Can the Bay Area Kick the Sprawl Habit? | Hacker News Reader

Can the Bay Area Kick the Sprawl Habit?

citylab.com

36 pointsatsneed62 comments

It really bums me out to see Silicon Valley in the state it is today. I got a chance to visit Korea, and one of the things that really impressed me was the rate and scale they were building high-rise apartments:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/17/asia-pacific/soc...

In addition, public trans is extensive and incredibly well-planned and executed.

Unfortunately, I realize this can only happen when the government has sufficient power to make these kind of changes. This will never happen in Silicon Valley as far as I can tell since local homeowners have the upper-hand.

those apartment blocks look like something you'd see out of the USSR.

is it good or bad thing?

Definitely bad. That's exactly the type of image I would use as a current home/land owner of a neighborhood to discourage urbanization and building more housing. "See what our neighborhood could become!!" /s

Even the residents don't like them:

>>“There isn’t much design inspiration. They’re just stacked up,” said Park In-seok, an architecture professor at Myongji University. He described a paradox in which the apartments are mocked for their appearance but coveted for their convenience. “Almost everybody hates the apartment,” Park said. “But everybody wants to live in one.”

It's funny, I thought I would hate those too, but after a recent visit to Ukraine, the "suburbs" that consist of those apartment highrises with lots of greenspace in between have their charms. You get the open spaces, you get the tons of small commerce, you get the public transit to city center and elsewhere, and you get local and larger community. I thought I would hate it, but it's pretty damn awesome.

>“But everybody wants to live in one.”

This was the part that I didn't understand until I experienced it. If they were more visually appealing from the outside, and in the stairways, people may stop hating them.

I was thinking the exact same thing. In my suburban part of the east bay area, the nearest real parks are about a 45 minute walk away, through bland boring suburban streets, the nearest schools would require a car to reach, the closest supermarket is about a 20 minute walk away and there's essentially zero public transit (slow buses about once an hour).

The small town my wife is from in the North Caucasus region of Russia has green everywhere. It also has schools, kindergartens, small grocery stores and parks within ~5-10 min walking distance of pretty much the entire city and public transit everywhere, roughly one bus per route every 5 minutes.

Sure the buildings are arguably uglier but the area as a whole is beautiful and far more livable.

I dated a Korean who grew up in one of those Seoul suburbs (newer and nicer than the drab ones in the photos, but similarly composed of skyscrapers), which I also visited myself. She loves it and prefers it there. It's extremely convenient. Everything is walkable - restaurants, parks, stores, etc. You don't need a car, and mass transit is fantastic. 20-30 minutes by subway to Gangnam (14 miles away) for 3000 won ($2.65).

I grew up in the American suburbs and now live in Manhattan. I hate American suburbs with a passion. Inconvenient, car-dependent, and isolating. NYC is great, but the apartments here are old and terrible by modern standards (not to mention the decrepit subway).

The problem is that America seems to care more about aesthetic appearance than actual living conditions. I don't think anyone will disagree with you that those Soviet-style blocks of identical apartments are ugly from the outside, but I'd rather live in a modern high-rise than some shitty 100 year old 5 story tenement walkup, or some giant house in the suburbs where I can't get anywhere without a car.

I think most people would find it ugly and would much prefer the high-rises of New York, or even certain parts of Hong Kong.

It wouldn't all be so bad if the transportation infrastructure in the bay area wasn't such a joke. When I first moved here I was surprised that a region known for it's innovation, had roads and public transportation systems that looked like people just gave up trying in the 80s.

At least you have public transit like rail or BART. There is nothing like that down in LA and OC. My commute is only 11 miles one way and it takes me 45 minutes to 1 hour thanks to the traffic. The trains here have enough stops that it would be just as long as if I had driven.

"Better than LA" is an incredibly low bar though.

Do you ride a bicycle? Tho I guess it would be too hot in LA for that most days.

I used to ride one to my old job, yes. There aren't many accessible paths to the new one though. It was nice to get outside and be able to have that though.

Maybe change jobs, or homes. Make employers know that you won't put up with subsidizing their cheap land with your gas and time (the latter is also known as "life"). Make builders know that we don't all want to live a zillion miles away from everything.

My LA commute was 12 miles one way (SM to El Segundo) and a pretty nice 50 minute bike ride. But it was nearly all along the beach, and even then I nearly got killed multiple times.

For those in SF want to get organized around this issue, this is a good place to start: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/sf-yimby-13476049611

I do not like living in high-density areas. I like being able to drive and park wherever I need to go - work, the grocery store, restaurants, etc. One of the things I like about being in the South Bay is that it allows me to live this way.

I welcome additional investment in our transportation infrastructure - both rail, bus, and road - but I take issue with the idea that everyone would prefer to live and work in a high-density environment. I don't see why we can't accommodate both preferred lifestyles.

Because that lifestyle conflicts with being an economic powerhouse and if you fight against it lower income people foot the bill. If that's the lifestyle you want, why not move to the midwest?

This is an extremist position - that I should either live somewhere as dense as NYC or as sparse as the midwest. Moderate density has some of the benefits and drawbacks of both.

However, given that the Bay Area is an "economic powerhouse" the way it is today, I don't accept the argument that it can't continue to be one without drastically increasing its population density.

I'm not saying that -- I'm saying the economy powers change and fighting against it is a losing battle where already disenfranchised groups are the casualties. I think the "I have mine" attitude is deplorable and those people should go have theirs somewhere else.

> I don't accept the argument that it can't continue to be one without drastically increasing its population density.

I don't see how without either limiting the economic growth or becoming a miserable place to live. I did my time in the Bay and will never move back.

It's a metro area of 8 million people. That population is larger than many european countries! It's one of the largest cities in the world. If you want the suburban lifestyle, go move to Sacramento.

As long as the area is an economic powerhouse, people are going to want to move here. The primary countervailing force is the cost of housing. Do you have some other plan for how to keep people away? Because if not, the area is going to get denser, or more expensive to live in, or some of each. Personally I'd rather see it get denser. We have a long way to go before we match SF, never mind NYC.

But you don't. You live in a low-density area, then drive your car to the high-density area to get to work. The high-density inhabitants end up paying for your car habit.

I would not call Cupertino, Santa Clara, or pretty much anywhere in the South Bay "high-density" except downtown San Jose, and there are a lot of employers and employees getting along just fine in this area. Could transit be better? Absolutely. For one, 85 could use a few more lanes and a rail line. But instead of trying to convince employers to move their office to denser areas that are currently better served by public transit, I would suggest that we invest in improving the infrastructure in the whole area.

The reality is that the majority of the areas of the United States are like the environments that you prefer -- low-density environments built around the car. Personally, I prefer a high density, walkable city, yet really my only option in the United States is NYC (where I live), as other cities that come close (SF, Chicago, Boston, DC, etc) don't run their transit 24 hours, or require some use of a car as neighborhoods aren't well connected by that transit.

I think it's completely reasonable to want to have a second city in the United States that can compare to NYC and all the benefits that come with a high density, multi-zoned, well connected city. Whenever I think about where else I could find this if I were to leave NYC I end up finding it really would mean moving abroad.

I think at this point it's useful to disentangle the city of San Francisco and the much less dense surrounding Bay Area. If you want to live in a high-density city, in this area that would be San Francisco. Its employers and residents (and prospective residents) should certainly push for 24 hour transit, more complete transit coverage, and whatever else is necessary for living in such an environment.

However, the rest of the Bay Area isn't really city-like. Much of the existing infrastructure has been built around cars as the mode of transportation. Building a second high-density city out of nothing somewhere in this area and convincing employers and employees to move there doesn't seem like it would be well received. If the employers and employees in this area wanted to be located in a high-density city they'd already be in San Francisco. Many are - but many are not.

I agree with that and I'm certainly not advocating that the rest of the Bay get developed as densely as SF. As a city, SF very clearly needs a lot more housing and a transit expansion, maybe even a merger with Oakland as a borough, with greater transit connectivity there and density to match in Oakland.

The problem then becomes that the rest of the Bay would most likely get pressured to build more densely as well, just like the metro areas of NYC did. That might ruin the suburb life that you enjoy as the expanding city to the north puts pressure on the surrounding areas.

You are correct, I expect that additional organic growth in all parts of the Bay Area will continue to increase the density, and there's not much I can do about that. However, as that does happen, I would expect that the area would continue to "sprawl" outwards, attracting employers to some of the more outlying areas because office space and employee cost of living are both cheaper, and that these areas would continue to provide the lifestyle I desire.

I do, however, push back against articles like this that characterize such sprawl as bad, and that instead of allowing growth and sprawl to happen organically, seek to curb it by lobbying for policy change.

You're showing NYC bias. 24-hour transit is not a requirement for living car-free at all. And you can get around the cities you listed pretty easily without a car. A bicycle helps in any city. Chicago's transit is good enough to do without a bike, too. Either way, you're not going to be able to bring home large furniture or a cartload of stuff from Target any more easily in New York than in Boston or Chicago. So access to a car (in the form of a taxi, Uber/Lyft, or ZipCar) is useful no matter what. I've lived in cities that only have a skeletal light rail and bus service without a car, and was just fine. If you're willing to bicycle, most major US cities without severe winter weather are quite doable without a car. You'll find many, many people in the cities you listed living carless and doing quite fine. Boston and Chicago in particular are cities where having a car is considered more of a liability than an asset. I wonder if you've actually lived carless in a city other than NYC (college campuses don't count).

I've never had a license, so everywhere I've lived I've lived without a car. Living in Chicago without a car was fine, although seeing friends in different parts of the city could take an hour or so. Or you might get stuck in a neighborhood that doesn't have 24 hour El train access. It also is only about one third of the density of Brooklyn and one sixth of the density of Manhattan, so there are only a few areas with the vibrancy that NYC has. I do like Chicago though, except for those winters.

I've spent a ton of time in SF over the past decade working in tech, so while it's not the same as living there, I've on many occasions gotten stranded in Oakland after Bart closing at night (pre-uber). Those cab rides weren't cheap. Same thing has happened to me in Boston.

I at one point had to spend a lot of time in Miami (had some stuff in a datacenter there years ago, also pre-uber) and I remember one night I got stopped by a local resident telling me I definitely shouldn't be walking where I was walking at that time of night (about 10 or 11 pm). I was walking and talking with him and a shooting happened a block away maybe 5 minutes after he stopped me. Having other options besides being on foot would have been great.

I've spent lots of time in Seattle and Los Angeles without a car, and it wasn't terrible, but wasn't great.

Anyway, that's all to say a 24 hour transit system is certainly not a requirement, but it's a great thing to have. New York wouldn't be New York without it.

It's really hard to accommodate both in one place. Quality high-frequency, low-cost (to ticket-payers and taxpayers) transit requires a certain amount of density. Otherwise you won't have frequent bus service within walking distance of every residence. Also, the infrastructure that is necessary for low-density living—parking lots (especially setbacks), wide (6-lane) roads with high (40-45mph) speed limits and few crosswalks, long (1/2 mile) blocks, highways—hurts walkability. Part of this is subjective but still legitimate imo (pedestrians prefer businesses on the street with no setback), and part of this is objective (long blocks makes crossing hard, lots of parking means places become farther apart and therefore less amenable to walking).

I'm curious what you think about this as someone who presumably lives in South Bay. Do you consider South Bay a place where people can get around just walking and using transit? What changes do you think could be made there that increases support for walking/transit without impeding car travel or increasing density?

Not looking that way:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/28/cupertino-adopts-proce...

The Bay Area is not the same as Silicon Valley. The East Bay (bay side of the hills) and SF have been building upwards. The South Bay and the past-the-hills East Bay are ruining things with sprawl. San Jose/SC/MV/etc are horrendous in terms of upward building and it comes down to an extremist form of NIMBYism passing laws preventing proper upward development.

The San Jose urbanized area is the third most densely populated in the country, at 5820 people per square mile. That's only slightly behind the San Francisco-Oakland urbanized area, which is #2 at 6266 people per square mile. (#1 is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim at almost 7000 per square mile).

Source: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_censu...

These are looking at the densities of entire metropolitan areas, which doesn't mean much.

In the NY-NJ metro area there are lots of high-density cities, like Manhattan at 70,000/sq. mi.; Brooklyn, Union City, Hoboken, at 40,000/sq. mi.; Queens at 20,000/sq. mi. There is empty space between these cities, which lowers the density of the metro area, but that doesn't really matter.

On the other hand, SV cities (Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose), actually are at densities of 5,000-6,000/sq. mi.

The figure we should actually be looking at is weighted population density, not population density.

Another solid example of regulatory capture. The nouveau riche in the bay area have begun piling on the poor.

Feels quite horrible to look at people who work retail jobs commuting 1hr each way to work. Just because soccer-moms who have no business organizing cities are now in charge of exactly that.

I mean just look at Cupertino - world capital of the soccer mom. So much money and they have managed to make it look like a giant walmart.

We need a Robert Hooke type to come in and take a good look at the problem. And deliver to us a London or a Rome.

Apparently Cupertino uses overcapacity at schools as a reason to limit housing development, especially high density.

It certainly has a good intent ring to it, though i suspect there are additional reasons for using that party line.

The overwhelming response you'd receive is "we don't want to be Rome". At this point I'm rooting for the tech industry to declare bankruptcy and found a new city somewhere ala NYC and the transatlantic trade.

Nobody ever says "When in Cupertino" do they?

It is surprising to me how in one dimension one can take so much pride in their work (tech etc) and in another way be so satisfied and desire such mediocrity (civilization, architecture, quality of life for all).

Uh, 1hr each way to work is entirely standard for $150k tech professionals when they have families (my senior colleagues, manager, and his manager), and for entry-level engineers when they want their own 1-bedroom apartments and cars (me).

Commute times for the actual poor are going to far exceed that.

It feels like the other major issue is that the housing isn't on those hubs. Everyone wants to live in the same three parts of SF - the parts near Caltrain.

Like LA, it seems like there needs to be another train line. For us it's Hollywood/Beverly Hills. For the Bay, it'd be, maybe Sunset down the 101.

But maybe I'm wrong, and two options just mean you're more likely to be incorrect on either side?

Another train line would be a waste -- take the window seat on Caltrain and look how utterly empty it is the second you leave SF. The whole way down the peninsula the train is flanked by flat, low-density construction spotted with breaks of wide open space. You don't see any real high-density housing until you get to San Jose.

Not everyone wants that lifestyle.

Being a photographer and also someone who tends to do a lot of Maker and gardening projects I find SF near impossible to live for my lifestyle. It's really hard to load and unload photo gear when you have to make 4 trips to the truck that is a 5 minute walk away and go up 10 stories each time. Not to mention paying $40 for parking. I couldn't do what I do without a truck and SF is extremely unfriendly towards cars.

I do like being able to walk to lunch from an office though. When I was working in downtown Sunnyvale I found it really convenient. The parking back then was decent but now it is overcrowded and you're lucky if you can find a spot. You have to wait in long lines for lunch now too. It's gotten much worse IMO.

When I worked in Redwood City I tried to take Caltrain but it adds another 2 hours to your commute every day and the train schedules are extremely limited the further south you live. Ended up getting a motorcycle just for commuting.

With electric cars coming along, and already here in many Silicon Valley parking lots, is this really a problem?

Downtown Redwood City has suddenly become very urban. The city is well over a century old, but until five years ago, had few tall buildings. Now, 5 to 10 story buildings are filling up downtown blocks. The downtown redevelopment plan actually worked.

I hadn't been there in 10 years until last weekend and was shocked at how transformed it had become. It has definitely kept up with the times. (I was also a fan of the weekend parking at Box Inc. Parking with validation at stores.

Redwood City has had that parking system for over a decade, with several large parking garages and lots. The city insisted Box be part of it.

Great move especially compared to downtown palo alto/MV or increasingly downtown Los altos.

Electric cars don't do anything to reduce the # of cars on the freeways, which is the main problem discussed in the article.

The number of cars on freeways is only a problem that needs to be addressed when they are causing significant negative externalities.

The same thing is happening to downtown Sunnyvale (4-5 story condos going up on top of street-level retail) and Mountain View (10 story towers going up around San Antonio, with the giant strip mall being converted into mixed-use condos + shops). The same may happen with North Bayshore - Google's building its new tent campus, and the plan includes up to 10-story residential buildings on street-level retail. There's still a lot of resistance from local residents, but the development tide seems to have turned.

With everybody complaining about how expensive SF is and how terrible the commute is, it seems to me like a more likely solution is to bring the city to Mountain View rather than bring all the workers from the city to Mountain View.

Thank goodness they finally developed San Antonio shopping center. Been going there since I was a child when there was a Payless drugs store (I think?) where the Safeway now is, and it had been basically dead for a decade between 2003-2013 or thereabouts.

Of course there are many many more places like this along El Camino, and Vallco is probably never getting redeveloped due to resident opposition against mixed use develeopment including high density housing.

You don't have to be a bystander in this process... the incentives might be for cities to listen to their current homeowners and to add more parking and prefer office parks, but we can organize for change and more density.

Here are some steps you can take:

- The Brisbane City Council is deciding whether to build 4400 units of housing on 600 acres south of San Francisco, about the same number of units SF built in total last year. The Brisbane Planning Commission recommended building an office park instead. Contact them and ask them to build the housing version of the project.

- The Mountain View City Council is deciding whether to build 2000 units or 8000 units of housing next to Google. They are leaning toward the low end - 2000 units would be tough to support a grocery store or frequent transit. Contact them (or show up to their board meeting - tonight!) and ask them to build the high-housing version of the plan.

- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a plan to require 28% of all new developments to be below market rate. When you consider the unit costs to build in SF, that would make it _extremely_ difficult to justify new housing starts here. Please contact your Supervisor and ask them to oppose the Peskin/Kim Prop C plan.

- Call your CA State Assemblymember and ask them to oppose AB 915 (makes it harder to build affordable units)

- Call your CA State Assemblymember and ask them to support AB 71 (higher property taxes on second homes, money goes to affordable housing)

- Call your CA State Senator and ask them to support SB 167, which would put teeth in the state's Housing Accountability Act. (for more on this see carlaef.org)

- Call your CA State Senator and ask them to support SB 35 (would remove the ability of local government to block projects that meet certain criteria - near transit, have a high % of affordable units, use union construction labor)

- Email your VC's and C-level executives and tell them how hard it is to find housing in the area and how ridiculous the parking requirements are. Tell them about your awful commutes and the difficulty of finding good school districts for your kids. Ask them to get more involved politically in pro-housing causes. Ron Conway is a good example here.

NIMBY's are really well organized and things don't change unless we do something about them. All of these changes listed above will go a long way to support the development of housing in the Bay Area, which should help lower prices, and help keep families here and teachers in our neighborhoods. https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/

It's easy. Just ban individual homes, make everyone live in small apartments along rail routes.

What would we lose?

people who don't want to live in small apartments next to busy rail lines

Well for starters that's probably illegal and would get challenged in court by various jurisdictions.

Municipalities could easily accomplish that with zoning restrictions.

They already do, for the opposite. Ban apartments and legislate only single family homes.

Also, a large portion of the voters are home owners in those districts.

The better plan would be to remove zoning restrictions (and while you are at it, institute a land value tax).

This is such an odd joke.

I say joke, but I feel that many people feel it is true. In that if the Bay Area builds any of that housing, that in a few years they will be forced into living in it against their will.

For existing property owners, this is not a problem. They have their single family separate household. And yet it's those people that put up the most opposition to people who want to live in a different way. To me, an apartment on a rail line is far more valuable than a house that's only accessible by car. That's what I want, yet the market is not allowed to meet that demand because of zoning restrictions and NIMBY actions.

I'm guessing you're trying to get at the fact that we did exactly this, but the opposite. The results have been less than stellar.

Not as bad as many other metro areas in the US. It's just that in the upper parts of a bubble (e.g. now), the infrastructure can't cope with the traffic.

No.

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