SF is kind of neither though. If you spend any time in the city, it definitely feels overstuffed. The houses may be cute and small but they are stuffed with roommates. The city is stuck in nostalgia and ignoring that it's bursting at the seams. It's like wearing clothes that are too small and pretending you are still skinny.
And it lives on a series of incredibly active fault lines. During my undergrad I had multiple geology profs adamantly mention that when not if aspect of this, and on time-scales of 100s of years, not 1000s. YRMV.
My friends in the geological sciences have told me there will be a big earthquake, but it will be capped at around magnitude 8.0; the faults here are not capable of a 9.0. Buildings in SF have been constructed or retrofit for modern earthquake safety by law.
An 8.0 would still cause massive devastation. Even if structures mostly survive there is the threat of fire and tsunami. This antenna tower looks like it is likely to survive though.
And it should be, given that they built the CBD on landfill which has the specific instructions of “do not shake”, since a seemingly solid foundation turns to liquid during an earthquake
The buildings should go somewhere else, on bedrock
Well, I desired and moved to SF exactly because it's the closest thing to a dense urban jungle that I could find in California. I even dream of moving to a denser part of the city one day, once I can reasonably afford it, but those parts are so in demand to be pricier.
sidentoe: If you wanna live out a super dense dream/experience on the cheap, go spend 6 months in Seoul, I lived in Manhattan for 10+ years and still found Seoul pretty intense.
This is why incrementalism is always the best method of development.
Spread out the pain so everyone only suffers a little. Spread out the development across different architectural eras. Spread out density to the point where you have diminishing returns.
The city shouldn't be changed overnight, but the city should be allowed to change an a consistent rate that slowly accelerates. A good example is to allow each building to only double the square footage of the median building within, say, a quarter-mile radius of the property being redeveloped. This means that SFH's can only become duplexes until duplexes are the norm. After that, quad-plexes can be built, and then when that's normal, you start building large, eight-unit, european-style flats.
This allows different areas to grow at different rates, while allowing density to remain generally uniform across neighborhoods. This incentivizes people who very much want low density to have a reasonably, predictably low-density neighborhood to invest in, while giving up the ghost when a piece of land is just to valuable to reasonably keep low density.
It would work, and would work quickly in areas where lots of development is needed.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, this solves for the problem in which someone wants to put a skyscraper in the middle of suburbia. In other words, based on the assumption that developers will always want to build bigger, but the locals don't want that.
Interesting to imagine what this city would look like. If it spread out evenly, you'd get a strange "bowl", with the original SFHs in the center, and high-rises on the periphery.
I guess in reality you wouldn't have such even growth; high rises would still potentially want to clump together for business districts, etc.
As buildings get torn down, you could do the recalculation; each new building can be x% above or below the local building density "slope". So over time, even the SFH areas could grow upwards, just at a slow pace.
There are various ways to do it, but I genuinely think uniform is better. Low density residential likely prefers, and naturally supports, low density retail.
> A good example is to allow each building to only double the square footage of the median building within, say, a quarter-mile radius of the property being redeveloped. This means that SFH's can only become duplexes until duplexes are the norm.
No, it doesn't; existing SFHs can, and have when allowed to, become duplexes, triplexes, and sometimes even quadruplexes without changing square footage at all, with doubling, you can go even further. All it takes is remodeling so that each subdivided unit meets minimum habitability standards (separate access, its own restroom, whatever other facilities are mininally required.)
> This is a general argument assuming units being arbitrary.
Well, no, it doesn't assume units are arbitrary, it assumes units are fixed square footage, which they are not. Under most regulatory schemes, there is a practical minimum size or a habitable unit, but a pre-existing area zoned for detached single-family units exclusively is unlikely to be comprised of single-family units that happen to also be the minimum square footage for a habitable unit.
The same concept, at a minimum, would need to be extended to units. This is what I mean by assuming it’s arbitrary. It’s just redundant to say that, yes, obviously you need an incremental increase in units, sqft’s, footprint, vertical footprint, etc.
It is easy to argue that Manhattan is far more livable than San Francisco due to the layout and highly convenient zoning, even before taking the obvious transportation advantages into account. San Francisco's advantage is the climate and beautiful natural setting.
Considering the advances in seismic technology made over the past fifty years, it is a shame that much faster upgrades to the real estate have not been encouraged.
You're assuming some linear/symmetric relationship, by trying to relate an inverted sign! The more direct question is, are there dense urban jungles that are desirable? A good way to measure that might be comparing where wealthy people live, with the assumption that desire and price are related, locally. Do they live more inner-city, or do they live more in the suburbs at the outskirts?
Could it be not desirable because of single-family homes, but rather because all lucrative and high paying jobs are located here? And it's proximity to the Valley? Also there is much more events and gatherings happen than in the Valley.
Maybe you're right, but we'll never know. It would be great if they allowed some sections to develop so we can test it out. To me it is a desirable location because of the companies, not the lifestyle.
Haha, no, it’s desirable because of geography and things to do. This is proven by the fact that large numbers of people are moving into expensive Mission Bay housing which has no single family homes by it.
Ever wondered if it’s desirable BECAUSE it’s not a dense urban jungle?