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Comment by 1024core | Hacker News Reader

I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs.

I was in Barcelona recently (yay NIPS!) and Barcelona is smaller than SF (36 sq mi) and has nearly twice the population! Everywhere you see are 6-floor buildings, with the bottom reserved for shops and people living above them. It is so walkable, with great (and reliable) public transportation. We kept thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN?

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Oddly enough, SF is among the best cities in America for density.

I wish more of America were like Barcelona, including SF. Regulations tend to prohibit dense walkable construction though. I don't mean NIMBY protests per se. Existing city regulations tend to require more parking spaces and setbacks than old cities provided.

Not to mention prohibitions on having shops and housing in the same zones that most modern cities now have.

This shows that a good chunk of Manhattan couldn't be built today: http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.c...

The North American status quo is weird: it is illegal to build dense, walkable, aesthetically pleasing neighbourhoods.

Ugh. Zoning rules on minimum setback are so frustrating. Setback beyond a wide sidewalk just decreases density for no greater societal benefit.

We kept thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN?

Because you'd have to demolish acres and acres of 100+ year-old architecture (generally considered to be among the planet's most distinctive) to make it that way.

And even if we did -- it wouldn't look anything like Barcelona (and its fabulously integrated 100 year-old architecture and street grid), either. Most likely, I betcha, it would end up looking like a pepped up, West Coast version of this place:

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

Which I'm sure would suit many of the "Who cares about historic architecture, as long as I can get a shot at a $2400 studio!" advocates here just fine.

> Which I'm sure would suit many of the "Who cares about historic architecture, as long as I can get a shot at a $2400 studio!" advocates here just fine.

As opposed to the status quo, which suits many of the "Who cares about the middle class, as long as we can preserve all of the 100+ year old architecture" advocates just fine.

You can't touch such historic buildings, that house is 100 years old! We have to preserve the character of our city! I've lived here 3 years and really treasure it.

Let's just continue the wholesale replacement of the people and culture that gave rise to it in the first place.

The people and culture that gave rise to it have already been replaced, actually. Did you know that the Mission used to be an Irish neighborhood, for instance?

Did you know that the Mission used to be an Irish neighborhood, for instance?

The point is that it used to be an affordable neighborhood. And the city in general used to be more or less affordable for the middle class, also -- independent of the ethnic background of its inhabitants. And that changes (including full-scale transformations of neighborhoods) which used to take generations to transpire now happen in the course of 10 years or so.

Just because change has happened before doesn't mean that all "change" is equivalent (or even "natural").

As long as we can preserve all of the 100+ year old architecture"

"all of" being a straw man, of course.

It doesn't have to be like that. There are places like SoMa where we have industrial buildings that city can easily get rid of.

> Because you'd have to demolish acres and acres of 100+ year-old architecture (generally considered to be among the planet's most distinctive) to make it that way.

SF's architecture is nice for being in the US. And the interesting parts are actually quite limited. The Sunset and the Richmond have pretty much zero architectural value, for instance.

> I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs.

I feel the same. I grew up in Europe and I'll add to that that generally speaking, apartment sizes are much bigger in SF (and, basically, western US) than anywhere I've lived before. I was recently in NY and apt sizes there remind me Hong Kong actually (well, I exaggerate a bit). Funny thing too is that when you cross the border into Vancouver from Seattle, you immediately revert back to Europe size apts!

I have too many hobbies that take space to live in a place like Barcelona. Where do people work on their hobby car or motorcycle? Where do you do woodworking? Where do you keep your boat or paddle board? Do they have gardens? What about an outdoor kitchen for grilling and smoking? Do their kids have bicycles and scooters and skateboards and baseball gear?

Seriously, come visit!

I've started watching An Idiot Abroad and I think I share a lot with Pilkington (or at least the character he plays on that show) when it comes to travel. I don't really like to travel. Twenty years ago, I was in to it but now it feels like a phase I grew out of.

Join a club for the sports stuff. There's a few nice sailing clubs in the Bay Area where they keep the boats and the gear there (some have lockers). There are motorcycle garages and storage units for race vehicles, parks, vacation homes, and get-togethers with opportunities to cook outside. Skateboards fit in closets. For wood/metalworking, there's stuff like TechShop.

It's not practical to live in a city and have a pole barn with a station for each different hobby, but you can still do a lot and make it work. Sometimes it ends up being pretty expensive, e.g. Keeping an extra car in the city could be ~$300/mo in the case of SF, but car storage around say Laguna Seca can be quite a bit cheaper.

And I live out in the burbs because I want to do all that stuff. My point was that for some of us, suburban life is a great fit.

Yes, people in Barcelona smoke, grill, have hobbies, bicycles, etc.

That's not really what my point was.

> why can't SF be more like BCN?

1. Earthquakes.

2. City planning policies over the years (or lack thereof).

We know how to safe six-story buildings in SF are a solved prblem, and developers have no problem following building codes when zoning allows them to build 6 stories.

The problem is that most of the inhabitable stuff in SF is being rented out at >$2500 per studio in those old Victorian homes, and it's not exactly easy to just evict everyone for a few years to build higher density housing. A lot of stuff is also under rent control, and since no new buildings are under RC (and all the new construction I've seen is explicitly luxury), tearing old things down to build means tearing down "affordable" (relatively) housing to build luxury junk.

It'd sure be nice to be able to clear a few blocks at a time and start over with fresh buildings, but it's more a matter of changing wheels on a bus while it's full of people driving down the street.

These issues can be addressed, but in any case they don't seem related to restrictions that limit construction to a certain number of stories.

>1. Earthquakes.

And yet Tokyo exists.

I was in Tokyo during Fukushima in a recently-built building.

Felt like nothing more than a freight truck passing by.

San Francisco really doesn't have Earthquake safe housing. It's been over 100 years (1906) since the last major earthquake (7.0+), which ended up destroying most of the city.

A large portion of the housing in San Francisco dates to that era. However, rather than learn from the mistakes made pre-1906, San Francisco just rebuilt things exactly the way they were before. Look how much damage the 1989 earthquake caused, and that was a sub 7.0 earthquake. Another major earthquake would result in similar devastation to the 1906 earthquake.

The best part is the NIMBYs who refuse to allow earthquake deathtraps to be destroyed for more modern buildings. They've become so complacent and ignorant to the reality of a major earthquake, that they feel the character of the city is more important than the lives of the people in it.

> We kept thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN?

Because 'Murrica. As a native Russian, this has always puzzled and bewildered me, too.

It's not that hard to understand, actually.

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