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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> Paradise on Earth and home to the nation’s fastest-growing industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming here from much less eco-friendly places.

Are you in agreement with changing zoning laws to accommodate many more high rises e.g in norcal and around the bay? (I'm presuming your location from your bio. Correct me if I'm wrong)

(I live near DC. DC itself has a height restriction that dates back to the building of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo, and I quite wish DC's height restrictions would change at the very least in its residential areas, but people are NIMBYing the heck out of that too)

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I’m in favor of higher density and I’d have no problem tying it to practical mass transit - thus encouraging developers to work to expand mass transit so they can redevelop land to higher density.

Unfortunately countless coastal communities will happily watch their children flee so that they can keep their "beach bungalow vibe" or whatever other delusion they have. Meanwhile we will keep building huge roads and parking lots to accomodate their lifestyle.

My father doesn't live in California, but he's one of those baby boomers that drives me crazy with this kind of crap.

There are no jobs or industry anywhere near where we grew up but people like him make sure that stays a reality and then he has the nerve to complain about how I live so far away. He's the ultimate NIMBY. He and others like him all truly believe that as soon as their house was completed no further changes can ever allow to happen or else it will ruin the landscape. It's not just hypocritical it's outright selfish.

> it's outright selfish.

Yes, but aren't we all to at least some degree? "Self-focused" is perhaps an easier adjective to digest?

The reality is that the boomers dominated politics (local and national) up until now. That starts to change inside this decade. So we are going to see dramatic shifts by 2030 and we will see if that is for the better or the worse.

No need for highrises; just take all the places where 40' single-family houses are allowed, and allow 40' multifamily houses.

Why no need for highrises?

Most of California, even the densest regions like the city of San Francisco, are covered in a sea of single-family houses. This is primarily because in the 1970's, all other kinds of housing were banned. See, for instance, the map at:

http://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/

If we allowed four-story apartment buildings again like we used to, the state's population could easily double in size without even having to raise a single height limit anywhere.

(However, I should mention that I, for one, think six-story apartments are where it's at.)

in LA, the limit in the early 1900s was 13 stories/150’ [0], so many of the older tall-ish buildings in downtown and along the wilshire corridor are a uniform height. it’s quite pleasing actually.

i’d support a bill allowing all mixed-use buildings to be 13 stories/150’ by default, and taller along transit corridors. and all residential to be 4+1 by right, and bigger within 1/2 mile of a transit corridor. CA politicians don’t even let such bills get to vote oftentimes, but vote them down when they do. i’d be down to put them on the ballot as a voter proposition instead.

[0]: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/l-a-s-changing-skyline-a-...

Politics is the art of the possible, and a bill that made those changes is highly unlikely to pass.

San Francisco's state senator Scott Weiner has been leading in he charge. A few good bills have gotten through, but opposition from LA has been a serious hurdle to upzoning.

weiner has gotten a lot of credit at the state level, but no obvious political success. that's why a ballot measure may be the way to go.

and LA isn't the principal opposition, that's broad among the state's landlords and homeowners. let's not let (geographical) divide-and-conquer obscure the goal here.

High rises don't necessarily help much with adding additional population, the real key is consistently higher density being allowed. Barcelona is an absolutely beautiful city with amazing transit and amenities, all without any high rises at all.

Really the key is to ban single unit detached homes, get rid of setbacks, get rid of parking minimums, establish parking maximums, even.

Basically, the entire planning profession has gotten every single thing wrong. Take any limit they have established, and reverse it, IMHO. All that feeder street nonsense has destroyed an entire century's worth of planning.

We don't even need to ban single-family houses; we just need to repeal the laws that ban everything else. People who want to pay extra for SFHs will continue to be able to do so, but crucially, people who want to put something else on their land would be able to as well. Those folks would build enough housing to accommodate at least a doubling of the state population.

Is this really the future you want to live in? I would like there to be a sane tradeoff between density and proximity to the city center.

I stayed in an Airbnb in a central neighborhood in Barcelona (l'Eixample IIRC) and I found it to be pretty cramped quarters. I'm not sure how much difference there is between one apartment building and the next, but I have more space living in San Francisco right now and I still would like to have more. I personally would not like to live in SF if I had to live in housing that small.

I want a garage, I want another room in my apartment, and I want a driveway where I can wash my car. I also want to live in a thriving city with lots of interesting people to meet and things to do. I recognize that these are contradictory desires. I think the latter desire is more healthy for society, but I think there is definitely a reason I feel the former desire. It's because that's how I grew up.

I think that Americans, culturally, value space more than perhaps some other cultures do. I think that trying to fight against that is a losing fight. You will not get any policy passed if you lead with "banning single unit detached homes". That is far and away the most popular housing option in the United States and absolutely what the average American thinks of when they think about "buying" (vs renting). I walk by people living in their modern, rectangular condos big glass windows that let me see everything in their house at once and I cringe - who on earth wants to live in tiny terrarium that costs $4000 a month? Like it or not, most people feel this way about condos. Also like it or not, a lot of people basically think that these are the only two options, because that's all that they've seen.

I think we need to just allow the missing middle. There are people who like high-rise condos, and there are people who like single family homes, and there are probably a lot more people who, when presented with the financial advantages of the middle options, would choose something in between.

What you want is fundamentally incompatible with city living. The best way to scale up the kind of housing you describe is in the suburbs with high speed rail links to the city center.

Not really. I live in a relatively spacious duplex that shares a terrace in with another house that has a garage facing the street. I live a 20 minute bike ride from downtown. How can it be fundamentally incompatible if the house I share the terrace with pretty much ticks all of my boxes? Hell, where I live does too for the most part.

I don’t want to live in the suburbs. I also don’t want to live in a high rise. I think there is a case for something in between.

I think your desired living situation should be allowed, but it shouldn't be subsidized by prohibiting more urban ones. There would still be houses with garages and driveways for carwashing in San Francisco, but there would also be car-free four-story, four-unit apartment buildings in every neighborhood.

Well, yeah. That’s kind of what I mean. There are many kinds of housing options besides single-family home that meet my criteria. My point is that we shouldn’t just ban the single-family home, and arguing that we should seriously jeopardizes the cause of increasing density because it’s a really unpopular proposal.

I don't get it, so you think I don't want to live in a place like Barcelona? Seriously? Of course I do!!

I can understand people having different preferences. What I can not understand is refusing to believe that people don't love living in a place like Barcelona.

> who on earth wants to live in tiny terrarium that costs $4000 a month

Why not ask the people that live there rather than pretending they don't exist or that their desires don't deserve to be allowed? Seriously, this is a strange way to think of other humans, seeing that they are right in front of you but trying desperately to pretend that they are fundamentally fooled, or nonexistent, or don't deserve to exist, or something. People pay waaaaay more than $4000/month for a detached home, and far less than that, but only they exist as people with valid desires, somehow?

I don't think it's clear at all that Americans "culturally value" space more. We have done lots of top-down planning to prevent density, disallowing it in nearly all places. But it's hugely in demand, and far more people want it than we allow to live in it. This despite nearly a century of media, law, and political movements on both the left and right vilifying cities as places of disease, crime, and inherent poverty.

If people didn't want to live in these types of places, why is it necessary to ban them? We should definitely legalize missing middle, but also legalize far more dense walkable urban areas, at least enough of them so that they are cheap to live in rather than the most expensive form of housing.

Much of Paris only allows 4-5 story buildings, but Paris is more dense than NYC where skyscrapers are allowed

Aren't skyscrapers in Manhattan mostly offices and luxury apartments?

I'm ok with taller buildings if we ever finally allow more CLT construction in this state. Our building code is antiquated and silly, and the construction industry itself is probably the least innovative or capable industry in the entire US, which is probably to be expected with the way we've treated it to such awful boom and bust cycles.

CLT=Cross Laminated Timber

https://softwoodlumberboard.org/california-building-standard...

"With this approval, California will adopt the entire series of the ICC approved change proposals for the design of tall wood buildings in California. California will become the fifth state to move forward with early adoption of the 2021 International Building Code"

Yeah. Plus, reducing parking minimum to the sane level will give us back a significant portion of land wasted for 90% of time.

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