Comment by tovkal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tovkal | Hacker News Reader

SF is in a similar situation as Barcelona, kind of. SF is 121.4 km2 while BCN is 101.9 km². SF is sea-locked on three sides while BCN is sea-locked on one side and on the other has mountains. As per the map, SF is mainly single-family housing while BCN is mostly multi-family housing (average is 12 homes per building). Population (in 2016) is 870k vs 1.6m.

If all those low density areas in SF were converted to high density, SF could grow a lot and housing issues could be plaited temporally (years?) but after a while it be the same thing, where there's more demand than supply.

Personally, I think having single-family housing inside a city is a waste of space but a city full of 30 story buildings usually is not very pretty. I like the Eixample, were streets are wide and buildings just the right size so there is plenty of sunlight, airflow and all that. Obviously if I were an owner of a single-family home in SF I would be against of converting my quiet, low-density neighborhood into all high-rise.

Tricky problem to solve.

I live on the Peninsula in the Bay Area, SF's suburbs. Recently there has been a huge uptick in apartment building, mostly because Caltrain is building apartments on their land. I rent so I like there is some downward pressure on property prices. However one problem with these apartments blocks is that they make them cheap and they look lame. Nothing like the nice apartments in Italy or France. It's too bad. There should be some big tax break for good architecture.

This. Why do every single new condo building in the bay has to be ugly ?

>There should be some big tax break for good architecture

As much as I would love it if modern builders tried making things look nice again, in practice I think this would just result in glass cube copypasta and beige foam

Yes, the nicest neighbourhoods in the world, in my opinion, are medium density, with a mix of mid-rise density that allows sunlight in while still getting a critical mass of people for services and transit, with some SFH that is nice for families and gets lots of green space in the neighbourhood.

Very tricky. Tourism is still a very big industry in San Francisco. One of the reasons people go there is to see the charming old houses and nice old neighborhoods.

While we think SF would look great if it were like in the Star Trek movies, that would pretty much destroy a large part of what makes San Francisco San Francisco.

Think about that for a moment.

People come to SF to visit the attractions at the high density parts e.g fisherman's wharf, union square, chinatown, ghirardelli square, coit tower, etc.

Look at a standard tourist map of SF: https://www.sftodo.com/sanfrancisco/wp-content/uploads/2018/...

No one comes to SF to visit the vast tracts of suburbia in the sunset: https://goo.gl/maps/p91HMQTcXBQ2

There's a high density apartment right next to the famous Painted Ladies, and tourists still come: https://d2v9y0dukr6mq2.cloudfront.net/video/thumbnail/NYb7kU.... Most people aren't for bulldozing landmarks and genuine historical areas, but rather building on mundane areas like old laundromats: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/2/14/17012606/laundromat-2918-mis....

> One of the reasons people go there is to see the charming old houses and nice old neighborhoods

The vast bulk of SF is probably not of any particular interest, though. Most European cities will have areas of historical interest where buildings are protected, sometimes incredibly strictly (here's a 250 year old 8000sqft house which would require 1.5million renovation to make it habitable, due to strict controls on acceptable renovation methods: https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/homes/georgian-p...). But that doesn't mean that you can't densify anywhere. Areas of historical importance are normally a small fraction of a city.

> charming old houses and nice old neighborhoods.

No one comes to outer Richmond, Sunset, or Parkside for the "charming old houses". It's mostly single-family sprawl.

The funny part is there are 6-10 story apartment buildings in Sunset that are illegal to build under current code. Doesn't seem to be "ruining" the neighborhood.

I think this tourist map[1] brilliantly depicts what parts most tourists actually stick to, by shrinking the western parts of the city on the map.

There are very few tourists in the vast majority of the Richmond and Sunset, except near the water and Golden Gate Park (around the museums). Also, there are very few tourists south of Bernal Heights Park.

[1] http://baycityguide.com/media/San-Francisco-Map.pdf

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