Peduto pushes for more housing (Pittsburgh, California: 2013, new home, construction)

[speagles84]

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

And start in Oakland please.

I can't even count how many are in my apartment. And Im sure there's more I don't even know.

[Buckeye Burgher]

uhhh.....we've been a net population loser during my entire life.

We are a city of 300,000 sitting on an infrastructure that was built for 700,000.

Granted a lot of that is in ill repair and in serious need of updating. We should be
focused on restoration and renovation more than new construction IMO.

My house contains massive stone and timber sections used buy the builders
a century ago. It is solid. You could not afford to build with such materials today.

[JoeP]

There are many reasons for new housing. Many. And not all new housing is single family.

uhhh.....we've been a net population loser during my entire life.

And that's changing and because of the past, the region is lacking in certain areas.

[Buckeye Burgher]

I'm glad to see the trends reversing, but we are never going to return to our peak population
numbers from around 1950.

On the other hand, that provides great opportunities for the people who do want to live here.

[EveKendall]

I think a population of 300,000 is great. I am not sure why so many people think unrestrained growth is a net positive thing. With big population increases comes a lot of negatives--expensive housing, terrbile traffic, and greater sprawl.
Better to be a city of 300,00 with the original infrastructrue built for 600,000 than a city like Austin that was built to be a city of 200,000 that now holds 800,000.
I agree that the infrastructure we do have needs to be updated and improved.

[FreightTrainRunning]

The problem with having a population of 300,000 in a city built for twice that is that we can't afford to maintain all that infrastructure. That's a whole lot of streets and alleys and water pipe and sewers and street lamps and whatever to maintain and currently the city just doesn't have the tax base to pay for all that. There are three ways to change that: raise taxes, cut services or broaden the tax base. It's unlikely that people will put up with much of a tax increase and services are pretty meager as it is so the only real choice is to attract more tax payers to the city.

[Evergrey]

Originally Posted by GeneW

The problem with having a population of 300,000 in a city built for twice that is that we can't afford to maintain all that infrastructure. That's a whole lot of streets and alleys and water pipe and sewers and street lamps and whatever to maintain and currently the city just doesn't have the tax base to pay for all that. There are three ways to change that: raise taxes, cut services or broaden the tax base. It's unlikely that people will put up with much of a tax increase and services are pretty meager as it is so the only real choice is to attract more tax payers to the city.

How many taxable incomes were there in 1950's City of Pittsburgh compared to today? Household size has shrunk since the days where Dad worked and Mom took care of 8 kids. This has been the number one reason why the population has shrunk in half in the static 55 sq miles that the city has been locked into over that period of time. Today, we have a smaller population... but a much higher percentage of that population is working primarily due to the rise of female partcipation in the workforce and fewer children per household.

That said, I do agree that we need more people and support continued housing development... but the whole "we have half the population" argument is a bit misleading considering the dynamics of socio-economic evolution over time.

[FreightTrainRunning]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

How many taxable incomes were there in 1950's City of Pittsburgh compared to today? Household size has shrunk since the days where Dad worked and Mom took care of 8 kids. This has been the number one reason why the population has shrunk in half in the static 55 sq miles that the city has been locked into over that period of time. Today, we have a smaller population... but a much higher percentage of that population is working primarily due to the rise of female participation in the workforce and fewer children per household.

That said, I do agree that we need more people and support continued housing development... but the whole "we have half the population" argument is a bit misleading considering the dynamics of socio-economic evolution over time.

I don't think that anyone is expecting a doubling of population or even wants that. I just don't see any way out of the cities financial issues other than growing out of them. You're probably right about the workforce in the fifties but we had all those giant mills in the city paying taxes and they aren't coming back so there has to be another way to raise revenue. More people living in more housing units equals more taxes which means more money for pot-holes and traffic lights and such.

[Geeo]

Many don't remember or were not alive during the 40s and 50s, but Pittsburgh was a severely overcrowded city with a lot of tenements packed with families, as well as crowded areas with sub-standard plumbing and sewage. As mentioned in other posts, family sizes were much larger.

[SteelCityRising]

We could most certainly house 700,000+ residents again (and then some) with our current socioeconomic trends of decreasing numbers of people per household if we were to massively rebuild upon blighted and underutilized areas of the city with super-tall structures to emulate Manhattan's level of density. Would I want that to occur? No.

Part of what drew me to Pittsburgh was its pedestrian scale, its architecture, its rugged topography, its isolated (yet populated) nooks and crannies, its interesting heritage, etc. I don't want to compromise any of that just so we can finally say that we're almost the same size of Jacksonville, Austin, or Fort Worth in terms of population in a much smaller land footprint. I like that I live in a rowhouse (or tenement, if you will) neighborhood within walking distance to Downtown Pittsburgh. Polish immigrants came here in the 1880s and 1890s to work in the nearby Strip District; crafted this neigborhood for themselves through blood, sweat, and tears; and helped to build a thriving community of thousands of people in a very small area. It would be very disrespectful to their memory (we're talking about the great-great-grandparents of some of today's current Polish-American residents---my neighbors) to just obliterate it so we could start fresh with high-rises with ground-floor Starbucks and Cosi locations.

New construction SHOULD happen, but it should happen responsibly. In our neighborhood in particular we've been conscientiously planning for the redevelopment of a parcel of land in the center of the neighbrhood that was the site of a major fire in 2007. Simultaneously several rowhomes on my block are undergoing rehabilitation into new housing; the site of a current leather gay bar is likely to soon be redeveloped; the nearby Iron City Brewery site is undergoing redevelopment; etc. We're a growing and changing city, but we have to be respectful of our past as we forge onwards to the future.

If I live to see the day we hit 350,000 people I'll be happy.