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Comment by llbowers | Hacker News Reader

Just some casual observations from someone who doesn't know a lot about city planning, zoning laws, and other things like that but...

I have spent a lot of time in various cities in eastern Asia, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei.

I was always amazed at how much more efficiently space was utilized. Dense, high-rise housing. Smaller apartments for single occupants. Vending machines and convenience stores near ubiquitous so one did not have to go far for basic necessities.

Also, the public transportation was wonderful. Whether subway, taxi, or bus one could get around without any need for a car.

I always wonder why our cities can't be "denser". Perhaps we are too used to our cars and driving everywhere? I'm sure there are a myriad other reasons though.

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I always wonder why our cities can't be "denser". Perhaps we are too used to our cars and driving everywhere?

It's cars. Designing for cars is mutually exclusive to designing for pedestrians. Cars require lots of space, wide roads, parking areas which immediately make it impossible to do quick, effective trips on foot. So, if you design for cars you have to use cars. And if you drive you want more of that space yourself while, if you design for walking, it's quite cumbersome to drive, even in small cars which Europeans like a lot.

There was something similar in the small town era of USA when cars weren't yet everywhere. And that is what people seem to instinctively long for: for example, in movies and TV series you see sets built to depict city squares, narrow streets, and people walking around. Of course, the more realistic picture would be a half-dead city centre while everyone keeps driving to that big box retail park around the nearest highway junction...

Ironically people seem to have a yearning for the time period two eras before where they are. Right as the suburbanized car era was getting started (1930s-1950s), there was a wave of nostalgia for the agrarian past, with homesteads on the prairie and wide open fields. Literature from that era: Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, Gone with the Wind, Grapes of Wrath.

Now we seem to be nostalgic for the urbanized town square with walkable shops and residences above - basically the 1900-1930 time period. Maybe when we're old and feeble we'll get to see our kids pine for the suburbanized developments, green grass lawns, and big-box retailers as they live in their arcologies and have all consumer goods delivered to them through matter-compilers.

Why do you think the arcologies won't have some sort of town square in them just like they'll have some sort of farm on them too?

I live in Mt View, and I can tell you that a rallying cry of anti-development people is "Do you want Mt View to become Tokyo?"

There is a large contingent of people who own single family homes who want to keep things exactly as they are now. They vote in elections. The contingent of people who DO want development largely doesn't live here, so they don't vote. There is no constituency of people who will live here in 10 years when we have higher density!

A quick search indicates Mountain View has a population of 80k and Tokyo has a population of nearly 14 million.

SMH.

FWIW, Tokyo's density is only 3x that of Mt View:

Mt View: 2,300/km2

Tokyo: 6,224.66/km2

Hmm, I would be a bit skeptical of that figure without observing incorporated city limits and how far out they extend. Sometimes population figures include the "metro area" as well.

This is a very good point, as there are western regions of Tokyo that after much lower density than central Tokyo. A good measure may be to look at the density in Minato-ku.

Minato has a population density of 10850/km2, Shinjuku of 18500/km2, Meguro of 18900/km2, and Nakano wins out at 20,700/km2. (Nakano winning surprised me. It's pretty low-rise for Tokyo!)

Wow did not expect Nakano to be so dense. Maybe more apartments compared to the other zones.

And everything I've heard indicates it has remarkably afffordable housing for a big city. A quick search turned up this article, for example:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/lai...

Seems like "becoming Tokyo" would be an improvement. (But I still find the comparison hyperbolic and ridiculous. It sounds like a deluded scare tactic, frankly.)

This is an excellent video on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU

Short answer: a decent house for a family can be had for about $400k in Tokyo and that's considered expensive.

My city (Delft) has about the middle of that: 4500/km2 and both public transport and cars work fine.

To be honest, as a formwr mountain view resident, mountain view also 'works fine'.

Tokyo had population of over milion in 1750, long time before cities became designed for cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_b...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tokyo#Edo_or_Tokuga...

Los Angeles sprawled before it became the center of gravity for the cult of the car. It was like that when people were getting around via street cars and on foot.

Its sprawl is rooted in the logistics of desert development. You had to develop large tracts to cover the costs of the water infrastructure. Without water infrastructure, you weren't going to develop anything.

There are myriad forces that shape given cities. I'm disinclined to accept the notion that our current car cult mentality is inevitable, irreversible, etc. and we can't do anything good anymore "like they used to do."

They should allow single family homes to be turned into 3-4 unit condos. Start there.

You hit it right on the head. MV needs to be a lot denser. But the city council, much like other bay area councils, likes things just the way they are. After all its the supply constraints that have made existing residents rich, why would they want to fix the area's housing problem all by themselves?

> After all its the supply constraints that have made existing residents rich, why would they want to fix the area's housing problem all by themselves?

I hear this argument a lot, but I’m not sure I buy the financial angle. If MV became Tokyo, the land alone in which a single-family home sits would be worth vastly more than it is today.

I legitimately think that they want to continue to live in a detached house with a yard, in a low-density neighborhood, like they have for a long time (or recently bought into).

The ones who have been there for decades don’t feel the increased prices (thanks to prop 13) and the ones who recently moved in are clearly wealthy enough.

Is it that hard to believe that people just don’t want their neighborhoods to change?

I think once we acknowledge that, we can work to preserve that neighborhood feel without dismissing that desire as being a disguised financial interest.

I mean, I think we could probably conclude it's a mix of both. But one way to nearly know for sure would be to observe the turnover of housing supply in that area.

We could conclude that it's a mix of both, but I don't think the financial interest actually works in homeowners' favor.

> But one way to nearly know for sure would be to observe the turnover of housing supply in that area.

Could you describe what you mean? What direction of effect would you expect?

Like you look at what percentage of homes go up for sale in specific neighborhoods. If it's like 20% a year that would be pretty high. If it's 2-3% a year, that's a very stable neighborhood and would imply that folks are hunkering down for the long term there.

That’s not too telling. Introducing skyscrapers would mean units would be priced far less than single family homes are - which would enable large portions of people to enter the market who are locked out right now.

But building skyscrapers would mean more units could be sold, thereby greatly increasing the value of land - as long as demand is there in the lower price ranges.

I'm not sure what this has to do with turnover in specific neighborhoods for determining if folks are voting out expansion "to keep their neighborhoods the same" or "for profit expansion".

Well. People are known to be completely irrational when it comes to economics: minimum wage, welfare, healthcare etc.

I don't see how preserving a neighborhood involves kicking out 350 people.

It doesn’t. That part is just a foul move on Mountain View’s part.

> MV needs to be a lot denser

Why is this necessary? What requirement is satisfied only by increased density?

I could equally say Google needs to stop growing and start moving projects elsewhere.

>The only change that's "needed" is increase in affordable housing to the lower- and middle-class which forms the support fabric without which the town can't exist.

and how are they going to do that without allowing the city to be denser?

Nobody opposes Google's growth because it benefits existing homeowners.

A lot of people in those places live in absolutely tiny places.

Lots of people don't have kitchens you can cook in for instance.

I'm not sure that's relevant unless you're suggesting the cost per square foot is actually the same, which I don't think is true

* Actually, it might be in Hong Kong, but I don't think it's true in the others

> Vending machines and convenience stores near ubiquitous

Yeah that's the last thing people need for a healthy lifestyle.

The Asian cities you mentioned are pretty good for getting around. A lot of other ones are pretty miserable.

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