until people learn how and, more importantly, willing to build good urban space, as a resident of MV (or of SV in general as i lived in other near by cities before) i am even against current 3 story "barracks" being actively built all over the place.
For example, one can build 30 story (plus 10 underground for parking/storage/etc...) towers with enough green space around it instead of covering all available space with the 3 story-s.
Good urban space is mostly about how nice it feels to be on a street. You want a comfortable amount of walking space, destinations that are close together, and that's pretty much it. Surrounding buildings with parks makes walking harder and less pleasant.
There's probably enough demand for taller buildings, but it's illegal.
The Wikipedia article refers to parks surrounding offices ("on the scale he imagined there was no motive during the business day for pedestrian circulation in the office quarter"), and is unclear about what scale the parks are.
For apartment complexes, the towers surrounded by park concept is the standard way to build new apartments in Korea for over a decade now. It works well because the density of residents attract businesses to the outskirts of the park, and in the parks I've seen, they always contain multiple playgrounds, rest areas, sculptures, and exercise equipment for public use. Children play there after school, families gather on weekends, and street markets and street fairs are held in the parks on a regular basis. It is a very efficient use of land to provide both urban density and public space. (Here is a typical apartment complex design: http://image.apt.joinsland.com/contents.upload/1501/1945/bir...)
>Towers surrounded by green space has been tried, with mostly negative results.
on 2D surface the density can be done only by growing into the 3rd dimension. The only issue is how to do it. The ratio between height, footprint and total capacity i think reaches its worst value in the current style of development in the Valley (as a result of developers ripping best value in profit possible inside the municipally imposed limits)
>Surrounding buildings with parks makes walking harder and less pleasant.
as if walking on a concrete sidewalk between 3-story wall and the traffic lanes in the open under CA midday Sun beats it :)
It does beat it. Those walls are full of people. Those people shop. That means there's more demand for nearby destinations. Walking in places where there's stuff nearby is better: it's more interesting, and you'll have a shorter walk to your destination since it's more likely to be close. Spreading people out—even with parks—is a negative. Parks belong in the middle of people, not surrounding them.
The "3-story barracks" you speak of - they're actually the most humane compromise we have. Something that is relatively cost-effective to throw up, but accommodates a decent number of people, and when built throughout a neighborhood will easily pass the critical thresholds for future services. Much of San Francisco is also built to 3 stories, and it's one of the most dense areas in the country. It's a geometry problem, as you point out - but also a cost problem. It's cheaper to have mid-rises everywhere than a few high rises, and people find shorter constructions more humane on average. But the construction height isn't the _only_ thing to worry about.
Land use in suburban areas is mostly premised on maximizing car traffic. That's why we have the big six-lane streets and the huge parking lots with sad, small strips of grass separating everything. If we optimize for maximizing people movement over car movement, the streets get smaller and so do the parking lots; transit and bikes get more accommodation. Room opens up for more destinations, and you get more access at a lower average speed and energy consumption, further improving the land value - all just by changing the design requirements. Traditional cities are very energy-efficient.
For example, one can build 30 story (plus 10 underground for parking/storage/etc...) towers with enough green space around it instead of covering all available space with the 3 story-s.