> “huge apartment buildings … 10 floors”
It’s kind of mind-blowing to remember that what’s the basic residential building standard everywhere else in the world is already “huge” in most American cities.
> “huge apartment buildings … 10 floors”
It’s kind of mind-blowing to remember that what’s the basic residential building standard everywhere else in the world is already “huge” in most American cities.
People in the city I live refuse to allow any buildings over three stories tall.
Weirdly enough, we have a constant housing shortage
I'm not sure this comment is very useful. It is much too generic. Look at most "old cities" (think Hanseatic era) in Western Europe. Over 10 floors is a huge residential building in central, old areas. Residential buildings in the central arrondissements in Paris are rarely more than 5-6 floors. Same for London. Same for Hamburg. Same for Amsterdam.
The only place in San Francisco that has many residential buildings more than 3-4 floors and is building more/new is SoMa (South of Market) and Rincon Hill. (I have not lived there for 10+ years, so please correct me if I am wrong.) Sure there are some odd ducks in Russian Hill or Nob Hill, but they are from 1960s/70s. Nothing new is built there now, except billionaires doing a tear-down/re-build.
Wild idea: What if we build 4x fifty story apartment blocks on those four blocks that I mentioned at Mission District BART stations? You could do stuff like bottom 3-5 floors are all retail (small biz plus chains), then next 30 floors are middle class housing, and the upper floors are unlimited for the rich. I think it would be a good mix. The hardest part of the build might be creating enough car parking spots for the luxury units at the top. We might need to do something bizarre/exotic underground, or buy adjacent lots to tear-down for a multi-story parking lot. To be clear: I am not excited about building new parking garages in 2020s in urban San Francisco, but it is a reasonable compromise for selling luxury units at the top of the tower. All together, this mega project could be easily a 1B USD build. Another bonus: One floor in one tower near the top could be reserved as an observation deck/floor. That would be very cool, like a modern Coit Tower for the 2020s.
Might you have trouble digging the foundation for such a tall building directly over the existing platform and tunnels?
Good point. The platforms and tunnels are only under Mission Street.
SF is not much of a city
It is one of the most dense cities in the United States.
It contains one of the most dense, and smallest cities. Most is low density housing.
So is New York City. See Brookln, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. This comment doesn't say much. When people talk about density in SF, they are talking about the northeast quadrant. That is some of the most dense urban residential areas in the United States.
And LA is more dense than NYC
But the absolute size matters. The actual “city like” part of SF is really small.
Where do you draw the boundaries or LA and NYC? This is imporant to test your hypothesis.
The city boundaries, which I admit is kind of arbitrary/weird for LA (city). If you include the county, or MSA it's obviously way less dense.
What bothers me the most is how so many Americans seem to have this irrational fear of cities. They think they are more dangerous, dirty, difficult, etc than they really are, by a wide margin. And they vastly under-estimate the amenities and quality of life they bring, along with the extent to which they make all of the wealth of the country even possible.
They wring their hands and complain that allowing more building will turn their city into NYC, which is just crazy on the face of it.
Look, I've visited NYC and there's a lot of nice things, such as mass transit that basically works, food options everywhere, etc. I liked it more than I expected I would.
But there's not a lot of peacefulness. There's certainly not peacefulness outside my bedroom windows anywhere I could afford to live. Sleeping with windows open and waking to birdsong rather than traffic sounds is quality of life for me.
You don't have to live in a city if you don't want to. In Japan you can choose if you want to live in the countryside or in the smack middle of Osaka.
Yeah, cars are the #1 of quality of life problem in cities.
Honestly a lot of arguments will be settled if the posters location was known. Culture influences a lot of wrong opinions.
Brooklyn is more dense than San Francisco proper though.
The United States is an extremely unpopulated country, though. This shows up as a policy distortion in all kinds of surprising places.
And Paris.