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Comment by oddthink | Hacker News Reader

But even in the US, there are other options.

I'm in the Google NYC office, which occupies most of a building that's a full city block and 15 stories high (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue) and that sits on top of a major subway station. We also have floors in a few of the neighboring buildings (Chelsea Market, etc.).

It seems to work really well. The density means that it's not that physically far to go to meet with another team, and that you hear what's going on with completely unrelated divisions.

I'm a little surprised that Silicon Valley overall has stuck with these relatively low-rise, sprawling campuses.

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Manhattan is the one place in the US where urbanism is allowed, and even then, there's a pretty strong instinct towards preserving the parts of it built at lower density.

Building Manhattan-like environments even a few miles over in Brooklyn is vehemently opposed, though not very successfully.

San Francisco would have 1.6 million people at Brooklyn's density. Fears of Manhattanization are a distraction. What San Francisco needs are vast tracts of 5 and 6-story apartment buildings where single-family homes now sit.

Most of San Francisco's single family homes are further from the city (in public transit minutes) than Oakland and Berkeley.

The public transit service from single family homes to downtown is already overcrowded and way too frequent (there is an extreme congestion problem among buses and trains themselves, before considering private cars). I'm skeptical that Muni could even maintain current levels of crowding with so many more riders.

I'm certain that Muni service to these areas would not get any faster. So the result of this would be to have vast numbers of people wasting vast amounts of time.

We're much more likely to get a livable city with a few dozen to a few hundred skyscrapers in and around each downtown (SF, Oakland, etc). People living in them could walk or bike to work reasonably quickly.

Vast tracts of 5-6 story buildings would only work if we could blanket them in subway coverage, and even BRT is pushing the upper limit of our capabilities as a human civilization these days.

Sure! I take it as a given that such a city requires strong transit options.

  Google NYC office, which occupies most of a building that's a full city block and 15 stories high

But all corporate use, with no residences? How does that not aggravate, rather than help, a neighborhood housing shortage?

Yep, all corporate use. Subway works pretty well to get people there. And honestly, I'm pretty pessimistic about just building enough housing capacity to be comfortable. There's been a ton of residential building in NYC, but it's all been "luxury" 1-bedroom and studios. The incentives just aren't there to build "family condo" units, at least in Manhattan.

> I'm a little surprised that Silicon Valley overall has stuck with these relatively low-rise, sprawling campuses.

One word: Earthquakes.

Didn't stop Japan, though.

Wrong word: Zoning

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