I live near 19th Street BART, and honestly I feel safer after dark in downtown Oakland than I do any time after 8 PM around the Powell Street station. I usually

I live near 19th Street BART, and honestly I feel safer after dark in downtown Oakland than I do any time after 8 PM around the Powell Street station. I usually go for a run after sunset around Lake Merritt and there have only been a handful of occasions where I felt uncomfortable. The other night I saw a young woman walking by the lake at 10 PM while talking on her iPhone -- and that seems normal for me as a newcomer, but my wife grew up in Oakland and tells stories from the 90's when it wasn't smart to park your car by Lake Merritt in the middle of the day on a weekend, let alone go for a walk by yourself at night with your phone out. What I don't understand is given the skyrocketing real estate prices in San Francisco, versus the much cheaper and undeveloped density that the BART corridor could support in Oakland, why more high-density residential isn't springing up on this side of the bay.