6 ms·
I'm not a fan of SF's bizarre city politics and NIMBYism, but... where can more housing be built? Much of the western half of the city is single family homes.
by rdouble 13y ago
I'm not a fan of SF's bizarre city politics and NIMBYism, but... where can more housing be built?
Much of the western half of the city is single family homes. As are neighborhoods like Glen Park, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, etc. The dense parts of the city like the loin and nob hill are already pretty dense. In semi-dense neighborhoods like SoMa, Hayes Valley and the Mission existing renters have to be given the boot in order for new housing to be built. That actually happens, and the anti gentrification crowd protests being edged out by yuppies, because that is what is actually happening. I'm not sure where the city could put more high density housing.
- arjunnarayan 13y agoBuild up. The same way every other big city deals with this problem. http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1 http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005...
- rdouble 13y agoYeah, but where? That is what I'm asking.
- tptacek 13y agoBayview. The Mission.
- probablycorey 13y agoThe tenderloin, soma, mission bay, dog patch, bayview. It's not like current buildings were built on empty lots.
- khuey 13y agoEverywhere.
- DanBC 13y agoWhat about earthquakes? How expensive is it to build up in SF when you know that there's a 60% chance, in the next 30 years, of having an earthquake with minimum magnitude of 6.7? Especially when a buynch of peolpe live on one of the faults, and a bunch of infrastructure goes over one of the faults. (http://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/faq.html http://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/faq.html)
- usaar333 13y agoWhen you have the property values San Francisco has, even after all the earthquake protection needed, you'll still end up with positive ROI. If it is cost-effective to build 10 story complexes in Mission Bay - on landfull - I can't imagine it not being cost-effective to do the same on Potrero Hill - bedrock.
- tptacek 13y agoIsn't high-density earthquake-safe construction a solved problem? It's not like SF has no high-density properties.
- khuey 13y agoYes, Japan figured this out decades ago. SF NIMBYs just like to pretend it's impossible.
- mechanical_fish 13y agoYou talk to Japanese civil engineers and they tell you how to build earthquake-resistent tall buildings, which they have a lot of practice with. From http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=863 http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=863 , talking about the Kobe earthquake of 1995 (magnitude 7.2): "Sixty percent of those who died were over 60 years old. The reason for this is that they were mainly the one who lived in the older houses that collapsed. Few people died in new homes. Nearly all the buildings that killed people were built before the enactment of modern building codes in the 1970s and 80s. Many newer buildings were badly damaged but they didn’t collapse." "Kobe's modern buildings 'seemed to have performed very well,' a former Stanford engineering professor told Newsweek. 'There may have been one or two that have been damaged. But I haven't heard of any that fell.' Every building constructed according to the building codes established in 1981 was unscathed." I bet there are many, many structures currently standing in SF that would be more earthquake-safe if they were replaced with taller, higher-capacity, but better-engineered modern buildings.
- tptacek 13y agoYou really think that if we took the time to work out the square mileage of SOMA, The Mission, downtown, Potrero, and Bayview that the population per square mileage of those areas would be competitive with Manhattan? Anything close to it?
- rdouble 13y agoHmm... I'm not sure I understand what you're asking regarding Manhattan. Do I think SF will ever be like Manhattan? No. I was just wondering where new high density housing in SF could be built.
- tptacek 13y agoMy point is that the areas where high-density residential construction would be least "damaging" to the feel of the city are not already very dense; the "dense" areas of San Francisco are sparse compared to other cities.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- glurgh 13y agoBrooklyn's probably a better example that won't elicit the 'ZOMG I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN MANHATTAN' response. Twice the density of SF and no heavens-darkening skyline.
- DanBC 13y agoWould better public transit systems (clean and fast trains, with power and wifi, at a reasonable cost) help? You ship people in every morning.
- cwp 13y ago> where can more housing be built? >Much of the western half of the city is single family homes. As are neighborhoods like Glen Park, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, etc. You've answered your own question.
- rdouble 13y agoWell what I meant by that is that they are already privately owned on small lots. Even if zoning permitted it, it wouldn't work to build a 20 unit apartment building in between two of these: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/go8f6701-copy.jpg http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/go8f670... In order to build a denser apartment building, a developer would have to buy up whole blocks of these homes. Which means that clusters of home owners all have to agree to sell their property. Which seems unlikely to ever happen.