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What this obscures is increasingly common stories like this. Since the core Bay Area is development-phobic, we have created sprawl 60-90 miles away. The only areas affordable to lower to middle class workers. Adding congestion, pollution and sprawl. This is not uncommon at all. Many of my coworkers with families live 30+ miles from work and we are pretty well paid at a tech startup. They can't afford to move closer with even above average income.
San Mateo and Santa Clara are two of the fastest growing counties in the state and have been so for quite some time. Santa Clara was briefly the fastest although Riverside has now regained its briefly lost thrown. If you're point is that they aren't keeping up with job growth, yes. They are not, however, development-phobic. San Francisco is, or perhaps it might be more apt to say that it was. Really the only counties that are development-phobic in the Bay Area is the North Bay. The anti-development gets tossed around a lot by social engineers because they don't see the right type of development, although even then you've had the shoebox towers in San Jose for years now. There was a temporary hiatus on the shoe boxes, but that's not because of anti-development. It's just because not much of anything was being built. A new shoebox apartment just opened last year and more are under construction. There's a couple dozen such projects in various stages. For a couple decades now San Jose has been really focusing on developing its downtown, coinciding with the relocation of city hall back to downtown.
San Mateo and Santa Clara are two of the fastest growing counties in the state and have been so for quite some time. Santa Clara was briefly the fastest although Riverside has now regained its briefly lost thrown. If you're point is that they aren't keeping up with job growth, yes. They are not, however, development-phobic. San Francisco is, or perhaps it might be more apt to say that it was. Really the only counties that are development-phobic in the Bay Area is the North Bay. The anti-development gets tossed around a lot by social engineers because they don't see the right type of development, although even then you've had the shoebox towers in San Jose for years now. There was a temporary hiatus on the shoe boxes, but that's not because of anti-development. It's just because not much of anything was being built. A new shoebox apartment just opened last year and more are under construction. There's a couple dozen such projects in various stages. For a couple decades now San Jose has been really focusing on developing its downtown, coinciding with the relocation of city hall back to downtown.
There is a big disconnect between housing location and job location. San Jose has lots of housing, but few jobs comparatively. San Mateo county is fine building offices, but refuses to build housing. Places like Palo Alto and Menlo Park have 2-3 more jobs than housing units. Leading to crappy commutes all around.
There is a big disconnect between housing location and job location. San Jose has lots of housing, but few jobs comparatively. San Mateo county is fine building offices, but refuses to build housing. Places like Palo Alto and Menlo Park have 2-3 more jobs than housing units. Leading to crappy commutes all around.
Except that's not reality.
San Mateo county has a daytime population increase of .5%.
Alameda county has a daytime population increase of .5%
Santa Clara county has a daytime population increase of 5.7%
San Francisco county has a daytime population increase of 20.6%
Yes, the jobs are concentrated in Palo Alto. If your argument is that the jobs should be more scattered, I'd say that's a stupid argument. Part of the problem from a public policy perspective is that the jobs are scattered which makes transit difficult. More evenly distributing the jobs doesn't make sense. It's like saying because the commute from Sunset is long that they should take jobs out of the Financial District and more evenly distribute them throughout San Francisco. That works pretty well if you assume everyone drives a car to get to work. It doesn't work so well if you assume that transit has a role to play in how people commute. Frankly, there's too many people for the car alone to be a good model for the Bay Area today, let alone in the future.
The problem from a regional perspective is that San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda used to be to some extent bedroom communities for San Francisco and today they aren't providing that any longer. They're doing the opposite. There aren't any bedrooms communities left in the four central counties (San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara). That leaves you with the periphery: Contra Costa (-9.6), Marin (-2%), San Benito (-13.2%), Santa Cruz (-4.6%), Solano (-10.5%) and San Joaquin (-4.3%). And yes, that means long commutes for people. Predominantly that's because there's not enough housing in San Francisco and to a lesser degree Santa Clara. San Mateo county, however, is very balanced. The problem is its neighbors. It still acts as a bedroom community with less than 60% living and working in San Mateo County. That means you need to import basically 40% of the county's population from elsewhere, and with San Francisco and Santa Clara both having more jobs than housing there's nowhere for them to come from nearby.
Even if you import a worker from a somewhat nearby county like Alameda in your case (assuming you work in San Mateo) that just means that's one more person Alameda needs to import from elsewhere. In effect, that's how it works. Alameda is a bedroom for San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. But since it already has a slight shortage of housing and 1/3rd of its residents go off to work somewhere else, it turns to Contra Costa, Solano, and San Joaquin. San Joaquin in turn imports the workers it sends off to the Bay Area (predominantly Alameda) from other counties like Calaveras which basically don't have an economy. You're always going to have the people that just prefer to live one place despite working somewhere else. Even in San Francisco, a quarter of the people who live there work outside of it.
America is a ****ed up cross between ****ty public transport and immensely dense urban centres. Makes the cost of devleopment, including by the government very high. This is why the transportation networks in places like NJ NY, despite some of the highest revenus taxes etc in the nation, are ****ing horrendous.
Santa Clara county has a daytime population increase of 5.7%
At least in SCC, the reality is that there's a whole lot of people commuting within the county, even as the overall population may only increase 5.7%. So what your number doesn't say is the huge number of SCC residents who live in San Jose or Campbell or Los Gatos but commute to Santa Clara, north Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto. Way more interesting for SCC would be daytime population changes by ZIP.
Percent workers who lived and worked in the same area
San Mateo 58.3%
San Francisco 76.3%
Santa Clara 86.7%
Alameda 67.3%
Quote:
(Column T) Percent workers who lived and worked in the same area – this measure is sometimes used as an indicator of worker retention, but it does not reflect variation in area size or other attributes very well. It is computed by dividing the number of workers who lived and worked in the same area (col. R) by the total workers living there (col. J) and multiplying the result by 100.
I think some of you guys are looking way to deep into this. The reason we have so much sprawl is there is so much demand for it. All these articles make it sound like people are rushing to move into cities but its simply not true (outside of San Fran and the other usual's). Yes there is demand in some areas, but overall the U.S. clearly has more interest in suburbs. As long as people are willing to pay for these suburbs there will be increased sprawl, its that easy. I am a millennial, and yes i love living in a city and so do some of my friends. However overall, a larger percentage of my friends stayed in the suburbs whether it be back home or in suburbs of a new city. Our society is so car reliant that the truth is most people don't give a **** if they have a long commute to work, and nothing is going to change any time soon (if ever).
I think some of you guys are looking way to deep into this. The reason we have so much sprawl is there is so much demand for it. All these articles make it sound like people are rushing to move into cities but its simply not true (outside of San Fran and the other usual's). Yes there is demand in some areas, but overall the U.S. clearly has more interest in suburbs. As long as people are willing to pay for these suburbs there will be increased sprawl, its that easy. I am a millennial, and yes i love living in a city and so do some of my friends. However overall, a larger percentage of my friends stayed in the suburbs whether it be back home or in suburbs of a new city. Our society is so car reliant that the truth is most people don't give a **** if they have a long commute to work, and nothing is going to change any time soon (if ever).
The fundamental problems are that the original reasons for suburban flight--crime and poverty--have or are receding from many urban areas and that developers have continued to build this form in spite of that change of context and in spite of housing + transit costs pushing north of 40% of household income. So we see an overabundance of one built form and a severe shortage of another, making one seem especially cheap (exurbs) and making the other exceptionally expensive (urbs).
My point is that, in response to your post, it is hard to say whether all the current construction of outer suburbs and exurbs is a response to consumer demand or if it is consumers buying the only housing that is affordable (ie, developers leading the market instead of responding to it).
As such, it is important that we have these discussions and people write these articles--and this is regardless of whichever form, urban, inner suburban, later suburban, or exurban--so that we have some common data about the costs and value of different built forms. Built form is too prominent in all our lives--it defines the very mode and means of how we go about our day-to-day lives--to not have critical data-driven discussions.
The fundamental problems are that the original reasons for suburban flight--crime and poverty--have or are receding from many urban areas and that developers have continued to build this form in spite of that change of context and in spite of housing + transit costs pushing north of 40% of household income. So we see an overabundance of one built form and a severe shortage of another, making one seem especially cheap (exurbs) and making the other exceptionally expensive (urbs).
My point is that, in response to your post, it is hard to say whether all the current construction of outer suburbs and exurbs is a response to consumer demand or if it is consumers buying the only housing that is affordable (ie, developers leading the market instead of responding to it).
As such, it is important that we have these discussions and people write these articles--and this is regardless of whichever form, urban, inner suburban, later suburban, or exurban--so that we have some common data about the costs and value of different built forms. Built form is too prominent in all our lives--it defines the very mode and means of how we go about our day-to-day lives--to not have critical data-driven discussions.
It really is very simple and is not hard to say at all.
Schools are much better in the suburbs.
Crime is lower.
Housing costs are cheaper because land is cheaper and there are fewer restrictions.
Some people like exurbs because they don't want to be in dense areas.
Developers aren't idiots. They (mostly) build what sells.
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