or big suburbs without anything in them. Where is the uber, airbnb and doordash for housing?
Buildings are living things that are constantly being changed by their owners too. After 10 years of their being lived in no two cookie-cutter houses will be the same either.
The reason what you want doesn't exist is because it's impossible to scale using technology without rendering these differences moot. The construction industry is doing the best it can by clearcutting every lot and bulldozing the surface features into a set of flat terraced lots and then building houses on that infill. The only thing SV could contribute is capital.
But the city council is pretty incompetent. It is a govt monopoly with no real incentive to be competent.
The zoning laws don’t allow building multi story apartments. The city council drags their feet for years to approve building permits.
People literally shit on the road. Crime is rampant. You’d be driving on the road, glass is smashed and someone takes your bag.
Trains don’t run on time. Some stink. You could spend a million and barely get a shack for a house.
Go to any of the modern Asian or European cities and there is a stark difference. They’re clean, trains run on time, they’re fast, low crime, little homelessness.
California governance is corrupt and incompetent. They earn the most from taxes compared to any other state. This is not a money problem. It is a “things are shit because we want them to stay that way.” problem.
Or, contractors.
I get the feeling residential building doesn't scale well outside of monopolistic competition, partially from red tape, partially from supply constraints/supplier network monopsonies.
but it seems like many programmers in silicon valley enjoy their wooden walls houses with no shops or bars around them just because they go up in value
I live in Portland. I’ve been cornered for my opinion on urbanization, so I’ll give it.
But at least here, many people have black and white opinions. Either you don’t care about the environment or you don‘t care about displacement.
This is why we needed the Green New Deal or Build Back Better. Urbanize, but increase social safety nets, provide rent control…
I don’t claim to know which levers to pull, but we definitely need to pull more than one at once to meet the goals of increasing density without driving people out of their own neighborhoods.
But doesn’t it seem strange that increasing density would increase displacement?
The US has a lot of political barriers to things like the Green New Deal. So when areas are urbanized, those against urbanization can point to the flawed execution and they certainly have a point.
That said, I’d love to see the Green New Deal return.
However apartments because of size quickly get to the point where you cannot build them without already having experience. Banks know that the details are just enough more complex than a small house that they won't risk a loan on someone without experience. Which opens the question: how do you get experience without experience?
Outside of SF and Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, the recent generation of tech workers have not been represented in local politics. As far as I know, none of the supervisors or mayors in recent memory in San Francisco have worked in technology; they typically come from nonprofits, unions, or just landed gentry. It is not young tech workers who refuse to rezone and amend the building code for affordability, it is older homeowners and nonprofit special interests. The Board of Supervisors (the city council) has been rather hostile to tech for the past decade or more.
but at the same time, they spend billions on metaverse stuff no one wants
Nobody tell him.
hypocritical mindset
This is an issue of zoning, therefore local politics, which is complex, specially in DF