Comment by jcdavis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcdavis | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree, I think potatolicious was pretty on point

> It's not some god given rule that cities HAVE to keep growing ad infinitum, especially ones that have limited land. Most San Franciscans are happy with the size of the city as it is.

You have a source on that stat? Rents in San Francisco are up something like 25+% year over year in many areas. Does that sound healthy to you?

> I'm not sure what you are referring to here. MUNI is very abundant and isn't too expensive (compared to NYC it's really cheap). There is generally plenty of parking outside of downtown.

Nope, MUNI is awful. Unless you live relatively close on one of the train lines, you are in for a world of hurt. The average speed of a MUNI bus has been going down continuously over time (due to extra traffic), to the point where it is now like 7mph. That means it takes an hour to go from one end to the other (vs 25 minutes tops to go a similar distance on BART). That means more people get cars, which means the buses get even slower. I'd happily pay the NYC monthly rates if I had an equivalent transit system.

> Not building high rises is preserving the quality of life SF is known for

San Francisco doesn't need to build high rises everywhere in the city, it needs to allow taller buildings (6-7 stories) in more areas without forcing developers to jump through all the hoops they have to right now. Lots of cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly. Vancouver is consistently rated as having one of the highest quality of life scores in the world and has tons of high rises

> Lots of cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly.

It's actually pretty common for European cities to limit high-rise condos/office buildings in the city centers (usually with limits around 5-8 stories). To still achieve dense housing, tall condos and office buildings are usually built close to public transit somewhere a bit outside of the city center, plus the suburbs don't start as close in, so there's a bigger urbanized area. The Manhattan/Chicago/Vancouver style of a downtown characterized by skyscrapers isn't very common in Europe; more of a North American invention, particularly in the Chicago/Vancouver form where there's a high-rise downtown that quickly turns into suburban homes within a few kilometers.

The SF equivalent might be to not allow condo towers in SF, but to urbanize the areas a few BART stops out: why are there single-family homes, not denser housing, in San Bruno, West Oakland, and Daly City? But of course, the Peninsula is even more anti-development than SF is, so politically that just trades one source of opposition for another one (to take another example, people have been trying to convince Palo Alto to allow more dense housing near downtown/Stanford/Caltrain for years, but Palo Altoans want to keep it suburban).

I think that's happening to some extent in West Oakland and Oakland more generally, at least. West Oakland's been getting some development, and there's the MacArthur Transit Village being planned at MacArthur.

> Rents in San Francisco are up something like 25+% year over year in many areas. Does that sound healthy to you?

That's in large part because people don't want to buy houses now (b/c of the volatility of the SF real-estate market and a lot of people don't feel it's a safe investment). And yet people are still renting (b/c wages are high).

> San Francisco doesn't need to build high rises everywhere in the city, it needs to allow taller buildings

This is just not a longer term viable solution.

> Lots of cities in europe are filled with buildings of that height (eg paris) and it doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly.

Paris a great example of where it does NOT work. You have the old center with the culture and the tourists and the traditional way of life (and yes, very very expensive real-estate). The parts that do have apartment blocks are on the outskirts and are poverty stricken monstrosities (with exceptions). People don't even consider them to be part of Paris proper.

Paris is definitely not an example of healthy development.

I concede that SF is an expensive city and lots of people can't afford it. I think that's just the new reality of the city and there isn't any viable long term way to fix it short of actively making the city less appealing to live in. I don't complain that rent in Manhattan is too high. I just don't live there. I personally can't afford to live in SF (though I grew up there and love the city), so I live elsewhere in California. But at the end of the day I don't expect SF resident to change their city to accommodate me.

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