Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

California infrastructure was originally scaled for around 20m people. There are currently currently around 40m people and rising living in the state. There are huge cyclical environmental events - periods of drought, wildfires, torrential rain and flooding (the entire central valley flooded in 1892, killing 40k people, bankrupting the state and wiping out housing, cattle and crops). We have a mediocre electric grid that fails if any of the above environmental events happen. We allow 95% of rain water to flow into the ocean then promote panic about global warming when the inadequate reservoirs are depleted in dry spells.

Attempts were made to verticalize housing in the 1970's bay area, with predictable results from building life cycles such as Geneva towers in San Francisco. https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Remembrance_of_Genev...

We don't need to pack people like sardines into metropolitan areas any more. We need to create smaller, more human living spaces closer to resources. There is so much undeveloped land in the state but we are wrecking historically important locations instead of thinking new development. The YIYBY activists are obsessed with existing cities, they are rooted in the past.

You want more sprawl? Sprawl that puts people farther away from the job centers and requires the state to build brand new expensive infrastructure in all of these places rather than benefitting from existing infrastructure. Look at how much it less costs to maintain infrastructure in denser settings compared to single family home suburbs. Not to mention if you have more sprawl you are potentially putting people in the way of the wildfires as they push into the forests. And then there are all the other environmental problems that come with sprawl...

We have the engineering knowhow to be able to build taller buildings, that can withstand earthquakes, and it has definitely improved since the 70s.

New towns and cities. Sprawl is last century thinking based on commuter xurbs etc. People should be able to chose to live in new 15 minute towns, historic metropolises or rurally.

Infrastructure is not frozen in amber. It's honestly attitudes like these in the comment above that are the most corrosive to US as a nation. This is a sick disease that has taken root in the American mind, and I don't know what's the cure.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-build-nothing-country

Add the new SF Muni line to the list of insanely expensive projects https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/muni-central-subway-1...

Couple of typing errors on my post earlier: flood was 1862 not 1892, and 4k died not 40k. I didn't mention that the 1860's also had 2 major earthquakes, a drought and wildfires.

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