What housing “filtering” can and can’t do
cityobservatory.org
cityobservatory.org
Silicon Valley, by-and-large, has always zoned for lots of cheap office space to keep light industrial rents cheap, in order to create jobs and reap the resulting tax revenue. But it has created an imbalance. Really, if you believe the thesis of this article, the only solution is to declare Sili Valley (and the peninsula) "full", or maybe even overflowing. Then rezone some industrial areas, bulldoze them, and build McMansions. Oh wait, industrial rents will go up and companies will move out or start elsewhere. It is hard to have it both ways.
Eg even the plentiful office zoning could become even more plentiful by building higher.
The new homes for high income buyers could come as part of a tower where there was only a single home earlier.
Density, not McMansions. Rich people, by and large, seem happy enough to live in `luxury condos' stacked on top of each other. (Or at least enough rich people are happy to stack to drive demand.)
Extensive design validation, solid construction, not cutting corners to badly, generally actually build them to last.
Plan for maintenance to happen during the building's lifetime.
* Have a 'car/dog wash' area in...
* A parking garage with room to actually park cars for families.
* Actually acoustically isolate rooms (even within the same unit) for privacy.
* Design ventilation paths that route 'waste' air away from /all/ residence windows.
* If you aren't going to hard-ban smokers from occupying residence within the building, make sure that there are designated smoking areas on each floor. (A scrubbed exhaust room).
More relaxed zoning, including things like the density bonus, could mean turning lots that have 1, 2 or 3 residencies on them into 10++ units.
If you really want "green field" space, of course there is that too. Golden Gate Park is huge. The Presido is huge.
As a political compromise, consider low-rise (~5-7 story) buildings. This is what most of Paris and some of the trendiest Manhattan neighborhoods (West Village, East Village) have, and it feels nothing like what people picture when they think of densities at 80k+ people per sq. mile.
I agree mid- and high-rise buildings are best for transit and commercial hubs, but low-rise in all other walkable areas is sufficient to make a huge difference in SF with less dramatic change in character, sunlight, etc--the usual NIMBY concerns.
It helps, but it's not enough units to make much of a dent in SF's housing shortage.
(1) Skyscrapers are very expensive per livable sq. ft. and take long to build. Low-rises are comparable to single-family homes, so they're lower-risk for developers, come about faster, and have a lower minimum rent price (in the wonderful event SF builds enough housing for rents to go down).
(2) If you neglect the rest of the city and create a sharp density cliff, transit patterns will be wonky. SF is in an odd in-between stage regarding public transit, and creating a transit-oriented dense central neighborhood hurts commutes from other semi-car-based neighborhoods: they should be denser to justify an increase in buses and trains needed by the city.
(3) In a medium-density city like SF, low-rise apartments would make a huge difference in supply. Consider the fact that the NYC neighborhood East Village, comprised mostly of 3-6 story low-rises, is (IIRC) the 2nd densest residential neighborhood after a part of the Upper East Side, pushing over 100k per sq. mile. Because this avoids the problems of high-rises[1] (e.g. blocked sunlight, like Manhattan's FiDI), it's not nearly as unattractive to NIMBYs. The few I've met hate skyscrapers, not low-rises.
I think HN might have a skewed perception of what levels of density correspond to different building heights, and what those buildings cost (in time and money). You don't really see huge swaths of residential high-rises in Manhattan most anywhere. That's due to both quality of life and cost reasons[2]. SF doesn't need to become Hong Kong anytime soon--there's not that much demand--so it's worth considering other options for the sake of political tractability.
[1] http://images25.blocksy.com/L_2027825/122330054/original.jpe...
[2] You could argue that in the past 10 years, Manhattan has had an increased need for more high-rises. But because of cost and the cliff reason mentioned above, it turns out a big part of the cost pressure in NYC has come from an inability to build low- and mid-rise buildings in Queens (which has comparable density to SF).
Vancouver is a good example of a city successfully adopting towers as a typology (as well as the obvious asian examples). You wont find something comparable with midrise as its not adoptable at the same scale for the reasons above.
But I'm curious if you have sources for claims (1), (5), and (6), since they don't line up with any knowledge I have. And I really like this topic so I'd love to learn more :)
And just some FYIs you probably already know but just making sure:
* #2/#3, high-rises in the vast majority of non-NYCHA Manhattan aren't the (horrific) towers-in-the-park style you're referring to. I'd forgotten about those!
* #4, East Village does have parking garages.
* Asian cities vary so much in planning that both you and I can probably find dozens of examples of what we're referring to :) (I'm partial to Tokyo and Taipei myself.)
(1-3) the broader issue is to ensure an even comparison. Typical debates around this issue show very nice historic examples of low-rise apartments and at best mediocre high rise. Originally the density comparisons of jane jacobs who this argument derives from were arguing (very rightly) for the retention of heritage areas like grenwich village against turning into terrible 60s estates. However when comparing new with new and in todays context the result is quite different. In general terms the quality of new build high rise tends to be better than new build low rise and the streets for new build low rise dont look much like your photo (though i wish they could)
(4) im all for reducing parking. But apart from a few places (which should focus on higher densities imo) SF is not approaching grenwich village levels of walkability and will need more cars.
(5) not sure which part you disagree with. Any developer (big enough to be able) will tell you theyd rather build high rise. Comparative hosuing prices to other cities show that there ia huge pent up demand in SF. In hong kong it started from the other direction - huge amounts of public housing were built to ensure employers didnt have to pay workers too much.
(6) 'perimeter-blocks' over a few storeys tend to strongly overshadow low levels and streets while large upper storeys get good sun all the time. Towers (or rather slender, well separated towers - like vancouver) have shadows which move around more and distribute the overahadowing more
I'm not familiar with Vancouver -- is this what you're describing? https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2821477,-123.1245358,3a,75y,...
If so I think we largely agree on SF's ideal future, and differ only in how to manage the politics and our understanding of the extent to which low- and mid-rise development would benefit SF.
SF changed already, it changed in ways to find coping mechanisms to deal with the damage being done to its future. The entire city of SF cannot continue to be the tech hub of the world and composed of (excuse my hyperbole I don't have accurate statistics on hand) 90% comprised of historical property that cannot be torn down or changed ever in any way.
Lucky for us, I believe you can have your cake and eat it too: SF housing demand is actually not high enough to require huge swaths of high-rises. It'd help a ton, but so would a mixed option. In fact I think the mixed option is better: see my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11278295
In SF the battle is over what will happen in the next 5 to 10 years. In that context it is politically dangerous to support market rate "luxury" housing. On a longer timeline this is the only thing that will make a serious dent.
Instead they are pushing for 25% of all developments to be affordable housing, which will retard the whole market and worsen the problem.
Fascinating to see actual studies supporting what the free market is already pushing for, more luxury housing.
Here is Santa Cruz, we have progressives that tell us that we must accommodate every tom, dick, harry, and jane that wants to live here whether or not they can afford to do so. Bullshit.
Companies building and hoping to scale in an area need to take the cost of living, availability of housing, and how that impacts attracting talent into consideration. They shouldn't suddenly demand that blocks of 5 story buildings be replaced with 20+ story buildings.
As a bay area native, what people desiring to live in SF and what they have to pay amuses me. Yes, there is a direct impact on job growth and housing demand, but rather than insisting that a community change and build such housing, maybe the businesses wanting to grow, expand, and hire in said city should fund the development of said housing -- even if it is outside the location of the office. We already have "corporate buses", why not bring back company towns and corporate housing?
Or, maybe, rather than requiring people on-site full time, think about fostering distributed teams.
It's amazing how many companies refuse to even allow a modicum of "work at home" in this day and age. Any engineer is likely to get contacted by recruiters from some of the big bay area companies. Shuttle buses are better than driving solo, but you are still sitting going from point A to point B for 45-60min each way, plus your work day.
SF got all kinds of broken by trying to have one without the other... How would increasing the burden on commercial residents help the situation in any way other than reducing demand by driving them away?
Remote work is a possibility I think it's more of a long term cultural shift that is unlikely to solve the current problems without resorting to regulations enforcing remote work. Regulations which would be shifting the burden to commercial residents and relevant that would just be