In 2016 San Francisco built twice as much housing per capita (EDIT: per new resident) as the state average. (https://sf.curbed.com/2017/5/4/15543668/san-francisco-new-ho...)
The city could do much, much better. The issue here isn't approvals, per se; it's the high cost of construction, and a big part of that is the concessions that the city (and NIMBYs) squeeze out of developers. But in any event at least the city is _approving_ projects. Compared to every other city in the Bay Area San Francisco is leading. Unfortunately that says more about the Bay Area than it does SF, but in any event SF isn't being hypocritical when it criticizes Brisbane, Palo Alto, etc.
Give homeowners/developers incentives to turn low density blocks into mid to high density housing. And build Geary Street light rail (and put most of it underground so it doesn't take as long as the N-Judah does to get downtown)
There is a growing group of people on the west side of the city who do want density.
Imagine Tokyo was located near SF. Would you criticize Tokyo for complaining about the pace of development in SF, simply because Tokyo could be doing a better job?
By defending Brisbane, you defend every other city in the Bay Area that has been dragging its feet, especially those on the peninsula. Don't forget that both Santa Clara County and San Mateo County have substantially greater median incomes than SF, yet most of the cities in those counties--especially the richest ones--have literally flat-out opposed growth in residential units.
I call out SF for its/our blatant hypocrisy. It's a bona fide city but they/we act as if we're still in the late 1800s Victorian times. Oh, historic, oh, views, oh, character, oh residential displacement. Always some provincial excuse.
I live in a mixed SFH/midrise apartment neighborhood in Oakland, and our population density is 24,000 per square mile.
So putting 24k people in that part of Brisbane wouldn't even look particularly built up.
The Nob Hill, Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill areas (beautiful, treasured, highly desired places) in San Francisco all vary from 30k to 60k per square mile.
Putting 45k people on Brisbane baylands would be awesome.
What's really happening is that Brisbane loves the sweet tax revenues from all the businesses they host, but don't want the (expensive) responsibility to house all those people that work in town.
That's a common, often unstated problem, in many places. A new family often doesn't pay enough in taxes to cover the services they need, schools in particular. Which puts pressure on everyone's tax burden.
I live in a rural/exurban town in New England and the tax issue definitely comes up in any discussion of approving any sizable development. (The town tends to be against development in general for traffic etc. reasons but taxes are part of it.)
Prop 13 can take almost exclusive blame for cities in California giving preference to jobs and retail over housing. It's like a direct incentive if they want to keep their budgets balanced.
I think it's fair to say that the real calculus in Brisbane is simply opportunity cost: they get a better ROI with commercial than residential. And this calculus simply makes it easier to defend anti-development sentiment, which is really what it all comes down to.
Brisbane's city report from 2013 states there were ~6,500 jobs in the city. Add in children, unemployed, retired, etc... and that accounts for many times more residents than can actually live in Brisbane. Which means Brisbane is contributing heavily to the housing problem in the Bay Area.
Geographic mobility really is a huge hurdle. A lot of business is becoming centralized around major long-distance transportation hubs, San Francisco being chief among them. Live in Concord, but want to work in Los Gatos? Good luck getting there by train. I lived in the Mission and to get to China Basin was a bus to a train to a bus. I opted for the ten minute drive instead of forty-five minutes of transferring. It's embarrassing how much better we could do so much better moving people around. Right now I opt to drive the 101 south instead of taking Caltrain, even though my employer covers the cost, because it would cost me an additional $10 a day to take other trains/buses to get to the Milbrae transfer, and by the time I've driven myself either to 4th/King or San Bruno I could have already been half way to work just driving the whole way. We need to do better.
Not to mention, no one is asking to knock down the beautiful hillside neighborhoods - they want to build housing in the flat baylands across the 5-lane highway Bayshore Blvd. The SF Muni T-line basically already services this proposed baylands neighborhood.
As for the mobility issue - I agree 100% that transportation is a crucial part of this whole equation. I also understand that you can't build effective transportation if you keep surrendering to people who want car-oriented sprawling development patterns, including prioritizing cars even in our dense neighborhoods.
Now, imagine the opposite, Brisbane demanding San Francisco become more suburban because San Francisco is to city-like for their liking.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-small-city-control...
The attitude is essentially, "I've got mine, let's pull the ladder up after me and deny anyone else affordable housing."
It also has ensured that residents of San Francisco have very easy access to wilderness - I'm certainly better off being able to go hiking with just a 15 minute drive.