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Comment by surrealize | Hacker News Reader

> From what I understand, efforts in other cities to build upwards to house poor people have been a failure.

You could always build upward to house the rich people instead. I'm sure a lot of the incoming startup-types are young and would be happy to live in a high-rise (The correlation between youth and high-rise-living coming, in my experience, from the fact that people with kids often want more space. But that's not a hard-and-fast rule, obviously.).

> But it might make more sense to build lots of small scale housing, with a focus on building viable community spaces rather large scale ghettoes.

I'm not sure if SF has the land space to build lots of small-scale housing. I totally agree about building nice community spaces, though, and I think high-rise building is compatible with that (e.g., Manhattan's pocket parks).

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"You could always build upward to house the rich people instead. I'm sure a lot of the incoming startup-types are young and would be happy to live in a high-rise"

You have to remember that San Francisco is a prime earthquake zone. I'm not sure how many rich people would want to live in what is essentially a death trap if a major earthquake (which is supposedly long overdue) were to strike California.

Also, gentrification tends to happen when wealthier people decide to move in to "hip", "happening" areas with "character". In other words, areas that the poor artists and the blue-collar melting pot have managed to just lift out of being a hellhole, through their hard effort. That's when the yuppie and hipster colonization begins. Witness the fate of the Greenwich Village and Williamsburg in NYC, and what's described in the original article in respect to SF.

So, I'm not sure how attractive high rises built for the rich would be to the rich themselves, as they'd be cultureless islands. No, they much prefer to take over brownstones and victorians that poor artists have fixed up, in an area full of "character".

In earthquakes Taller buildings are safer than smaller buildings http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/25/opinion/op-little25

Also, go to the the hip neighborhoods in NYC (LES Williamsburg), notice the tall buildings being built. Units in these buildings are being bought for large amounts of money.

I think

Isn't building earthquake safe highrises pretty much a solved problem? When I think "ring of fire", I don't think "flats".

rut roh, all those new highrises in downtown LA....

> So, I'm not sure how attractive high rises built for the rich would be to the rich themselves

There are four units for sale at the (42-story) Infinity now, and the cheapest one has an asking price over $1.2 million. In my book, that's for rich people. If you consider a $1.2 million condo a middle-class dwelling, you may have lived in San Francisco for too long.

Tell that to downtown Vancouver, BC:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=vancouver%2Cbc

> You have to remember that San Francisco is a prime earthquake zone. I'm not sure how many rich people would want to live in what is essentially a death trap if a major earthquake (which is supposedly long overdue) were to strike California.

Have you seen what Tokyo looks like?

http://i.imgur.com/a4GQL.jpg

Don't give me that bullshit.

Actually, that photo is a little misleading. Sure, there are some tall buildings in Tokyo, but for a city that size the number of skyscraper class buildings is actually quite low. Tokyo is more an endless sprawl of lowrises and single family dwellings.

It doesn't matter if the percentage of skyscrapers is low, the point is that a large number of them has been built in absolute terms while strictly complying with earthquake regulations. That is, it is entirely possible to safely build skyscrapers in an earthquake zone.

There are a variety of other reasons for Tokyo's urban sprawl, not least the presence of what is the world's most comprehensive public transportation system.

I completely agree with you. My point was more along the lines of: don't look at Tokyo as an example of building upwards in an earthquake-prone zone to combat housing shortages. Tokyo has sprawled, and built said public transportation network to deal with it.

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