Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction. The government won't issue permits. The unsurprising result is that it has a really bad case of suburban sprawl, constrained by geological boundaries. Unfortunately, this means that even if you don't want to live in suburban sprawl and commute a long distance, it is pretty much mandatory in Silicon Valley because the city planners have essentially outlawed all other arrangements.

The insanity runs deeper when matched to their obsession with having more people use public transit. Public transit doesn't work in a low-density suburb larger than some states in New England. In typical fashion, the left-hand bans all development that would allow public transit to be usable and the right-hand insists that people should stop driving and take public transit. This is just one example; Silicon Valley is full of fundamentally inconsistent bureaucratic mandates.

This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government. In some cases, it is entrenched special interests demanding these things; the sum of these policies may be insane but the politicians do not care as long as the special interests are happy.

Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data? Are you involved in a local Bay Area government? Are you working to change the things you don't like?

The article, and this response is very frustrating to me. The notion that the government is broken and that our policies are insane and that politicians don't care just does not match my personal experience. Yes, there are many, many problems -- from the garden variety to the wickedly complex. I can however comfortably say that Palo Alto is generally run by decent, intelligent people responsible to an engaged, accessible city council.

Available and affordable housing for example, is and has been part of the city plan, done in coordination with the Association of Bay Area Governments[1], who develop regional growth projections and plans[2] that cities are required to incorporate into their general plans. These plans are created in concert with regional transportation, environmental, etc. plans. How the growth is managed within each city is up to the city of course -- and that's where the NIMBY and rich vs. poor issues are played out on the ground. I find it absolutely challenging and amazing to see (and be part of) the balancing of the various factors to actually govern. There are winners and losers in every decision, and it's important to remember that we're not playing a one-round, zero-sum game.

I can't say anything about the state and federal governments -- but it's easy to get involved and make a contribution at the city level, and absolutely will be enlightening. The first step in conquering the "denial of reality" problem you complain about seems to me to be understanding how cities actually work, and then working to make some constructive improvements.

  [1] http://www.abag.ca.gov/housing-top.html
  [2] http://www.abag.ca.gov/planning/pdfs/SFHousingNeedsPlan.pdf [PDF]

Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data?

Read the original article. Edward Glaeser also discusses Silicon Valley in his book The Triumph of the City.

That the city council is comprised of nice people is irrelevant. What matters is how they vote. And city councils in wealthy suburban neighborhoods have an extremely reliable track record of preserving the status quo in terms of urban development in order to protect the property values (dressed as "quality of life") of the existing residents.

Here's my suggestion for constructive improvement: Ignore existing residents' concerns about "quality of life" and allow builders to construct high-density housing. This will have the effect of increasing housing stock and making housing more affordable, without having to regulate affordable housing in special cases that almost always end up pleasing nobody.

The zoning, height limits, floor area ratio limits, etc. in various cities are the substantiation of the claim. Also, the (brutally obvious) fact that housing is ridiculously expensive here.

Some city plans include provisions for some affordable housing, but that misses the point of the article. The point is about housing supply: creating a few units of "affordable" housing and requiring them to be sold below market to income-qualified people doesn't address the supply problem at all. It just changes the distributional effects of the supply problem a tiny bit.

The claim is not that politicians are stupid, exactly, it's that bay area incumbent residents, collectively, have made stupid land-use decisions. As long as you own real estate here, and the value of your home keeps going up, why would you complain? You'd only have a problem if you were trying to move here, or if you're trying to recruit here, or if you have the imagination to see all the increased economic activity that would occur if the housing supply problem was solved. And most residents don't have the ability to see that.

Isn't this, in fact, democracy at work? The older people who already live there, and vote in greater numbers than the young, don't want the development, and the politicians merely reflect that.

> This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this amazingly focused and insightful comment you've written.

I too agree. I finally understood when I moved here why americans have a streak in them that dislikes government. It's because theirs can be so bad and huge sometimes.

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