What if they picked one small, area, perhaps somewhere in SoMA, and built all the skyscrapers there and not anywhere else? That way the buildings are all centralized and nobody gets gentrified.
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.