Dumb rules prevent Silicon Valley from building needed houses and offices

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html/

by jseliger • 14 years ago

79 67 14 years ago

slate.com

medusa6662• 14 years ago

Google "urban planning." The "dumb rules" may not be convenient for you or me in the short run, but they exist for a reason: water, sewage, traffic, pollution, supporting a sustainable quality of living for the long term.

I don't have the answer - and I notice that you don't really offer one - but I know that the answer is not to throw out all our laws in a short-sighted imitation of some polluted Chinese metropolis.

jseliger4• 14 years ago

they exist for a reason: water, sewage, traffic, pollution

Not really. See Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City, Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High, and Ryan Avent's The Gated City for more; pay particularly close attention to the sections about how urban life tends to be far more sustainable than alternatives.

steventruong• 14 years ago

I got these books simply because of this recommendation. Will check them out, thanks.

medusa6662• 14 years ago

Hey, I (much) prefer urban life. Starting from the ground up, I wish they'd built Palo Alto and Menlo Park to be real cities. I wish I lived in a city with a real subway, and the people density to support it. And women.

But all that's not the same thing as adding skyscrapers today's mid-Peninsula. Most of these responses are coming from an idealistic blank-sheet mindset. In the real world, we don't have the option to start from scratch.

otterley3• 14 years ago

There are plenty of examples of cities that are prosperous, clean, and not stifled by pollution: Montreal, London, Paris, Zurich, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Sydney to name a few.

zalew• 14 years ago

Munich is the most polluted German city, also, fun fact, city with the slowest average speed in EU (at least some time ago) because of traffic jams.

maurits• 14 years ago

Zurich (and Geneve for that matter) consistently lead the list for the most expensive places on earth to live in not to mention that it is damn near impossible to find a place to live. Geneve's rental market currently has less than 2 promille vacancies.

shin_lao3• 14 years ago

All of these cities you list are actually stifled by pollution and are (very) far from being clean. I happen to live in one of those and visit regularly others in the list.

The problem is far from being solved. However, it's true that the pollution per inhabitant is much lower than in the Silicon Valley.

jbm2• 14 years ago

Montreal is a dying metropolis, with very high taxes, Greece-style debt and an out-of-touch central bureaucracy that is more interested in culture wars than good management. Former premiere Lucien Bouchard mentioned that he was "shocked" when bankers threatened to cut Quebec's bond rating; the idea of deficit spending was so entrenched that the idea of it having a negative impact was seen as laughable. Wall to wall graffiti (and not attractive graffiti) are the hallmarks of the town, as are the poorly built roads and collapsing overpasses.

I left Montreal to go to "30 year recession" Japan and the difference is night and day. I don't believe in the future of Japan, but I am even more skeptical of Quebec's. Bringing it up as a success story makes me doubt your comment, eventhough I strongly want to believe what you said.

spot• 14 years ago

don't forget NYC which also has a huge tech scene.

jellicle• 14 years ago

One thing that all those cities have in common is extensive zoning regulations.

willyt• 14 years ago

London has a massive affordable housing shortage. London councils are moving tenants to other cities because of new government limits on state aid for rent payments[1] Earning £35K, expect to spend about 2/3rds of your salary on rent. A 1 or 2 bedroom flat in a 'normal' part of town will cost you at least £1300/$2000 per month. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/24/tory-westminst...

excuse-me• 14 years ago

Unfortunately these cities are part of the reason for the current problem.

You had poor people living in rookeries and tenements up against the wall of the smoke and pollution belching dark satanic mills. So philanthropic reforming politicians introduced zoning laws to separate industry and housing and move all the people out to fresh air of the suburbs.

100 years later it's not too much of an issue to have your air-conditioned condo tower in the same zip code as your air conditioned office tower - but the rules still apply.

The downtown core here is ringed with self-store, car lots, freight terminals and other low rent low density industry. While the area around every suburban transit station is ringed by condo towers.

But you can't build in the industrial zone around downtown because of planning rules and taxes. Amazingly you pay 20% tax to build on a brown field site and nothing to bulldoze trees in the suburbs.

shin_lao3• 14 years ago

No silver bullet, however with high density it's possible to find solutions for traffic and sewage more easily.

For water, the problem is the same.

ChrisLTD• 14 years ago

It's not a binary situation. There is a medium between the high rises of Manhattan and the large single family homes of the suburbs.

More to your point, dense cities can be much more sustainable than suburbs. Money spent on infrastructure benefits more people. People living in apartment buildings use less energy for heating and cooling. Commuting doesn't necessarily require a car so you use less fossil fuels.

gibsonf1• 14 years ago

Actually, they are "dumb" rules designed to create suburban sprawl. There is a new movement to create pedestrian friendly neighborhoods with higher density at transit nodes: SmartCode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartCode

phamilton• 14 years ago

They compare the growth in Detroit as though Silicon Valley were missing out. I for one wouldn't live in Detroit today.

jakozaur• 14 years ago

Maybe instead of getting rid of rules, lets find a better ones?

ianrandall• 14 years ago

I live in Sydney & for a city of over 4.6 million people, most residents would consider it a great place to live, with great entertainment & night life, good public transport, low unemployment, good schools & recreation facilities. That being said we also have a housing rental shortage that keeps rents high, some pollution problems, seriously bad crime statistics and horrendous traffic conjestion in many parts of the city. Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world and like Canada most of our population lives in a narrow 100km band (in our case from the coast). Most parts of the world are livable if you find your urban village. If you are not in a village the lifestyle is crap, if you are in the village, life is great.

narrator• 14 years ago

The anti-growth stuff is so that when the inevitable bust comes the whole place doesn't clear out and turn into Detroit.

Las Vegas is a great recent example of too much over-optimistic growth being followed by a devastating bust and urban decay.

woodpanel• 14 years ago

Sure, the Valley won't Detroit-enize. But that doesn't mean that decay isn't at work already. Zoning like that mentioned in the article leads to

1) urban sprawl, which means

2) more land being used inefficently (wasted) and

3) more hours of life commuting (wasted), which leads to

4) more need for cars, leading to

5) more hours in congestion (wasted)

6) poorer people getting the worst of those points above, making

7) building public transport even more political feasable, while

8) public transport is the least efficient in low-density areas (wasted)

One could say that the decay of Detroit is at least contained in terms of space. Also, just because a bust is to be expected, it doesn't mean that people should be deprived of Jobs that never come to existance due to handicapped growth.

roc• 14 years ago

The emptying out of Detroit is contained almost entirely within the low-density residential neighborhoods. The downtown area stubbornly clings on in large part because density makes it easier to serve with new business and core infrastructure.

Low density is what made the emptying so contagious and the costs so unsustainable. Low density requires continual growth to pay for the long utility runs and the long service routes for everything from busses to police patrols to trash pickup. And because service erodes as buildings empty, more buildings empty. And when the remaining 20 or 30% of your population is scattered, it's very hard to introduce new businesses or retrench old ones to serve them. The erosion is almost impossible to contain without Flint-style abandoning of large swaths of area and relocation programs for anyone who remains. (Detroit has been trying similar, but it's expensive and slow.)

I don't know much about SF and the valley and I'll refrain from commenting there. But you guys know demonstrably nothing about Detroit and you may want to follow the example.

slantyyz• 14 years ago

I was thinking that Silicon Valley's problems could become an opportunity for places like Detroit.

Of course, it takes money to attract new people to a city, but I think it can be done if the cost of doing business (i.e., cheap office space, business taxes, access to skilled labor, etc.) is attractive.

lcargill992• 14 years ago

I would actually call it an emphasis on the appearance" of growth without doing the heavy lifting necessary to have real* growth.

underwater2• 14 years ago

Silicon Valley should be conservative in its growth to miigate the damage from potential downturns? Do you not see the irony in that statement?

otterley3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I follow your analogy. Las Vegas is a case of suburban boom and bust, not urban conversion. If anything, Downtown Vegas and The Strip continue to do quite well.

jandrewrogers• 14 years ago

Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction. The government won't issue permits. The unsurprising result is that it has a really bad case of suburban sprawl, constrained by geological boundaries. Unfortunately, this means that even if you don't want to live in suburban sprawl and commute a long distance, it is pretty much mandatory in Silicon Valley because the city planners have essentially outlawed all other arrangements.

The insanity runs deeper when matched to their obsession with having more people use public transit. Public transit doesn't work in a low-density suburb larger than some states in New England. In typical fashion, the left-hand bans all development that would allow public transit to be usable and the right-hand insists that people should stop driving and take public transit. This is just one example; Silicon Valley is full of fundamentally inconsistent bureaucratic mandates.

This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government. In some cases, it is entrenched special interests demanding these things; the sum of these policies may be insane but the politicians do not care as long as the special interests are happy.

rwmj• 14 years ago

Isn't this, in fact, democracy at work? The older people who already live there, and vote in greater numbers than the young, don't want the development, and the politicians merely reflect that.

sneak5• 14 years ago

> This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this amazingly focused and insightful comment you've written.

mahyarm2• 14 years ago

I too agree. I finally understood when I moved here why americans have a streak in them that dislikes government. It's because theirs can be so bad and huge sometimes.

dcreemer• 14 years ago

Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data? Are you involved in a local Bay Area government? Are you working to change the things you don't like?

The article, and this response is very frustrating to me. The notion that the government is broken and that our policies are insane and that politicians don't care just does not match my personal experience. Yes, there are many, many problems -- from the garden variety to the wickedly complex. I can however comfortably say that Palo Alto is generally run by decent, intelligent people responsible to an engaged, accessible city council.

Available and affordable housing for example, is and has been part of the city plan, done in coordination with the Association of Bay Area Governments[1], who develop regional growth projections and plans[2] that cities are required to incorporate into their general plans. These plans are created in concert with regional transportation, environmental, etc. plans. How the growth is managed within each city is up to the city of course -- and that's where the NIMBY and rich vs. poor issues are played out on the ground. I find it absolutely challenging and amazing to see (and be part of) the balancing of the various factors to actually govern. There are winners and losers in every decision, and it's important to remember that we're not playing a one-round, zero-sum game.

I can't say anything about the state and federal governments -- but it's easy to get involved and make a contribution at the city level, and absolutely will be enlightening. The first step in conquering the "denial of reality" problem you complain about seems to me to be understanding how cities actually work, and then working to make some constructive improvements.

  [1] http://www.abag.ca.gov/housing-top.html
  [2] http://www.abag.ca.gov/planning/pdfs/SFHousingNeedsPlan.pdf [PDF]

jseliger4• 14 years ago

Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data?

Read the original article. Edward Glaeser also discusses Silicon Valley in his book The Triumph of the City.

otterley3• 14 years ago

That the city council is comprised of nice people is irrelevant. What matters is how they vote. And city councils in wealthy suburban neighborhoods have an extremely reliable track record of preserving the status quo in terms of urban development in order to protect the property values (dressed as "quality of life") of the existing residents.

Here's my suggestion for constructive improvement: Ignore existing residents' concerns about "quality of life" and allow builders to construct high-density housing. This will have the effect of increasing housing stock and making housing more affordable, without having to regulate affordable housing in special cases that almost always end up pleasing nobody.

surrealize• 14 years ago

The zoning, height limits, floor area ratio limits, etc. in various cities are the substantiation of the claim. Also, the (brutally obvious) fact that housing is ridiculously expensive here.

Some city plans include provisions for some affordable housing, but that misses the point of the article. The point is about housing supply: creating a few units of "affordable" housing and requiring them to be sold below market to income-qualified people doesn't address the supply problem at all. It just changes the distributional effects of the supply problem a tiny bit.

The claim is not that politicians are stupid, exactly, it's that bay area incumbent residents, collectively, have made stupid land-use decisions. As long as you own real estate here, and the value of your home keeps going up, why would you complain? You'd only have a problem if you were trying to move here, or if you're trying to recruit here, or if you have the imagination to see all the increased economic activity that would occur if the housing supply problem was solved. And most residents don't have the ability to see that.

lisper• 14 years ago

These "dumb rules" are one of the main reasons that, by some people's quality metric, the Valley is such a great place to live (if you can afford it, of course). Oakland, San Jose (at least the downtown area), and San Francisco all have pretty high density. Some people like cities, but I think most people would prefer, all else being equal, to live in Portola Valley or Woodside.

underwater2• 14 years ago

Being a nice place to live is a luxury that the rich enjoy and everyone else suffers for. Silicon Valley is the biggest tech hub in the world and home to billions of dollars worth of industry. Zoning should reflect that, rather than the whims of the lucky few who can afford to buy into the current inflated market.

jseliger4• 14 years ago

by some people's quality metric, the Valley is such a great place to live

And, by other people's, it's a terrible place to live because you have to drive everywhere. As "The Soul of the Commuter" describes, driving makes people unhappier in almost every possible way: more socially isolated, fatter, and less connected to their communities: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... .

quatrevingts• 14 years ago

Low density suburbia is what makes the Valley appealing? You can get that anywhere in America for a fraction of the price. What distinguishes the Valley is obviously its status as a tech hub. And most people may prefer to live in a mansion on the hills, surrounded by other rich people, just like most people would like to live in the Hearst Castle. But back in reality, people are choosing between a 1000 sq.ft. million dollar house in the Valley, and an hour long commute to something more affordable. The people who like the status quo are frequently those who bought a house in the 90's or earlier and saw a 500% return on their 10x leveraged investment, and don't want to see that price drop even a little. But even they complain about traffic.

unim• 14 years ago

Here's a smart idea : Build homes and offices elsewhere in the U.S. I never understood the constant swimming against the tide in the Valley. Expand elsewhere... It's becoming uncomfortable and unreasonable for a great deal of people. On a grand scale this is bad for the U.S : > More expensive to hire people here > More concentration of wealth ... > Wealth gets pissed away into the inflated shoebox called Silicon Valley.

Think outside the box .. but the nature of the valley is that everyone thinks inside it .. Go figure.

After some observations, A visiting friend commented : You have some of the highest paid/intelligent people in the U.S located here yet they live no better than the garbage man in other states... I don't know if this is incredibly stupid or smart.

eschaton• 14 years ago

Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.

I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy. Manhattan's finance, creative and ad industries do, as with other financial and creative centers. Hollywood is Hollywood for similar reasons as well.

Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements. This is fairly unique in the United States, and is the very first thing any region needs to address in trying to become "another Silicon Valley" but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.

michaelochurch2• 14 years ago

Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.

Yes, and it's not physical density but time-to-get-there that matters. That said, it's impossible to provide the latter without either (a) making living arrangements more dense, or (b) providing an efficient rapid-transit infrastructure, which usually leads to urbanization.

Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements.

Bingo.

but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.

I agree. That's bizarre but quite interesting, because kowtowing to employers on microgripes means they miss out on something far more important (to their long-term interest) than whether they can enforce noncompetes: whether they can find talent at all.

RyanMcGreal2• 14 years ago

> I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy.

It certainly did. Unfortunately, the most innovative idea to come out of the autombile industry - the assembly line - had the subsequent effect of destroying innovative learning and thinking on a vast scale. Detroit became a one-industry city and that industry demanded a large, mostly unskilled workforce inimical to the kind of entrepreneurial activity that might otherwise have diversified Detroit's economy.

sneak5• 14 years ago

s/elsewhere in the U\.S\./elsewhere/;

All of the good places to live in the USA are balls-expensive, because there aren't very many of them.

Berlin's great this time of year.

michaelochurch2• 14 years ago

All of the good places to live in the USA are balls-expensive, because there aren't very many of them.

The Upper Midwest (Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor) is great if you can get an interesting job there. The weather isn't as bad as it sounds and the cities themselves are beautiful (although I wouldn't recommend most of the suburbs).

swah• 14 years ago

Its very interesting to see people in each region perceives the other regions. I'm a brazilian, and wouldn't imagine that US has so few good places to live.

larrys• 14 years ago

"All of the good places to live in the USA are balls-expensive"

By "good places" of course you mean places that you've hard about in Berlin, right?

lcargill992• 14 years ago

They tried that - North Dallas was a rising star as a tech magnet. Nortel/Enron/Worldcom ( and dare I say Cisco? ) killed it dead. There's a modest smattering of tech left there, but it's all very weak and thready in pulse. Perhaps also ditto Atlanta. I don't know what is holding Dallas up now.

I won't go to the Valley, and it's been worth it. I'm north of Houston right now. Had a chance at a really compelling Valley gig last year, with an awesome boss and turned it down purely because of location.

We as a culture have traded "making a comfortable living" for "making a killing".

RyanMcGreal2• 14 years ago

Edward Glaeser explores this phenomenon in some depth in his recent book Triumph of the City. Over time, cities that refuse to let the market meet the demand for affordable housing through height/density limits and so on tend to transition from dynamic engines of economic development into exclusive boutiques for the very wealthy.

msellout• 14 years ago

Not the most scientific of books, btw.

crististm• 14 years ago

I don't know about dumb rules but (for a change) he should come and see some properties in my area with practically no space between buildings.

However, 30% of a lot seems small for a high density area.

gavanwoolery• 14 years ago

I suspect I'll be down-voted for saying it, but Silicon Valley does not need housing or offices. People need to move out of SV. Software can be done from anywhere...why bother doing it in an undesirable area? Everything in the Bay Area is overpriced, and most of it is pretty boring. SF certainly is not boring, but it has also turned into a dump (was way cleaner when I was a kid, not sure what happened). And yes, there are VCs outside of SV, believe it or not -- not that proximity to VCs should be a deciding factor of where to base your company.

(For the record, I grew up in the Bay Area, if it matters.)

Dumb rules prevent Silicon Valley from building needed houses and offices

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