Why don't they just build taller buildings?
If I buy a piece of land, and it's my property, I can do whatever I what with it right? Who can stop me from constructing a tall building on my own property?
The United States is a free country right? I assume a free country respects property owner's freedom to whatever[1] they want with their land?
[1] Of course excluding actions would cause significant harm to one's neighbors, like environmental pollution.
The insane laws of the bay area might restrict you, for starters.
What would you call it when your new 50 story building leaves neighboring properties in permanent shadow, or get in the way of their previous panoramic views of the bay?
No.
> The United States is a free country right?
Nothing to do with the United States. Most countries have zoning laws.
I'm well aware of zoning laws. I think when they're taken too far, they impinge on personal liberty.
There are localities that mandate that every house be painted the same color. The Bay Area zoning laws benefit a few (the landlords) at great cost to everyone else who lives there, and stunts the growth of the regional economy. (If taller building were allowed and property prices were more sane, there would be more companies and more people, thus leading to economic growth).
I think what we need is a constitutional limit on state power in the United States. The Tenth Amendment[1] and the Enumerated Powers Clause[2] limit federal overreach, but there is no analogous limit on state power in the U.S. Constitution. The states' powers are not enumerated, well-defined or limited in any way, and states are free to legislate on almost anything (unless it infringes on an enumerated right of the people or a right covered under Ninth Amendment[3]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_... -- "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Well then it's a good thing we have courts to decide what "too far" is. The Supreme Court has decided that zoning laws are not inherently unconstitutional (Euclid v. Amber), but they've struck down more infringing laws on multiple occasions. Maybe you don't agree with the exact balance they've chosen, but that's your problem, not a fatal flaw of our government.
> I think what we need is a constitutional limit on state power in the United States.
We already have one: the Supremacy Clause. Federal laws and the national constitution override state laws in all cases. If a certain right is not granted either by a state or by the Supremacy Clause, it's because both the state and the Federal government have decided that particular right isn't a natural one. Again, you seem to be taking your particular conceptions of liberty and what the law should be, and deciding the government is flawed for not obeying them. A lot of us like the current system.
If there's a particular right you feel should be Constitutionally protected against state laws, we have a system for that with Constitutional amendments enforced by the Supremacy Clause. Propose one to your representative if you like. But your suggestion of more non-specific Constitutional limits on state power is not going to win you many followers: the vague right-libertarianism of your attitude will alienate the Left, and the Right will balk at your suggestion of more Federal limits on state power. You're walking a lonely road here.
Thanks for the well-thought-out comment.
What I'm essentially arguing for is for a sort of massive expansion of individual liberty through federal restriction of state power, by for example, having a list of "Enumerated Powers of the States" similar to the federal Enumerated Powers clause added to the Constitution, and establishing (just as in the Tenth Amendment) that all powers not specifically delegated to the states are reserved to the people. This would expands personal liberty, as it would put well-defined limits on what the states can legislate on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
Limits on building height can make sense in some places, even if not in this particular case.
Building codes.
> ...I can do whatever I what with it right? Who can stop me [...] The United States is a free country right?
You are dangerously close to setting the bozo bit (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SetTheBozoBit).
And yet your alias is all too apt.
There's a map for this, I'll edit my comment when I find it.
Edit: I found the map (http://i.imgur.com/B48yRGK.jpg), the maximum building height for this area is 182 feet above sea level. The Google campus sits around 15 feet above sea level and LinkedIn around 50. That works out to a max height of around 10 stories for the Google area, 7 stories for LinkedIn. So actually, it's higher than I thought.
There are quite a few tallish (7-10 story) buildings along 237 and Central expressway that seem to skirt this restriction.
I edited my comment to remove that part.
http://www.mountainview.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?...
Lesson: it's a mistake to design to the limit.
I suppose in some idealized, maximally YIMBY world, the difference between 8 stories and 10 represents some horrible market interference by "NIMBY asshats". But in the real world, Google would be foolish to build above 8 stories no matter what the Mountain View city council says. The Precise Plan just reflects the practical limits of building in that area.
A 12-story building was planned back in 2012 and they almost had a protest over it. The name of the town is 'Mountain View' and not 'city skyline view', after all.
I get that the Bay is not Lake Washington.. but seriously, lakes vary in height too, and still have docks.
Somehow the bay has almost no docks, no boating (except some sailboats way up north in SF), no recreation at all. Is it water quality? Chop? Regulation?
there is a marina in redwood city, but notice how shallow the bay is south of SFO (aside from the channel) - much of that is mudflats (lakes don't have tides), marine preserves, etc.
1: https://www.daftlogic.com/sandbox-google-maps-find-altitude....
Sure, it can be done, but it's not that safe and requires a lot of extra expense.
They DO have more votes than Google.
If you are building a building with X floor area the city government requires you to have f(x) area as open land. If you want to build a very tall building it will have to look like the Saruman's Tower. This regulation is part of the reason why Sunnyvale or Mountain View do not look like SF. It is also the reason why property prices are so expensive. The good part however is that it means less crime, better neighbourhoods and overall good quality of life.
The potential issue that was brought up in Mountain View is an unwillingness to become a "company town" for Google. Residents can remember being a "company town" (to a lesser extent) for SGI and then SGI went poof, leaving the Shoreline area vacant for a time. I actually think it is good for residents to be suspicious of tying their fates to one very large employer; nothing lasts forever.
The same issue may one day impact Cupertino...how many companies could or would want to acquire a single property as big as the "spaceship" campus? Apple isn't going away anytime soon, but this is still a valid concern.
you can build parking deep under ground. Heck, giving the tendency for the quality of offices, you can build underground office floors too :)
But highways are nonetheless terribly inefficient. One extra lane or off ramp isn't enough to handle all of Google's traffic. They've already widened 101 around Google, rebuilt the whole Shoreline/85/101 interchange area to add more lanes, etc. The bottleneck is the off ramps themselves and the local streets -- they cause traffic to back up onto the freeway and make all lanes congested.
The real solution is to allow more housing to be built close to the campus, and elsewhere in Mountain View, so that more people can walk/bike/take transit. The land use just across 101 is really inefficient right now.
Next to the bay? That would be...either disastrous or ludicrously expensive.