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