If only there were some way to put more houses on a given plot of land, perhaps by stacking one on top of another, we could somehow break this dynamic. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco...
The housing prices are rising across the globe - one has to put somewhere all this money sloshing around. So, even to just stabilize the prices, one has to build faster than the money are printed - like Alice in Wonderland where you have to run fast just to stay at the same place.
Basically all that NIMBY vs. YIMBY fights is just 2 poor hobos fighting for a penny and completely distracted with that fight while a nice rich gentleman sells them both to slavery and makes away with the money and all the rest of their possessions.
It definitely won't be one or 2 developments; there has to be a systematic increase in the housing stock. Which is why the latest California plan (which was shot down in committee) to increase the density around mass transit by default was so amazing.
SF is NYC in the making. I know SF folks don't want to change the character of the city but something has to give; its attracting way too many people and we still need affordable housing for middle class folks.
I have only vague idea about Barcelona - quick check shows like it may be on the scale of E5K per square meter (it was $100K per 2-3 bdrm 20 years ago, so 3x-4x today seems reasonable) So you need to have like at least $60K salary - do they have that there?
Again, i'm not against high[er] density. I'm against it being suggested as the panacea for housing affordability crisis - as far as i see it looks like it may even worsen the crisis (at least for some less fortunate people - like relatively affordable low income communities being displaced by upscale new construction like we have happening everywhere in SV).
Please just show where higher density did help to alleviate the affordability crisis. I think even the massively empty apartments in all these massively constructed ghost towers in China aren't falling in prices.
However, if the prices in silicon valley were, say, 30% lower than they are now due to zoning which allowed more housing, would that constitute as evidence? You could still say that the "prices are high, higher density housing doesn't work!" - even if the higher density housing would've decreased prices by non-trivial amounts.
In any case, it's weird to see people objecting to basic supply and demand when it comes to housing.