Where do you see these Bay Area cities in 20 years? (San Jose: rentals, townhome)

[checkup]

about 100,000 more units of housing than today...which is still far from the 1M+ needed to keep up with what would otherwise be the natural population growth of the region and to keep housing prices and rents from continuing to rise at more than twice the inflation rate

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by Dave Coe

It will be interesting to see if San Francisco allows more highrises. There's a lot of opposition from residents and strict zoning. Even SOMA is getting a lot of low rises under construction.

Which is downright stupid. If people were smart they'd realize that by condensing high rises as much as possible in that part of the City, it would take pressure off of the other parts of the City and help preserve much of the rest of the City. Instead, we get these mid rises which add barely any units (all luxury, of course!)... And nothing changes overall in the City.

Frankly, I think we've squandered a giant opportunity with all of this land that's been open to development. Most cities would kill to have the amount of land to be developed that SF has seen open up on the last 10-15 years, and we're still building like we're some quaint midsized town, ignoring reality (and damning us to a future of too much demand).

The same patterns hold true outside of SF... Instead of embracing smart dense developments around public transit hubs (i.e. Bart and Caltrain stations), residents fight tooth and nails to bring these developments down. If only they realized that this type of development could go a long way to reduce overall demands on their town, and would actually encourage preservation outside of the transit areas, maybe they'd see why they're smart. Instead now the demand will be spread out evenly, and their neighborhoods can be affected (especially if we're talking 20 years from now).

[Dave Coe]

Originally Posted by HockeyMac18

Which is downright stupid. If people were smart they'd realize that by condensing high rises as much as possible in that part of the City, it would take pressure off of the other parts of the City and help preserve much of the rest of the City. Instead, we get these mid rises which add barely any units (all luxury, of course!)... And nothing changes overall in the City.

Frankly, I think we've squandered a giant opportunity with all of this land that's been open to development. Most cities would kill to have the amount of land to be developed that SF has seen open up on the last 10-15 years, and we're still building like we're some quaint midsized town, ignoring reality (and damning us to a future of too much demand).

The same patterns hold true outside of SF... Instead of embracing smart dense developments around public transit hubs (i.e. Bart and Caltrain stations), residents fight tooth and nails to bring these developments down. If only they realized that this type of development could go a long way to reduce overall demands on their town, and would actually encourage preservation outside of the transit areas, maybe they'd see why they're smart. Instead now the demand will be spread out evenly, and their neighborhoods can be affected (especially if we're talking 20 years from now).

Most of the city is historic unlike LA there are very few opportunities to build up.

[rah]

Originally Posted by Dave Coe

It will be interesting to see if San Francisco allows more highrises. There's a lot of opposition from residents and strict zoning. Even SOMA is getting a lot of low rises under construction.

There are dozens of high rises currently under construction and approved in SF, and many more proposed. There are a lot of wealthy and powerful NIMBYs who fund anti-development propaganda campaigns that are full of scary-sounding lies and half-truths, that trick a lot of other people into supporting them, and they often get things blocked...but more high rises have been getting built than those that are getting blocked, and more of them are getting built than any time since the 1970s. SF has been in a sustained high rise construction boom for nearly 20 years now (and it's picked up recently), with 60+ highrises built since 1998, after a decade of almost nothing at all...and SF seems to be getting more friendly to them as time progresses. I'm pretty sure that won't suddenly change, and all new high rises won't be blocked.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by Dave Coe

Most of the city is historic unlike LA there are very few opportunities to build up.

Not the parts where they're building high rises, and that was my exact point.

The city is squandering opportunity by building a bunch of tame low/mid rises in the areas that have opened up in the last couple of decades. I'm not suggesting (or advocating) building high rises in the Haight... I'm saying there are things like former parking lots that are being converted to new housing, and SF is being really shortsighted in how to handle these new land openings (i.e. Building small in most cases, and making barely any dent in the total housing need).

Oh well, nothing we can do now, I guess.

[Dave Coe]

Originally Posted by HockeyMac18

Not the parts where they're building high rises, and that was my exact point.

The city is squandering opportunity by building a bunch of tame low/mid rises in the areas that have opened up in the last couple of decades. I'm not suggesting (or advocating) building high rises in the Haight... I'm saying there are things like former parking lots that are being converted to new housing, and SF is being really shortsighted in how to handle these new land openings (i.e. Building small in most cases, and making barely any dent in the total housing need).

Oh well, nothing we can do now, I guess.

That's true but there is a very limited number of parking lots to build on and in many cases like West SOMO they are building low rises.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by Dave Coe

That's true but there is a very limited number of parking lots to build on and in many cases like West SOMO they are building low rises.

Most of the stuff I'm talking about occurred a decade or more in the past. We (as in the city of SF) have lost this opportunity for the majority of "open" land in SF, which is why I speak in the past tense. You're not going to see these somewhat newly-developed low/mid-rises turned into higher rise buildings (as they should have been built) anytime soon.

A great example are the low-rise apartments, such as South Beach Marina Apartments or Bayside village, along the water right by the ballpark. I don't know what person thought 3-4 story buildings would be a good idea in this part of town...but they did it. It's almost like the developers were pretending that they're in some distant suburb? Not sure what happened there.

I get the "character" argument that people make about the majority of SF. I love the fact that most neighborhoods in SF are built at a scale for humans (3-5 stories) - but I don't know what we're trying to preserve in areas like SOMA! We should have double-downed on building as many high rises in that area as possible, which would take pressure off of other areas of town (and allow us to preserve those neighborhoods more easily).

The majority of "open" space you see in SF is pretty much already spoken for in some capacity (either planned or development stages for something). So this is all really a moot point now.

[checkup]

I think SF has a lot more undeveloped or blighted land for development. SOMA after 5th street is largely parking lots, empty lots, dilapedated buildings, etc. Obviously much of Dogpatch and Mission Bay are undeveloped. The area between Mission Bay and Potrero Hill is only starting to build up. Then the whole eastern coast (nearly 1/4 of the city's land area), along Bay View down to Candlestick is mostly blight or undeveloped, with lots of landfill, lots for vehicles and large warehouses, etc.

I never understood those who say that we've run out of room in SF. Even in Fidi, mid-Market (around 5th to 7th) or parts of North Beach close to Fidi there are huge parking/empty lots and gas stations, etc. It amazes me that with rents/prices so high, these spots aren't under construction. This whole city should be a large construction site for the next few years until enough housing and office space gets built to handle demand

[iamfishhead]

Originally Posted by checkup

I think SF has a lot more undeveloped or blighted land for development. SOMA after 5th street is largely parking lots, empty lots, dilapedated buildings, etc. Obviously much of Dogpatch and Mission Bay are undeveloped. The area between Mission Bay and Potrero Hill is only starting to build up. Then the whole eastern coast (nearly 1/4 of the city's land area), along Bay View down to Candlestick is mostly blight or undeveloped, with lots of landfill, lots for vehicles and large warehouses, etc.

I never understood those who say that we've run out of room in SF. Even in Fidi, mid-Market (around 5th to 7th) or parts of North Beach close to Fidi there are huge parking/empty lots and gas stations, etc. It amazes me that with rents/prices so high, these spots aren't under construction. This whole city should be a large construction site for the next few years until enough housing and office space gets built to handle demand

Yeah, having read some city planing documents, the city has realized what you've seen already and are doing just that. Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, and Dogpatch are all zoned for 40-60-80 foot residential or mixed use. A lot of the corridor between 3rd and 6th to the highway from King street is also to be zoned for 60-80 foot (primarily commercial) with occasional high rises.

I do think they fell short in western SoMa. There are a number of places, right next to BART, that are not getting up-zoned at all.

[Sierrajeff]

Originally Posted by Dave Coe

Mission will be full gentrified with hipsters.

"Hipsters" will be as quaint a term in 20 years as "yuppie" is today. Maybe in 20 years the 'it' crowd will be "HSters" (because they all use HSR to commute from their organic farmlets in the Central Valley), or "tuppies" (because they all use that new-fangled teleporter to get around, leaving the poor and unwashed stuck on Muni...

Speaking of which, in 20 years Muni will be ... pretty much exactly the same as it is now. With no new infrastructure on the drawing board, other than finishing the Central Subway to Chinatown, it's pretty much guaranteed that nothing else new will be in existence by then. Which is sad, because we need to extend the Central Subway to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf, and then maybe turn to the Marina... and we need a 2nd line through SoMa (to deal with both the congestion on the Market underground, and the increasing population density in SoMa)... and a subway out Geary, maybe turning south around 25th to Daly City & BART. All are eminently needed *now*, let alone 20 years from now... but unless someone starts the planning process today (then interminable public meetings, then initial plans, then EIR, the EIR appeals, then revised plans, then a revised EIR... etc!), none of it will be present 20 years from now.