California, and the US, shouldn’t be afraid of density and upzoning
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My experience has been that it's a bunch of factions who can't/won't work together toward a common good.
Until that changes, you can create all the smart, rational, reasonable, fact-based, win-win proposals you want, but they aren't going to happen if people aren't even trying to cooperate.
I’ve lived in NYC and in the country. You can’t simply increase housing density and have it work. You have to learn different ways to interact with people. You have to create shared transportation and parks infrastructure. And you have to admit there are trade offs.
You do lose a lot when moving toward very high density cities. The night sky. Quiet. Calmness. Yards.
I'd also posit that the culture changes follow, and are directed by, the density. That's my speculation though.
There's no night sky in any suburb though ?
Also, go to Terry's for breakfast in the city.
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I think we can handle a style of city that's already pretty common throughout the world.
Its doubling and quadrupling (even 10x) the number of housing units that is really needed and that affects everything - more cars, more schoolkids, more water, more trash, more crowds.
This right here is the root problem. If you increase housing density in America, everyone expects a place to put their car, and to be able to use a car to get around, so you don't improve stuff that much. We need to get rid of cars altogether as a primary people-mover; then you can really build things closer together, and not have to waste so much space on parking lots.
Trash and water aren't problems; they don't take up a lot of space, though you do need a source of freshwater to supply the city, but unless you're in the desert that shouldn't be that big a problem. Schoolkids aren't a big problem in urban areas: people aren't having kids any more.
Dense housing is the start of making it more inconvenient. Then, once owning a car is less convenient than other modes of transit, will we see alternatives that are better for those areas.
If you're 10x the number of housing units, there will be less cars though.
We have serious problems with people living in RVs taking over entire streets. They don't just live in the RVs quietly. They spread their stuff (furniture, garbage, sometimes large collections of stolen goods) all over the street. They harass nearby businesses and homeowners. They park in ways that are not just technically illegal, but dangerous to drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Crime has gone up in nearby areas. I'm not saying RV people are all responsible for the crimes, but I'm aware of several instances where the crimes have been committed by the RV people. They're not all homeless, either. Many of them own homes in the East Bay or further afield and just do a week long commute to their $100K+ peninsula jobs.
Single family houses are housing 6-10 adults. Their cars are all over the streets. Some neighborhoods are can barely be navigated, and its dangerous for driver and pedestrian alike.
We'd all be better off if there were affordable apartments (with parking garages) for people to live in. We'd see an increase in city revenue. We'd reclaim our streets. We'd have a cleaner city. We'd have fewer accidents and safer walks. We'd no longer have city council members hiding behind 'compassion' when it comes to removing the RVs.
Yet every single development is opposed.
"It will make traffic worse." Not conceivably possible. Every development includes requirements of $$ to improve nearby streets and appropriate parking. Parking has gotten so much easier since one major development included public parking. (One guy argued that the amount of money a business was willing to offer wasn't enough to fix a problem area. As if it is not the responsibility of the city, county, and state to fix the existing problem. Or as if $X million is worse than $0 million for fixing a problem we already have.)
"That area is already a mess!" Yes. It is. That's why it needs to be improved.
"It only adds X homes!" X is better than zero. They're also generally trying to add them near downtown and public transport.
"It will bring more people to the area!" I don't have the numbers on this, but I suspect this is largely a red herring. Anecdotally, several of my friends have left the area, many still live with their parents after graduating, and my girlfriend wants to leave.
"They're only building luxury apartments!" So? It means more houses. It means all the houses get more affordable because supply is trying to meet demand.
"But the town will be so different!" Different than when you grew up in 1965? It's already different. And it's trash. It'll be different from now and it will be better because it will actually be meeting our needs.
"But my property values!" Just kidding. No one ever says this, but they all mean it.
My observation is that it absolutely does change the character of a neighborhood. Whether that change is bad, neutral, or good depends entirely on what sort of character you prefer. But there's no getting around the fact that greater density means that the area will be very different.
Personally, none of this scares me. I consider it unfortunate, but it's also probably inevitable.
Talking about being "afraid of density" shifts the argument and action away from progress. The discussion should be that *we should try to avoid density" and we're failing at that.
We need:
1) Faster and more efficient travel to/from hubs.
2) Organizations to embrace remote work.
I think that's more of a side effect of a population increase. Though as we've seen over the past few decades, the most advanced societies tend to have a decrease in birth rates after a certain point. I don't think we should be striving to turn the entire Earth into Kowloon.
Oh of course not, that's an absolutely extreme example.
Yes, advanced societies tend to have a decrease in birth rates. Yet, they still keep getting denser, as people move to cities. Density, if done thoughtfully, can lead to increased economic output, better health, better environmental outcomes, less traffic (holding population constant, anyways), etc.
I don't think so.
Cities are much more efficient for the masses.
If you have 20 people that all evenly dispersed within 20 square miles, or 20 people within a square mile, more progress can be made in the square mile.
Right now density is as you describe > a metric for progress. But that's old fashioned. Living in a $3,000 closet in SF or NYC in a building with 100 other closets shouldn't have to be a near-requirement to work for an exciting company or enjoy your time off in an exciting place.
I like to think this modern world has enough intelligence to improve our antiquated and slow modes of transportation. We've done it for communication.
Right now it's too costly to blanket a city with public transportation, for example, because the density isn't there. The same issue happened when electricity was invented, and when the telephone was invented - to build the infrastructure in less dense areas, the taxpayer had to subsidize.
Houston and LA have worse air quality and worse traffic than NYC does, despite having less than half the population. Yes, NYC and SF are very expensive, and they also happen to have very strict zoning laws that prevent the suburbs from adding density.
I think there is a place for dense communities as well as non-dense ones. Different people need and thrive with different environments. Recently the focus on pushing only high-density (usually from the new wave of 'urbanist' blogs) looks to demonize anything that isn't high-density urban, and frankly it feels very us versus them.
Given all that, who benefits when new units are built? The developers obviously make money. The local government gets some mad money to play with. But mostly the real estate finance industry and big multinational corporations.
Economists have run the numbers, the little guy doesn’t benefit at all from efforts to increase the housing supply. It can’t be increased enough to lower prices, it merely expands the speculative market, adding more wealth to the bottom line of the big winners in the game.
Source? I can't imagine this is true given the ridiculous rent that a dwelling commands. Why leave cash on the table?