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Comment by honkhonkpants | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty surprised anyone thinks Dublin, California is "highly dense". It has half the population density of Oakland, and only double the overall population density of Alameda County, which is huge and empty. The only even remotely dense housing I can think of in Dublin are the apartments near the BART station, but even those are utterly car-dependent because there's nothing to which to walk. I challenge you to name even a single commercial establishment that fronts a walkable street instead of being totally surrounded by parking lots.

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I don't think it's that Dublin is highly dense, it's that the new housing developments are (in comparison to the more spacious, less-planned communities). One of my good friends grew up there, and they lived in a regular neighborhood with normal sized houses and big yards.

The new developments have units stacked high and smashed together. It may not be absolutely dense, but it is certainly more dense than necessary or desired by residents.

Population density isn't a great measure here either, because Dublin has a ton of open/protected/unbuildable space, and even the planned communities have a certain target ratio of public/garden/playground use space.

I think it's more a case of it's the 'burbs, and they'd like it to stay that way.

https://www.bing.com/mapspreview?&ty=30&q=dublin%2c%20ca&sat...

> The new developments have units stacked high and smashed together. It may not be absolutely dense, but it is certainly more dense than necessary or desired by residents.

Not desired by the people living there? Or not desired by other people in Dublin? These are two very different things.

> even the planned communities have a certain target ratio of public/garden/playground use space.

Maintaining a certain amount of public space in the form of parks/playgrounds/plazas makes sense, but that shouldn't translate into shooting down high-density housing developments.

> I think it's more a case of it's the 'burbs, and they'd like it to stay that way.

This kind of attitude -- the "let's keep it this way, forever" attitude -- is exactly why the bay area is now largely unaffordable. Sure, we'd all love it if we could maintain a certain neighborhood style AND have affordable housing. But we can't.

So, it comes down to what you value more: a style of neighborhood with more space between residents, or people being able to afford their rent without hour+ long commutes.

> desired

That's something to be careful with too. I certainly desire a couple of acres of rolling woodland in Palo Alto, but... yeah, that's probably not in the cards. Some people may not desire dense housing, but given the alternatives like moving back to Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma, they might find it's still ok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

The OP never claimed that Dublin is highly dense but that it's one of the few places in the Bay Area building "highly dense" projects, which makes sense given the situation they describe of a local population complaining about increasing density.

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