6 ms·
Seeking to maintain a balanced economy, culture, and community isn't "class warfare"; it's just city planning with a view beyond the next MVP. You can never bu
by teacup50 11y ago
Seeking to maintain a balanced economy, culture, and community isn't "class warfare"; it's just city planning with a view beyond the next MVP.
You can never build enough housing in a high-demand city without destroying the city; the demand is too elastic, the incentives between neighborhoods/culture and developers too misaligned.
San Francisco's problem is in the externalities levied by the immature VC-valley monoculture; significant increases in market rate housing density bring corresponding increases in the societal/cultural problems underlying this issue.
- Kalium 11y ago> You can never build enough housing in a high-demand city without destroying the city; the demand is too elastic, the incentives between neighborhoods/culture and developers too misaligned. Come on. Say what you mean. You don't want things to change, because then things would be different and you'd have to have Those People in your wonderful inclusive life. And that would be bad. So down with inclusiveness!
- teacup50 11y agoIn many places, yes, density would objectively and significantly decrease the quality of life of all existing residents, and that would be bad.
- Kalium 11y agoFortunately for us all, precious few of those places are in the Bay. The vast majority of San Francisco can't even be reasonably called mid-rise neighborhoods. But let's not get caught up in that yet. In what way would density "objectively and significantly decrease the quality of life of all existing residents"? From your phrasing, you clearly have solid evidence and objective metrics for your rather strong claim about both significance and universality.
- beatpanda 11y agoSorry -- define "destroying the city", please, because my understanding is that cities are made of people, not buildings, and not building any new housing tends to prioritize buildings over people. From where I'm standing, the neighborhood groups preventing any new housing from getting built are the ones destroying the city.
- teacup50 11y agoHousing density is only one attribute of a city; livability, open space, affordability, diversity, culture, safety, community -- these are often just as important to the people living in a city, and development doesn't occur in isolation from those issues.
- beatpanda 11y agoLivability, affordabilty, diversity, culture and community are all adversely impacted when the housing supply is artificially constrained the way it is in San Francisco, and the notion that, for instance, building marginally taller buildings, or legalizing the construction of backyard cottages, is going to have even the slightest impact on open space is absolute nonsense. There was a neighborhood meeting this week about building over 1,000 units of affordable housing on what is now a parking lot, and the majority of current neighbors expressed a preference for the parking lot. Please, convince me that a massive slab of asphalt is better for San Francisco than making room for 1,000 new working class neighbors.
- raldi 11y agoMore details on the parking lot: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir_many_prefer_empty_parking_lot_to_housing.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir...
- beatpanda 11y agoI think Curbed is being really hard on the narrow streets proposal. City streets in America, and especially in bike-friendly places like the Bay Area, are absurdly wide. We would have much more livable cities without them.
- patmcguire 11y agoDemand is pretty inelastic when the alternative is being homeless. Seriously, housing is one of the least elastic markets out there. Everyone needs exactly one home, everything else is secondary.
- sokoloff 11y agoEveryone needs at least a portion of a home, not exactly one home. Families and roommates are obvious examples where housing units and people are not 1:1.
- teacup50 11y agoNo, the alternative is living somewhere else. This is obvious to anyone that has watched the rental and housing market in a city across economic boom/bust cycles: - Bust: Demand dries up from the beleaguered economic sector (e.g., tech in SF after .com crash, finance in NYC post-housing bubble crash). Prices drop. Demand rises, fast, with residents moving in from the boroughs/suburbs. - Boom: Demand is extremely high from the booming economic sector. Prices increase to match, unmet demand drops as those outside the boom sector move out to the boroughs/suburbs.
- msabalau 11y agoAustin and Toronto are both desirable world class cities that allow homes to be built for people. Neither of them seem to have been "destroyed". Having affordable housing allows community and culture to be preserved and built on.
- hindsightbias 11y agoAustin and Toronto are 250 square miles. Every time I go back to Austin, everyone is whining about how expensive it is and how bad the music scene has gotten, while half of them want to turn 6th Street into a kid friendly zone. SF is maybe 35 square miles, once you take out the parks. Why don't we build new housing in Palo Alto? Or better yet, rezone Stanford or Atherton? I guess affluent monocultures must be protected.
- Kalium 11y agoWhy don't we build more housing in all those places?
- beatpanda 11y agoYou can't get housing built in SF, Palo Alto or Atherton for the exact same reason. Using one as a reason to oppose housing in the other is a red herring.
- capkutay 11y agoAtherton is about as conservative as it gets. They're the reason BART doesn't run through the peninsula.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago>You can never build enough housing in a high-demand city without destroying the city; Out of all the places and times and people who've talked of building more housing as destroying the city, most of them were just rich, white landowners who didn't want immigrants, minorities, and jobseekers ruining their views. I'm not saying you're any such person, but your position is objectively furthering the interests of rent-seeking landowners as the expense of the marginalized and the exploited. Real equality can proceed only when housing is available as close to construction cost as possible, or better yet, cheap as free.
- teacup50 11y agoIt's insane to think there's a "right" to live wherever you want. I live somewhere that's 1) expensive, 2) low-density. The expense is because the low density makes this a nice place to live; more people want to live here than can fit here. If we simply allowed development to meet demand, then this place wouldn't be a nice place to live anymore. The solution is to pay a living wage such that everyone that works here can afford to live here. The solution isn't to socialize housing.
- Kalium 11y agoHow does your plan address the problem that there isn't enough housing here for all the people who work here to live here? Are you assuming that if there are living wages all around, that there will be enough construction? Or do you expect people to just live somewhere else nearby?
- teacup50 11y agoSupply/demand. If there's not enough housing, companies will either need to pay more, people would need to commute farther, or people will need to choose other cities.
- Kalium 11y agoWhat do you think happens when many cities adopt the same approach? Fix supply, increase incomes, and let markets take over? Have you considered the possibility of region-wide consequences when supply and demand set in, companies pay better, people commute farther, and live in other cities too?