"Maybe if we just create/change a few more rules everything will be better" type mentality probably won't fix things. I see there are ideas to relax rules, which is good, but ultimately that might actually remove the 'money' aspect of the situation.
My mentality is that if the costs are too high then don't pay them (hint: move away).
I am Norwegian myself but when I lived in the US I was always puzzled by the extremely segmented feel of cities. Everything in one area was the same, and when you meet people you get the feeling that most people only know people from their own economic class.
As a country that prides itself on diversity, there doesn’t seem to be much diversity where people live.
I think cities with less rules which are able to grow more organically will tend to develop better.
Or I guess it depends on the type of planning. Where I live in Oslo a lot of thought went into making it possible for kids to walk to school, playgrounds etc without crossing car roads or walking next to car roads.
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
It's from a while back... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845
In American cities, I can always tell whether a neighborhood is rich or poor or middle-class. I notice even without thinking about it, it's blatantly obvious by the homes and the cars and the environment.
In Munich, even when I'm trying to figure out how rich an area is, I usually can't tell. In terms of income distribution at least, most parts of the city -- and its suburbs -- feel roughly similar, in that they have a mix of people. This undoubtedly has to do with the fact that even "low density" parts of Munich still have duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment complexes (but more tastefully designed than ones in the states, I admit).
The fact is, the SF Bay area is a housing shitshow, mostly because of a boom economy, which will end. Nobody was talking about this crisis in 2002 when the economy hit the skids, and all of the wacky California policy issues with property taxes and development challenges were all there.
I don't live in California. I live in an urban environment in a neighborhood a mixed 1-4 family freestanding units. A major component of my property's valuation is that neighborhood cohesion. When you hear people characterizing turning potting sheds into shitty rental units as some sort of victory for social justice, you're hearing a movement that is poised to be upsurped by well capitalized real estate developers.
I grew up in Queens, NYC, which has pretty loose zoning controls. My neighborhood, which in the 80s was a mix a 1-2 family detached and attached homes, changed dramatically, starting with the 80s real estate boom and continuing in waves in the 90s boom and the 2000's boom. The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community. The only happy stakeholders are the real estate people who walked away with millions and left a mess for the residents and the city to deal with.
Your framing of the residents of high-density housing as not "stakeholders" or "the community" is a common NIMBY talking point, but the condo/apartment dwellers whose humanity you choose to deny are not less deserving of space than you. If the "well-capitalized developers" want to help people like me (who were born too late to own city land) fight for the right to occupy space, I'll take it.
I live 4,000 miles away. My humanity doesn’t require that I have an apartment on 5th Avenue. Instead, I own a home where high quality housing runs around $100/ft.
Fundamentally, the reason you don’t live in Cleveland or Buffalo is that aerospace and other industries left and moved to California 80 years ago, largely because it was cheap to buy an Orange grove. Capital and the investment culture of tech is why SFO is the way it is. Until that changes and Google Omaha starts impacting demand, you are stuck.
Markets are about control. Not fairness, not what is right. If you don’t control the votes, and don’t control the land, you don’t have a stake.
If you prevent wealthy people from buying new homes, they'll just buy old ones instead. This isn't a theoretical concern. In fact, it's precisely what has been happening throughout the SF Bay Area.
What do you mean by your first statement? There are many types of market economies; this one seems to be state-driven (into the ground).
The idea that we just have to wait for the "boom economy" to end for the housing prices to fall to reasonable levels is not backed up by any evidence. Even the dotcom collapse of the oughts and the Great Recession didn't have enough of an effect on Bay Area housing prices [1] to make them affordable. Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence that this isn't a bubble—the demand is driven by well-established tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple that aren't going anywhere.
> The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community.
Speak for yourself. I happen to like those "nasty condo units". In fact, I just bought one in San Francisco (in a building that replaced a disused industrial warehouse) after nearly a decade of saving—which was necessary largely because of NIMBYs driving down supply. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do that, and I fully intend to buck the trend of homeowner-driven NIMBYism and encourage more development in the area so that others in my generation, as well as future generations, can afford to live here.
[1]: https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/annual-trends-overview-san-...
By the by, it's also a grave injustice that I'm not driving a lambo; someone needs to sort that snafu out, because it's not my fault.
Is it injustice that a new CS grad who got a job at Facebook can't afford a place in San Francisco? Not really, plenty of other places to work.
Do I follow you correctly? I have to assume not, because such a notion is an affront to equity, fairness, and progressive principles. I would very much like to know where I erred in following your logic.
I dont care about SF, the best would be for tech to move away from there. It just dont fit in, spacewise. Companies should more to place where they fit.
But I find it funny that the same forum that yap and cry about lack of community or loneliness in every single loosely related topic (and especially when it is possible to blame women not being at home anymore), puts exactly zero value on it when it comes to people who were born in San Francisco and are not one of us.
The parent you complain about here is literally about social ties and community. Newcomers don't have it and young tech people don't really value it, so maybe it would make sense for us to move away. Unless we make it about entering contracts and all that, in which case people who been there first has the same right to make rules they do like.
I value community that is willing to include me. I do not value community that rejects me, especially after I make sincere efforts. Someone else's insular community is irrelevant to my decision-making processes. Generally, I'm content to live and let live, as much as it irks to be excluded because I lack some shibboleth. I know they're not going to start caring about me because I stand with them in solidarity, so I spare myself the effort.
This changes when insular communities seek to leverage their position against my interests and those of my community.
I understand where you're coming from. You see a comment about social ties, community, and cohesion and someone else accusing them of trying to create an aristocracy. It looks spurious, like this joker refuses to care, think, or understand why someone might care about such things.
I see someone looking to legitimize a system of exclusion of my community on supposedly progressive grounds. With the idea being that they can protect their privilege - without ever using the p-word - by encouraging exclusion. I find it hypocritical and distasteful.
I understand why they want to do it. I do. I understand their pain, their sense of loss, their fears for the future. I simply do not agree with what they would do about these.
Sure they do. There is tons of space on the vertical axis that we're choosing not to use.
It doesn't fit in spacewise if everyone needs a detached house and a car.
Where does it follow from those principles that it is in any way fair, equitable, or progressive that people born into a community, with friends, family, and community there, should have to move out because they can't find a good job or afford housing in that community?
Similarly, how does it follow that some other young person should have to completely uproot themselves and move to a strange city just to get a decent-paying job?
"Labor mobility" is for the convenience of capitalists, not workers.
You're absolutely right. That isn't fair or equitable in any way, shape, form, or manner. Forcing people to move isn't fair or equitable.
> Similarly, how does it follow that some other young person should have to completely uproot themselves and move to a strange city just to get a decent-paying job?
You're absolutely right. That isn't fair or equitable in any way, shape, form, or manner. Forcing people to move isn't fair or equitable.
With all that said, don't you think people should have the right to live where they choose? I do. I think it's a basic human right for people to have the ability to emigrate where and when they choose. I think it's unfair and inequitable to stand in the way of this.
Though I understand where some people might otherwise. After all, new people are scary! They might have more/less money, more/less melanin, speak different languages, pray differently, and so on. The urge to exclude The Other is basic, deep-seated, and very human one. I understand that some people have no wish to over come it. They'd rather raise walls than open their arms.
But I'm hoping that the best among us can. Maybe I hope too much.
Restrictive zoning and planning are a price-fixing cartel perpetrated by homeowners. The fact that they do it through the ceremony of local government may change the legal status, but not the ethical status.
* Do you want good teachers for your kids?
* Ever need a nurse at the hospital or at the doctor's office?
* How about police?
* And firefighters?
How are you going to have people like that if you have to earn 300,000 to even afford a home?