article saying that SF Bay Area needs DENSE HOUSING (San Diego: condos, townhouses)

[Perma Bear]

Originally Posted by jade408

You haven't spent much time in Oakland at all. Downtown has a bunch of awesome historical buildings. Many neighborhoods (like my own) have a mix of housing types landing from Victorians, to craftsman to mediterraneans to mid century mid-rises.

There are plenty of underutilized parking lots downtown that should get high rises. And blocks on Broadway north of downtown that are getting mid-rises, and other potential spaces that should get a similar treatment.

We should be filling in housing on empty lots, surface parking lots and other underutilized spaces.

Oakland was hit so hard by the urban decay of the mid 20th century that a lot of those historic buildings are dilapidated. I say tear them down.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Perma Bear

Oakland was hit so hard by the urban decay of the mid 20th century that a lot of those historic buildings are dilapidated. I say tear them down.

Not exactly. The 1989 quake did a lot of damage, but many buildings are doing fine. Oakland is planning around picking up the housing slack in the region. That's not enough though. We need to make sure housing is near all the job centers. Peninsula can't keep pretending they only get jobs. It is totally unacceptable that some cities have 3x more jobs than housing units.

[Ruth4Truth]

The Bay Area can't handle any more density. What the Bay Area needs is "dense" public transit. It needs more transit options, to get people out of their cars and breakup the traffic nightmare. Only when it can figure out how to do that should higher density be discussed.

Good luck with that.

[sav858]

^thats pretty true. Bart is bursting at the seams. VTA's light rail is really under utilized though.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by jade408

There is a wide spectrum of "dense." We should say denser. RWC doesn't need 20 story buildings. But 3-6 story multifamily buildings are not out of scale for the areas around transit stations. We can't only build single family homes and wonder why we have no space.

This is a great explanation.
Home Page - Missing Middle Housing

We need the "missing middle" and the mid-rise in all of our bigger towns and suburbs. I.e. like the Peninsula downtowns.

Yes. I have been saying this for a while. We don't need (nor do I want) endless high-rises throughout the region. But we can build much more smartly, and we really should be building densely (smaller high-rises (mid-rise, if you will) and 4-6 story apartment buildings) near transit centers/downtowns of the region (downtown San Mateo, Hillsdale, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View on the peninsula).

If you focus on areas that are already dense (regional downtowns) or that should have dense housing around them (transit hubs), the majority of the region would remain unaffected (don't worry Perma Bear, no one's gonna take your flat from you). And you'll want to build corresponding infrastructure for these new residents (BART/MUNI/VTA/Caltrain expansions and improvements).

Some of these places already have highrises. It's odd to me that many of these high rises (such as the one I live in) were built 50 years ago...and nothing has been built since. It's like we reached a point as a region where we all of a sudden decided "that's it - no more change!".


I do agree that if you don't want to change anything, then you should please not complain about the cost of living here. You should understand that this desire to keep this region as some museum for architecture of the mid/late-20th century has a large effect on housing costs of the region.

We can't have it both ways: we either demand that we want no change and accept that the resulting costs of the region of that decision (i.e. escalatinggggggg costs); or we realize that we can bring costs down (over time) but understand that that will require us to change some things in the region (through building new (dense) housing).

Obviously, the world doesn't work in theoretical ways - and I know we'll never build the amount of housing that this region really needs (hundreds of thousands of units spread out across the region) - so even if/when we do build, it won't really do much to address the overall problem.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The Bay Area can't handle any more density. What the Bay Area needs is "dense" public transit. It needs more transit options, to get people out of their cars and breakup the traffic nightmare. Only when it can figure out how to do that should higher density be discussed.

Good luck with that.

Why can't both be done at the same time? It really should not be an "either or" thing.

[GalacticDragonfly]

Originally Posted by Perma Bear

Places like RWC and San Carlos don't need skyscrapers sticking up like a stick in mud. It's an eyesore. Build that high density housing in Oakland and the East Bay where there is no history.

Da ***? Redwood City and the Peninsula has more history than Oakland and Berkeley? What do you mean by history? Like, pre-home computers? Does some 80's tech companies and mainframes count as history?

[GalacticDragonfly]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The Bay Area can't handle any more density. What the Bay Area needs is "dense" public transit. It needs more transit options, to get people out of their cars and breakup the traffic nightmare. Only when it can figure out how to do that should higher density be discussed.

Good luck with that.

Well first, lets make sure BART has decent coverage within the core of the Bay Area, before we start getting concerned about suburbia. Unfortunately, BART's been doing that since 1972.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by GalacticDragonfly

Well first, lets make sure BART has decent coverage within the core of the Bay Area, before we start getting concerned about suburbia. Unfortunately, BART's been doing that since 1972.

That's because Bart was built for suburban commuters primarily.

[bodyforlife99]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The Bay Area can't handle any more density. What the Bay Area needs is "dense" public transit. It needs more transit options, to get people out of their cars and breakup the traffic nightmare. Only when it can figure out how to do that should higher density be discussed.

Good luck with that.

Bingo, we have a winner!