San Francisco would be a much better city with twice the population

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/san_francisco_housing_policy_it_would_be_a_better_city_if_twice_as_many.html

by jseliger • 12 years ago

47 18 12 years ago

slate.com

MrZongle2• 12 years ago

Boy, if there's one thing I always find myself saying when I visit a big city, it's "hey, this is nice but you know what it needs? More people."

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

Well, then you definitely won't be saying that if you visit SF, because it's not a very big city (less than 850k people).

coderzach• 12 years ago

The population density, and the proximity to other people that it affords, is the primary benefit of big cities. The high density of entertainment, restaurants, companies, etc, is only possible because of the high population density. If you want more of the benefits of a big city, increase the population density. Otherwise, you can get a compound in Montana on the cheap, and you don't have to deal with any of those pesky people.

jseliger• 12 years ago

Boy, if there's one thing I always find myself saying when I visit a big city, it's "hey, this is nice but you know what it needs? More people."

You're being sarcastic but it's actually true, per Triumph of the City (http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...)

jmromer2• 12 years ago

But no one ever seems to consider that there might be a point of diminishing returns to density. Or, even if they do recognize the possibility somewhere in the back of their minds, they assume their understanding of returns is the transcendentally true one.

01Michael103• 12 years ago

Was the idea of this article really to make SF more crappy (and more like other big cities) so then it would be less desirable by higher income people which would drive rent prices down?

01Michael103• 12 years ago

I am not sure why my comment was down voted but guess I should expound on my flip comment more...

Increased population density for cities and less sprawl is something I generally agree with but not so much for SF. It's a very unique city with few issues and apparently the people who live there can afford the rents. I think creating high rise residential buildings and doubling the population would ruin that city.

Now, Buffalo (pop. little over 400,000) on the other hand, where I live could really benefit from increased population density. We have been destroyed by suburban sprawl over the years which has resulted in unnecessary higher taxes for everyone and other issues.

Humjob• 12 years ago

Of course Slate would write an article like this.

The site was always liberal, but it used to represent a sort of rational leftism. In recent years it's churned out increasingly deranged and self-parodying social justice warrior-esque articles, to the point where Marx himself would call them a bunch of dirty commies.

comicjk• 12 years ago

Check before you comment. The writer is a conservative; his other recent articles include a description of a tea-party utopia ("Teatopia"), an argument that the US should never have pulled out of Iraq, and a critique of NYC making it easier to get welfare. Furthermore, the article is just proposing a market-based solution to high rents: increase supply.

davidgerard• 12 years ago

With an irrelevant dig at minimum wage thrown in as a bonus "not as bad as" argument.

01Michael103• 12 years ago

Of course we had a liberal bashing rant posted since the article didn't criticize Obama, say global warming is wrong, or plead for Sarah Palin to run for Senate. Geez...

jacobolus• 12 years ago

There are some parts of SF which have enough people already (the quirky Victorian buildings are for the most part just fine), and some parts where buildings are larger than I wish they were. But there are also various big areas full of abandoned industrial buildings, parking lots, very low density residential neighborhoods, etc., some of which have pretty shitty access to transit, so everyone needs a car and a garage.

If transit were better around the city (more subway lines, more frequent trains, more express buses), I think there are big areas of the city that could support substantially more people while remaining very pleasant. (But massive high-rises suck. We don’t need those. I’m thinking mixed-use, 3–6 stories here, to replace the current 1–2 story buildings.)

I also think the city could use a lot more 600–1500 sq. ft. apartments without dedicated parking spots, if transit were better and if the streets were a bit more bike friendly.

* * *

Better density in cities along the peninsula and in the east bay, plus improved transit infrastructure in those places, would also be a big help for the whole region. Replacing the Caltrain with something less shitty would be wonderful (though this is pretty unlikely).

justizin• 12 years ago

Caltrain was actually intended to be upgraded as part of a high-speed rail project, but people in peninsular suburbs opposed the upgrade because they feared it would devalue their homes which double in value every decade or something like that.

Further, it has been massively defunded because the largest peninsula employers send their employees on the dirtiest, most disruptive, private means of transit rather than participating in and funding regional transit expansion. A couple years ago something like 1/3 of the caltrain stops were shuttered, and today I hear from friends who ride it that it is bursting at the seams and people are often turned away from boarding trains that are too full.

The peninsula needs to urbanize if peninsula businesses want to attract young talent who want to live in urban areas, but the suburban residents are happy to approve office developments while opposing further housing development.

When people talk about building being restricted in SF, what they don't know is that they're talking about building being restricted on the peninsula.

Also, while there are some areas of SF which have larger homes (hey, some people have kids and do not want to raise them in a studio) and room for cars, even if you presented a very strong argument and accompanying civil planning to further urbanize these areas, in a city where everyone is basically hanging onto their housing by a thread, is your proposal to evict the entire Excelsior and Outer Sunset in order to undertake this change?

Yes, it would be easier to design SF from scratch with no regard for its' current or past residents, but even if you could do this, do you think you could retain demand for housing in san francisco long enough to complete any of this construction?

malandrew2• 12 years ago

    "600–1500 sq. ft. apartments without dedicated parking 
    spots"

It really depends on how many rooms are in apartments that size. A 1500ft apartment with 1 or 2 bedroom is huge. Even with two bedrooms, that's a lot of space per person. I'm in a 1,061 square foot 2-bed, 2-full bath new construction in the city, and it's very spacious for a city experiencing a housing crisis. This building probably could have had 10% more units with no real impact on quality of life for anyone living here.

For the past 30 years, housing space per occupant in new constructions has grown 50%. That is an unsustainable growth in living space in places that don't have room to grow. Unfortunately because SF has gotten so out of control, the only types of units being built now are luxury apartments that house fewer people than could have been comfortably housed on the same parcel of land, even before you factor in absurdities like very low height restrictions and minimum parking mandates.

mturmon• 12 years ago

I have been reading the fantastic summer issue of Boom magazine, which is dedicated to the San Francisco housing conundrum. Boom is a small, high quality journal put out by UC Press, and they really killed it on this issue. (http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2014/06/summer-2014/)

They have articles from both pro-growth and anti-growth people, including Rebecca Solnit, whose piece on Google buses in the February LRB really touched a nerve.

mateo411• 12 years ago

This is the best article I've found this year regarding housing in SF.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

San Francisco would be a much better city with twice the population

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