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Comment by junkscience2017 | Hacker News Reader

junkscience2017

"If only there were some sort of mechanism for it to skim off of real estate value and use the money for public goods. We could call it... property taxes."

what schools? land has to be set aside for schools. no developer makes this sacrifice anymore. it doesn't matter if revenue is generated if there is NO SCHOOL because no one would build one. and yes this is becoming a problem in the Bay Area.

"Road capacity is an interesting one, because people who live in dense walkable environments close to their offices need less transportation"

maybe like 0.1% of people in SF are candidates for walking to work, you can't be serious

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If one developer is doing a single project so big that they can spare a school-sized plot of land... that's concerning in itself. The model of production that worked for cookie-cutter subdivisions isn't the only or best one.

Public money can and should be used to acquire and develop sites. The city can negotiate with developers to get schools incorporated into large multi-use buildings the same way we got museums/arts centers around Yerba Buena.

We don't need developers to plop down entire fully-formed communities all at once to get these things, and we shouldn't necessarily want them to. More, higher-value activity to tax only increases the city's ability to build what is needed collectively.

100% of people in a condo tower next to a cluster of office towers and a Muni stop should be very serious candidates for walking, bicycling, or taking Muni. This could create more transit riders and therefore require more transit (which we’d be happy to approve), but also take some existing longer-distance drivers or transit riders down to shorter and less resource-hungry commutes.

> maybe like 0.1% of people in SF are candidates for walking to work

Everyone says SF is seven miles a side. Walking speed is maybe 3mph. If you want a commute of 40 minutes each way, you need to live at most 2 miles (straight line) away from your office.

0.1% seems low. Divide walking speed by sqrt(2) to be conservative about directness and you get about 20% of the peninsula within 40 minutes walk, and 40% of it within an hour.

Here in seattle we are building like crazy. I moved into a 1 year old residential skyscraper across the street from my office for the 4 minute door to desk commute.

I don't know how it is in SF, but if you are building sensibly, you would mix high density apartments/condos with offices so that people can live close to where they work.

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