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Comment by anarazel | Hacker News Reader

Berlin? Denser than San Francisco? Huh? I just moved from the former to the latter, and I'm pretty sure that that's not the case, and Wikipedia backs me up (~4,000/km2 vs 7,124/km2).

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Density isn't really the problem in San Francisco. The problem is available housing. Relatively speaking San Francisco is far less dense than many other cities. But these other cities don't have housing shortages.

Well, I didn't bring density up - I was just responding to the Berlin vs. SF comparison on density. But I do think that available building space can ease a lot of the discussions. Having to tear down low density (and possibly quality) housing, build in somebody's backyard, cover up small specks of green, et al. allows for far much more backlash/nimby than if there's copious unused/undeveloped land.

Thanks -- Cannot find my original source but perhaps it was a difference in how they measured land area.

Berlin used to have a lot more inhabitants, about 1 million more around around 1940 than now. Not all of the living areas from back then still exist, but it means there are some reserves. In addition to that, while there's obviously some pressure against just moving outward, it's in the middle of flat, mostly unused, land. Not comparable to SF's space constrained situation.

(Oh, and I do miss Berlin)

I visited once, and loved it.

Of course, my expectation was that it was more dense than SF, so when I found a source that confirmed it, I was all too willing to trust it. But in retrospect (based on your protest on the matter), the housing itself was quite dense in many areas, but there were many parks and large spaces of open areas between the housing blocks.

Wikipedia very unhelpfully tells me that SF has 17k/mi^2 and Berlin has 4k/km^2, which works out to about 10k/mi^2.

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