4 ms·

It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.

by wyclif 11y ago

nemo44x 11y ago
This was voted down and is something of an inflammatory comment but there's truth to it. You see it throughout the Valley and the entire Bay Area. It's why there is little density in the Valley in my opinion, why the public transit isn't very good among other things. I'm afraid it's hard to change. People who paid so much for their Valley homes certainly do not like the idea of the supply dramatically increasing and their pleasant, small communities becoming drastically urbanized. And I understand that. But the progressive nature of this area has always seemed face value to me as an outsider who travels to this region often. It's incredibly nice here but I believe it is time to begin building lots of high rises (scaled for quakes) in some city near SF and urbanizing areas while creating mix zoned housing and commercial similar to what you'd see in NYC. It's time for an experiment like that in the Valley somewhere.
- x0x0 11y ago
  But a big piece of it is sf getting fucked by the nimbyism elsewhere. viz Mountain View: they just authorized something like 3.4 million ft2 of office space between LinkedIn, Google, etc while supposedly they're giong to add 1.5k to 5k housing units. In the future. Where are the other, say, 15 to 20 thousand people going to live? Mountain View doesn't give a shit, but a bunch of them are going to have to life in sf, because that's where there's housing.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    How about just having the state use eminent domain to seize half of Atherton, hook it back up to CalTrain, and build dense urban housing there, with easy commuting to Mountain View and Redwood City? I jest... partially. Atherton is horrible for the whole area.
    - nemo44x 11y ago
      Honestly, that would be a great place to start. Build lots of streets with high rises with light rail and commercial and residential stacked. With a location near Palo Alto/Stanford and the region I would bet it becomes unbelievably high in demand. Obviously this could never happen there!
- narrator 11y ago
  The NIMBYism is what makes San Francisco a nice place to live. You know Marin Headlands? They had plans to cover that whole area with a subdivision[1]. A bunch of NIMBYs got together back in the 60s and blocked that and now all these people who left some overbuilt sprawl to live here want to live near there. However, they want it to be cheap and want to drastically expand the urban footprint to make it cheap. Go figure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello
  - refurb 11y ago
    The NIMBYism is what makes San Francisco a nice place to live. So the next time someone complains about how expensive the city is I should point across the bay at Marin and say "that's your trade off"?
    - narrator 11y ago
      Yeah. Tell them they could live in a nice big apartment tower in the Marin Headlands and have a quick commute to the Presidio and Chrissy Fields across the Marin BART, which also got shot down in part by Marin NIMBYs concerned about population density[1]. Of course, Chrissy Fields and the Presidio would just be quaint names as they would be massively built up and look like SOMA if there weren't all these darned NIMBYs around. [1].http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/23/imagine_hopping_on_bart_to_get_to_marin_county.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/23/imagine_hopping_on_...
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  some city near SF, but not in SF and not in my city!
BurningFrog 11y ago
The problem is not that people don't want new developments near their homes. People are always going to want things that benefit them. The problem is the legal situation where a lot of people and organizations that stand to gain from stopping development can veto it. In other words: We don't need better people, we need better laws.

It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.

by wyclif 11y ago

It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.

This was voted down and is something of an inflammatory comment but there's truth to it. You see it throughout the Valley and the entire Bay Area. It's why there is little density in the Valley in my opinion, why the public transit isn't very good among other things. I'm afraid it's hard to change. People who paid so much for their Valley homes certainly do not like the idea of the supply dramatically increasing and their pleasant, small communities becoming drastically urbanized. And I understand that. But the progressive nature of this area has always seemed face value to me as an outsider who travels to this region often. It's incredibly nice here but I believe it is time to begin building lots of high rises (scaled for quakes) in some city near SF and urbanizing areas while creating mix zoned housing and commercial similar to what you'd see in NYC. It's time for an experiment like that in the Valley somewhere.

x0x0 11y ago
But a big piece of it is sf getting fucked by the nimbyism elsewhere. viz Mountain View: they just authorized something like 3.4 million ft2 of office space between LinkedIn, Google, etc while supposedly they're giong to add 1.5k to 5k housing units. In the future. Where are the other, say, 15 to 20 thousand people going to live? Mountain View doesn't give a shit, but a bunch of them are going to have to life in sf, because that's where there's housing.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  How about just having the state use eminent domain to seize half of Atherton, hook it back up to CalTrain, and build dense urban housing there, with easy commuting to Mountain View and Redwood City? I jest... partially. Atherton is horrible for the whole area.
  - nemo44x 11y ago
    Honestly, that would be a great place to start. Build lots of streets with high rises with light rail and commercial and residential stacked. With a location near Palo Alto/Stanford and the region I would bet it becomes unbelievably high in demand. Obviously this could never happen there!
narrator 11y ago
The NIMBYism is what makes San Francisco a nice place to live. You know Marin Headlands? They had plans to cover that whole area with a subdivision[1]. A bunch of NIMBYs got together back in the 60s and blocked that and now all these people who left some overbuilt sprawl to live here want to live near there. However, they want it to be cheap and want to drastically expand the urban footprint to make it cheap. Go figure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello
- refurb 11y ago
  The NIMBYism is what makes San Francisco a nice place to live. So the next time someone complains about how expensive the city is I should point across the bay at Marin and say "that's your trade off"?
  - narrator 11y ago
    Yeah. Tell them they could live in a nice big apartment tower in the Marin Headlands and have a quick commute to the Presidio and Chrissy Fields across the Marin BART, which also got shot down in part by Marin NIMBYs concerned about population density[1]. Of course, Chrissy Fields and the Presidio would just be quaint names as they would be massively built up and look like SOMA if there weren't all these darned NIMBYs around. [1].http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/23/imagine_hopping_on_bart_to_get_to_marin_county.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/23/imagine_hopping_on_...
throwaway2048 11y ago
some city near SF, but not in SF and not in my city!

BurningFrog 11y ago

The problem is not that people don't want new developments near their homes. People are always going to want things that benefit them. The problem is the legal situation where a lot of people and organizations that stand to gain from stopping development can veto it. In other words: We don't need better people, we need better laws.