuel a minute plowing through dolphins and kelp, but you still need to generate power to operate all of the on-board facilities such as electricity, plumbing, elevators, etc. Would the city allow an entrepreneur to run a fat power cable onto a sitting ship - leaving aside political implications of a big honkin' vessel blocking the ocean view, are there even any regulations written for it? Based only on what I've read of jwz just attempting to put a door in a nightclub wall, it seems that a hostile takeover over San Francisco, followed by some summary executions of most of the city government and a formal secession from the United States of America would be easier.
- ars 14y agoWhy can't the ship generate its own power? Is a power plant can do it, so can a ship - it's large enough to be able to make the generator efficient enough. Load it up with LNG every one in a while - LNG is transported by sea all the time anyway. If you plan ahead you can pipe the LNG throughout the ship for cooking, and maybe even heating.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIt can absolutely generate its own power. But then you have to pay to ship a whole lot of diesel onto your ship. I'm betting that the liner's efficiency is a heck of a lot less than a local power plant's, since I assume that a line is optimized to move a screw through water, with electric power being a lower priority. You could also build a better power plant on the ship, but that's not free, either.
- ktizo 14y agoModern vessels use electric motors powered by a generator to move the screw anyway.
- rachelbythebay 14y agoHave these people looked at North San Jose lately? They have been tearing down office buildings (Sony, on Zanker) and have been putting up huge residential complexes. One of them just opened its first phase, and many more are on the way. Basically, anywhere between the Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek north of Montague is starting to go crazy, and if that isn't the Valley, I don't know what is.
- antidoh 14y agoBut the real estate restrictions will never change, not in the foreseeable future. If you imagine a world where that fact will never change in any usefully short future, then you have to work around it. Why does the software industry need to all be located together? Yes I know, software includes startups, and it's easier to pivot and meet investors and all that when you're together. And yes, it's often more effective to be working face to face with your team mates. Which means that development practices and industry organization are wrong for the economics of the industry, at least that part of the industry located in highly concentrated and unexpandable locations. However we're building apps, systems and businesses right now, we're doing it wrong, if mere real estate is what's hindering hiring.
- kcima 14y agoI am moving there anyway. Bringing my camper.
- wes-exp 14y agoAlso, not as many women => not as many babies supporting population growth.
- dennisgorelik 14y agoNot only that. No urban sprawl -> no backyards & cul-de-sacs -> few babies -> no natural population growth.
- ttfntatafornow 14y agothere are just as many women here as anywhere else. Males: 408,462 (50.7%) Females: 396,773 (49.3%) if anything, when you consider that there are far more homosexual men than homosexual women, men have it good here. http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html
- wes-exp 14y agoWell, whatever the population figures, something creates an overabundance of single men. This must create a drag on the reproductive rate. Also, what you're saying might apply to SF itself, but not necessarily to South Bay / Silicon Valley. http://creativeclass.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/03/singles_2.jpg http://creativeclass.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/... One other thought... even given a balanced overall population, we need to look specifically at those of reproductive age. Population figures will include children, which should be roughly 50/50 m/f, until they move away as adults (perhaps due to the high rents!).
- hollerith 14y agoThat's the ratio for San Franciso. Silicon Valley, different story.
- jarek 14y agoOh you mean like San Jose? "For every 100 females there were 101.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.8 males." Palo Alto? "For every 100 females there were 95.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.0 males." Cupertino? "For every 100 females there were 97.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.6 males." San Bruno? "For every 100 females there were 97.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.1 males." Redwood City? "For every 100 females there were 99.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.1 males." Menlo Park? "For every 100 females there were 93.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.5 males." Millbrae? "For every 100 females there were 90.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.7 males." San Carlos? "For every 100 females there were 93.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.7 males." San Mateo? "For every 100 females there were 95.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.8 males." Atherton? "For every 100 females there were 96.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.3 males." Milpitas, Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale were the ones with more males - worst ratio in Milpitas, 104.5 and 104.6 respectively. Surrounding cities would more than balance that out.
- oscardelben 14y agoI just moved here from Italy, and it's almost impossible for me to get an apartment that's near public transportation. I mean, other than caltrain there's little if nothing public transportation here, and that may be part of the problem too. I certainly can't rent a house in the hills if there's no way for me to get to work from there. I ended up renting from a colleague.
- mjn 14y agoYes, unfortunately the whole area is built on an assumption that you have a car. Santa Clara County in particular is amazing in that it's one of the few places in the world that has three levels of grade-separated freeways: national highways, state highways, and county highways. The latter (San Tomas Expressway, etc.) were paid for out of the money that Santa Clara County saved by opting out of BART, which is not coincidentally why the public transit is bad.
- mattdeboard 14y agoI'm sorry but after living in Santa Clara Co. for a couple years, then moving back to my home state of Indiana, I can say with absolutely no compunction that Santa Clara Co. is a MECCA compared to where I live now in terms of public transpo. Maybe it could be a ton better but my god I cannot wait until it's time to move back there.
- jarek 14y agoSCVTA is pretty bad compared to some select localities in North America (NYC, SF itself, Montreal off the top of my head). On a world scale it barely registers, the transport infrastructure compares unfavourably with, say, Lille. Compared to Indiana it may well be nice.
- gobbluth 14y agoAgreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and public transportation, and I wish we'd learn from their example. But try telling 99% of the US that 1) their shitty sprawled real estate is effectively worthless, 2) their obese asses will have to give up their cars, and 3) we've spent 70 years of infrastructure investment supporting the dumbest possible lifestyle choice.
- vannevar 14y agoIn short, the reason there’s too much money chasing too few businesses isn’t that the country is running out of people with good technology ideas. It’s just that bad housing policies mean that there’s nowhere for additional people to live. Well, you could spend millions and take years to move thousands more engineers to Silicon Valley. Or you could just get on a goddamned airplane and invest your money more than a few miles from your house. Silicon Valley self-absorption never ceases to amaze me.
- redditmigrant 14y agoI think you are ignoring the fact that Silicon valley is an ecosystem of engineers/product managers/sysadmins etc. all of which a growing startup needs. Hence, while a remote area might have people with ideas, it most likely will not have the eco system to sustain the growth of the startup.
- Cariapa 14y agoTrue. But I think his point was that by not investing in other parts of the country, people are not giving a chance for the ecosystem to develop. I think local culture plays a big part as well. In most other parts of the country people join big large companies and then spend their entire life being the company man or woman. If I did that I'd cry just like the other guy said he would if the Bay Area got paved over.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoIf you have remote workers, you have a very very large ecosystem.
- vannevar 14y agoI think 'the ecosystem' consists mostly of people with connections to money. Which of course is true, since the money is so provincial. Yes, there are lots of engineers there too, but as the article points out, they all have jobs plus back-up offers lined up three deep. Instead of going to the trouble to import people, why not invest in them where they're at? I'm not talking about farm towns in Iowa, I'm talking about places like Boston, New York, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, etc, etc.
- DanI-S 14y agoThe Bay Area is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and if they turn it into another Los Angeles I will cry. This country is phenomenally huge and there is no reason whatsoever to live clustered together in vile, concrete scabs. Compact cities are more efficient, but congested urban sprawl is most definitely not. Strict building regulations are part of what make this place productive and desirable in the first place.
- Androsynth 14y agoHave you ever been south of Palo Alto? There is not much of a difference between San Jose and LA (I have lived in both). Besides, LA is not ugly because of the population density, but because of the endless sprawl.
- Apocryphon 14y agoHow do the two cities resemble each other? SJ seems sleepy and is basically a giant suburb.
- mturmon 14y agoParts of the western San Fernando valley, which lies within LA proper, are not that dissimilar from SJ. And, when people say "LA", they really mean the LA area, which contains not only the city itself, but outlying/surrounded cities like Pasadena, Santa Monica, Compton, Long Beach, etc.
- Androsynth 14y agoParts of it are sleepy, parts of it arent. But really its just endless tract housing and strip malls. (also similar: minimal amount of nature within the city itself; lots of concrete but not in an elegant urban way; not much in the way of historical sections)
- rsl7 14y agoso the high cost keeps out the riffraff?
- rbranson 14y agoThose types of regulations exist in every city. The problem isn't housing, it's transportation. Without the necessary transit infrastructure, it's pointless to just build buildings. It seems as if it was up to the author of this piece, the Bay Area would look a lot like LA. Please, for the love of all that is good, do not make this place like LA.
- benmccann 14y agoThe two are fairly related. Without sufficient housing density, it's difficult to build efficient mass transportation.
- joelandren 14y agoI'll try to be nice here, but the author is a fucking idiot. To posit that the Bay Area can handle the population growth of sprawling and ill-planned Atlanta, Phoenix and Las Vegas is patently ridiculous. The Bay Area is already one of the most dense metro regions in the US and to think that the area could see growth like that without a MAJOR disruption in quality of life is absurd. I also think many engineers, who can usually pick where they want to live, already find the Bay Area to crowded and have decided upon less lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
- delackner 14y agoIt is all about perspective. Compared to London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, most of the bay area is incredibly low density. Huge chunks of SF, Oakland, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Redwood City are 1 or 2 story single-family homes with huge lots. Regulations prevent even a modest 10 story condo. You don't have to make it into a false dichotomy of LA-like insane urban sprawl vs. the current situation.
- binarybits 14y agoThe Bay Area's density is a fraction of of New York City's density. Yet rents in the densest parts of NYC are even higher than those in the Bay Area, which suggests that many people want to live there.
- fusiongyro 14y agoYou're sort of both right. One reason I don't want to relocate to the Bay (despite several offers) is when I do the math, my quality of life is substantially higher here in the middle of nowhere New Mexico on astonishingly less money. If you're not after the glory, it doesn't necessarily make economic sense. Doubly so if you don't like the kind of work that exists in the bay. If the housing and commute time issues weren't so dramatic, I would think about it, but still probably would stay out here.
- dennisgorelik 14y agoIf you are single or DINK (double income no kids) - moving to Bay Area (or NYC for that matter) can have economic sense.
- DanBlake 14y agoAs a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not be living in a 4 bedroom apartment in pacific heights for 1k a month. I have no problem with giving affordable housing to those in need, but rent control is not the answer as it places the burden on individual landlords to provide social security. The biggest gap of people who can live in SF are not the poor (taken care of by rent control) or the rich (dont care/buy homes) but those in between. Run of the road engineers and others who make between 75k and 150k a year. These are the people who are hurt most by san franciscos crazy rent laws. If rent control was abolished, the one thing you would see is that rental rates would lower significantly as supply starts to balance with demand. Yes, some people would be displaced but the question is- If the city of san francisco wants to provide affordable rental units, why dont they instead just pay lower income people directly, letting them be free to choose where to live?
- mjn 14y agoFrom the numbers I can find, I don't think this is true. The biggest population constraint in the Valley by far comes in the form of explicit density constraints, such as minimum lot sizes, not rent control. Palo Alto has no rent control, for example, but is less dense than SF, despite the fact that demand exists for much denser housing to be built (especially near Stanford) if it were permitted. Some kind of scared-rich-person-club mentality going on where they're worried that allowing apartments, or even townhomes, might bring in too much riff-raff, so by law everything has to be an undivided and large single-family home (in a large portion of the total area).
- hollerith 14y agoDo any parts of the Bay Area south of San Francisco have rent control? I do not know of any.
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- nnnnnnnn 14y agoThe author uses three examples to assert his 11 million number, but he doesn't explain why he believes the bay area should model these growth points. In the case of Detroit, the boom was driven by many cheap manufacturing jobs available to all. This differs significantly from the fairly specialized and specific technical positions available in the valley. Cheap, uneducated labor isn't seeking out the valley -- in fact the economic incentive is an exact opposite: If you can't earn a high salary, you flee to a cheaper state. Las Vegas has a booming service industry, which is much more in line with the manufacturing boom in Detroit. Phoenix is where people go when they flee expensive southern California life. Phoenix is also close to Mexico, and the hispanic population is by far the fastest growing demographic (46% growth vs 17% for all other demographics per 2010 census). The author of this Forbes article ought to spend more time analyzing the cause of population booms, rather than trying to rely weak and unsupported correlations. What a disappointment.
- rizzom5000 14y agoThis article seems to have missed or glossed over a number of critical relevant points: 1. Few people on this planet would consider Atlanta, Phoenix or Las Vegas as cities to emulate. They are all excellent examples of unsustainable growth - and to the point where water shortages are a very real future possibility for any or all of the three. 2. The 'nut' of the story is that Silicon Valley needs more engineers, and that more engineers would move there if only the cost of living were less. By this logic, Silicon Valley investors should be able to take a quick drive over to the cheaper Las Vegas, where all the cheapskate engineers must be hiding out waiting for a Silicon Valley investor to show them the way to the riches that can be found building web services and phone apps for sweat equity. 3. No mention of telecommuting? Still a taboo topic? If it's such a problem, maybe one of those start ups should start looking for a solution to that problem - that way engineers could live wherever they wanted and we wouldn't have to contemplate what the Bay Area, Phoenix style, would be like.
- guelo 14y agoCoincidentally this other article also published today has a similar theme making the case that California's previous prosperity was caused by higher population growth and advocating construction in Silicon Valley. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/14/the_decline_of_california.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/14/the_decline_o...
- balloot 14y agoAll I know is I have lived in and visited many other places in the US, and the SF Bay Area (and especially San Francisco proper) is hands down the most distinctive and beautiful. Whatever is being done here needs to be done more and not less. If the author wants to take his ball and stomp off to some urban-sprawly McMansion-filled city that is supposedly more optimal for talent, go right ahead. You have your choice of the vast majority of the country. There is a wonderful lack of regulation and population density out in the plains of South Dakota - just go there and I'm sure all the talent will follow in droves.
- pwthornton 14y agoSilicon Valley has some of the least progressive views on housing in the country. Limiting people to single family homes, which much of the valley does, is terrible for the environment and drives housing prices up. Space is finite. Building up leads to more affordability, shorter commuters and more creativity (by making it more likely that smart people run into each other). The issue in the Valley is that there isn't enough housing stock. That's not hard to fix, unless you have too many regulations and nimbys. Steve Jobs was a genius about a lot of things, except housing and work environments. The new Apple campus is almost laughably stupid. Everything we know about cities and their ability to forward humanity and creativity can't happen in Apple's new campus. It's disconnected from the larger community and sits next to a freeway. See Triumph of the City as to why density of knowledge workers leaders to more innovation and creativity (or why the Renascence would never happen in rural America). I bring up Jobs because I think his ideas on housing is common in the area. He loved the suburbs and perhaps the suburbs of the 60s and 70s were nice for a kid growing up. But Apple doesn't employ kids and our country's populations has doubled since 1960 and shows no signs of slowing down.
- redwood 14y agoI'd love to see the bay area achieve a level of density that makes mass transit (and not cars) the norm everywhere. There has been a lot more progress, at least in areas like Palo Alto, than this article makes clear. Throughout my life countless properties have been turned into relatively high density homes.
- redwood 14y agoThere's another problem: integration of mass transit across counties... BART and Caltrain each have their advantages, especially BART which is truly rapid. But those are arteries, and we need to see veins also connect across counties. For example it's a pity that Palo Alto, being at the county line between SAMTRANS and Valley Transit, does not have any good street car service. The light rail that ends in Mountain View should continue to Palo Alto, and I hope the density will push that.
- hristov 14y agoI am going to be captain obvious here and mention that you cannot compare the growth rates of a city that is on an enormous flat desert plateau with that of a city on an already crowded peninsula.
- rdl 14y agoThe big hack for living in the Bay Area seems to be having roommates. I'm currently trying to find a really nice, big house in San Mateo County (the only Bay Area county which is pro firearms ownership, thanks to an excellent sheriff, Greg Munks). There's really spotty availability of nice houses in a "reasonable" price range (2-3br/2ba for $3000 or less) anywhere reasonable, but a lot of huge, absurdly nice houses (8-12br, 8+ ba, multiple pools, etc. for about $10k/mo). The rent vs. buy calculation is totally rent for properties like that too. Clearly the arbitrage play, assuming you don't mind sharing a $300k gourmet kitchen, housekeeper, chef, etc., is to rent a house like that and share it. $1-2.5k/mo, and you get to live as well as you would in Texas, while being in SFBA.
- tom_m 14y agoHaha that's nit why. The reason why is living cost. I live in Palo Alto (rent of course) and its STILL increasing in cost. Startups can only pay so much. Since this area carries prestige from Stanford and the tech industry its expensive. Always has been. But real estate sees all this glamour and wild success stories as an excuse to charge lots of money. It's an inflated area...in the cost of homes, rent, and food. The crap I overpay for at most restaurants downtown is insane. Coming from NYC, I had far more options and better food for cheaper. Why? Size. Competition, sure...But also no bubble. Ladies and gentlemen we are in the middle of another tech bubble here. Prices are outrageous and companies are over valued. So it'd the cost. That's why. People do their best to find places to live and they over extend themselves. I know doctors (both husband and wife) who are struggling. A nice profession...Still not enough. If you actually look at the stats (there's a map/site for this) most people move out after moving here. So "growth" and how many people actually do try to move and live here are two different things. It's not the running out of space...it's the cost.
- vorg 14y ago> A variety of regulations—minimum lot sizes, maximum building heights, parking mandates, restrictions on renting out basements,... Are you still allowed to start a business in your garage with a friend building, say, printers? What about hooking up a server to the web running a search engine?
- rsanchez1 14y agoThis presents an opportunity that other cities in the US should be taking advantage, but aren't. There aren't enough engineers in Silicon Valley? Move somewhere that has enough engineers. If a city provides enough incentives for tech companies to move there, and attracts enough recognizable companies to increase its reputation, then that represents an opportunity to bring some of that Silicon Valley money home. I wonder what it will take for entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors to consider other locations instead of Silicon Valley first.
- cafard 14y agoAre you weeping for the engineers or for the developers?