
Make More Land - QuitterStrip
https://www.jefftk.com/p/make-more-land
======
dr_dshiv
America has an attitude problem. It thinks it is already developed. Like,
there is nothing left to do. That is the single biggest difference between the
America of today and the America of the last century.

The Netherlands feels more like India, in that everything is under a state of
continual improvement all the time. The Netherlands is fantastically
futuristic, though, and super nice (much more developed than most of America).
That's because they don't think they are "done".

Here is a map of the parts of the Netherlands that are under water.
[https://images.app.goo.gl/c5E11LJfLETAFFBy9](https://images.app.goo.gl/c5E11LJfLETAFFBy9)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
america has 350 million people. california, for example, has 40 million
people.

netherlands has 17 million people. india has 1300 million people. population
density of netherlands is 488 people/km2. population density of india is 416
people/km2.

usa is 98 people/km2. we are not netherlands or india.

[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/ind...](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/india)
: netherlands and india country comparison.

[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/usa](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/netherlands/usa)
: netherlands and usa country comparison

[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/india/usa](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/india/usa)
: india and usa country comparison

continual improvement is aka constant readjustments for optimal function.
america functions just fine because of our less than highly dense
population/km2. stability is not a negative point. change and progress occurs
with stability too. perhaps india and netherlands ought to consider stability
and aim for lesser population density.

~~~
Nitramp
> america functions just fine [...]

I think reasonable people might disagree with that assessment.

Also, as an example the South Bay (Santa Clara County) houses 2'400 ppl/km2.
That's cherry picking a bit, but somewhat comparable to the Netherlands'
densely populated area (the Randstad @ ~1'600/km2). The US just happens to
contain a lot of desert in the middle, but that says little about the
metropolitan areas. I don't think anyone suggests Alaska should polder-up or
Nevada desperately needs urban mass transit.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
How do you think America is malfunctioning compared to other countries?

I have never seen anyone trip over to try and immigrate to Netherlands.

US has a lot of ‘desert’ in the middle? Pray do tell..what is the name of said
desert in the middle of America?

~~~
dr_dshiv
I immigrated to the Netherlands. I lived in Denver, Cleveland, new haven, NYC
and San Diego. I love them all.

That said, the Netherlands truly does many things better than America. It is
such a great place to raise kids. America will not be great if it doesn't
steal good ideas where they exist.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Would you be willing to share the nature of your immigration? I understand if
you would rather not. Just curious.

------
marvin
Here's the biggest objection, that would hold true for many expensive areas of
the Western world, and any policy that will dramatically increase the supply
of real estate:

"I own property here, and if we do this, the value of my property will fall.
Therefore, we shouldn't do it".

This is the real motivation, but bring up some environmental concerns,
something about retaining the character of the area, something about ensuring
that the area won't be mobbed by new inhabitants, just to make the argument
plausible. Then vote.

~~~
leetcrew
I tend to lean libertarian on most issues, but I am starting to think it just
doesn't make very much sense for people to own land privately. it's one of the
only things in the world that is truly scarce (ie, you can't make more plots
in the upper east side), and the value of land tends to be based much more on
improvements to the surrounding area than improvements to the land itself.
also, land ownership seems to lead to all sorts of perverse incentives to
lobby for laws that distort the housing market.

sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better to take a snapshot of all property
values at a certain point in time, pay out the owners at the current value,
and switch land over exclusively to long term leases from the government
(where the lessee is allowed to sublet).

~~~
isostatic
A land value tax, where you pay for the value of the land. Society builds a
new subway stations near you, and land increases 20%, you pay 20% more tax.
Society puts a power plant on your doorstep, land drops 40%, and you pay 40%
less tax.

What you do with that land is irrelevent - you pay the same whether you have a
small house on a 15 story building on it.

~~~
war1025
Isn't that exactly what property taxes currently are?

~~~
leetcrew
no? if you renovate your house in a way that increases the value of the
structure, you will pay more tax. under LVT, you only pay more tax when the
land itself increases in value. that's how the tax gets its name.

~~~
war1025
My property taxes are a combination of both land value and dwelling value. So
property tax is a superset of land value tax (at least here in Iowa).

My understanding is that this is all screwed up in California because there
are restrictions on how much your taxes can go up each year. So it's not an
issue of needing an additional tax, it's just a matter of needing to un-break
California's property tax system.

~~~
leetcrew
I personally don't know enough econ to know whether LVT is actually a good
idea, but intuitively it makes sense to me.

the basic objection to property tax as it currently exists is that it
penalizes you for improving your property. at the margin, this creates a
perverse incentive to let housing stock degrade or even leave whole lots
unused. in general LVT advocates want it to replace traditional property
taxes, no be added alongside them. the claim is that, for a target tax
revenue, LVT can raise the funds much more efficiently.

as for California, the problem with their tax system is outside the scope of
LVT vs traditional property tax. they have land with massive valuations but
get relatively little revenue out of it due to extremely low grandfathered
rates.

------
strstr
I’ve always sort of wondered why we don’t also manufacture more of the rare
types of environments.

Wetlands are hard to come by and getting more rare. Why not make more?

Seattle’s Union Bay Natural Area was previously underwater, then exposed by
changing lake levels, then a dump, and now a natural area [0]. It’s partially
wetland, partially forest. It’s a popular spot for birders now. Green Herons
(rare-ish find in WA) took up the area recently.

It seems like we could, at least to an extent, compensate for clear
environmental harm (paving over estuaries) by building up more elsewhere.
Obviously not an easy task. Not even obviously possible (there are only so
many places substantial freshwater meets the sea).

But at the moment we have substantial suffering in the Bay due to housing
availability. We have clear suffering in nature due to habitat destruction
(more broadly). Seems like we should at least try to engineer more interesting
solutions than “build taller” or “build nothing”.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Bay_Natural_Area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Bay_Natural_Area)

~~~
NegativeLatency
What you're describing happened accidenally outside of Anchorage at Potter
Marsh. It's now a great spot to go birding and see other wildlife.

> Potter Marsh was formed when construction of the Alaska Railroad embankment
> limited tidal ingress to a bridge over Rabbit Creek. This embankment
> impounded the creek and consequently formed the marsh.

[http://dnr.alaska.gov/parks/plans/pottermasterplan.pdf](http://dnr.alaska.gov/parks/plans/pottermasterplan.pdf)

------
seiferteric
> The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land
> we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is
> available at far less impact to people.

Wetlands in particular are pretty rare and environmentally valuable places
though. The fact that you would fill them in and "set aside" some probably
less valuable land somewhere else is not very reassuring.

~~~
twic
This is where i cringed hardest. Wetlands are, as you say, disproportionately
valuable in ecological terms. Not just for wildlife, but for nutrient
recycling.

Wetlands are mostly found around bays and estuaries.

Now, where are major cities found? That's right, around bays and estuaries!
Because that's where you can build ports and lowest bridging points, and those
are fundamental drivers of the development of cities.

There's something about this failure to consider basic geography and ecology
that complicates an otherwise shockingly bold and simple plan that is
characteristically LessWrong.

~~~
jschwartzi
Me too. I stopped reading the article after that "who cares, the birds can
just move somewhere else" kind of thinking. It's supremely ironic that the
author copped this attitude about land use in the Bay Area, of all places.

~~~
gfodor
I mean, you either accept the plan or not. The author clearly accepts the
plan. Instead of writing reams of text about how much they care about the
birds, they state clearly that's one negative characteristic of the plan: the
birds are fucked. You may disagree, but you have to commend the honestly and
lack of trying to weasel out of it as we've come to expect.

And frankly, the behavior of stopping reading of a proposal when you get to a
point of disagreement is the root cause for why people have to do such
weaseling: otherwise, people who do that would just stop listening or leave
the room. So what we get are leaders who are forced to come up with ornate,
wishy-washy language to lead people to the end of the argument so they can,
maybe, digest the whole thing at the end.

~~~
jschwartzi
The reason I stopped reading is that the author didn't care enough to find out
why the birds even have a protected area to begin with. His argument basically
boiled down to "the birds can move" and he didn't appear to have done basic
research to understand why they can't. If he's not going to dig into one of
his major premises then it's not a very strong argument to be making and I
think I'm better off moving on.

That's why.

------
driverdan
> The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land
> we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is
> available at far less impact to people.

Absurd. Just because a city happens to be there doesn't mean we should destroy
the surrounding environment with impunity.

Want to increase available housing in the bay? Get rid of NIMBY zoning that
prevents building up.

~~~
jefftk
(author here)

I'm also strongly in favor of abolishing the restrictive zoning that prohibits
building up, but in many ways it's less politically practical to increase
density in built-out areas than build new dense areas.

If we don't use small amounts of land close to cities to build new housing
we'll continue with our default of using large amounts of land far from
cities. This destroys more of the environment, pollutes with more driving, and
wastes more time commuting.

~~~
ridewinter
Nice, concise & persuasive article. Do you think the political environment in
the Bay Area is ripe for it?

------
tony_cannistra
"The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land
we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is
available at far less impact to people"

Perform a thought experiment in which human systems are _part_ of nature, not
separate from it; that land isn't set aside _for nature,_ but that nature is
everywhere. This frame will encourage systematic thinking of the sort that at
least more realistically contextualizes this land-filling exercise, and at
most entirely invalidates the ideas underlying the practice.

To decimate such productive, sustaining landscapes is reckless, short-sighted,
and perhaps even cruel––not only to natural systems which depend on them, but
to us, who in turn depend on those systems.

Read Wendell Berry's "Wild and Domestic" on this, if you'd like:
[https://orionmagazine.org/article/wild-and-
domestic/](https://orionmagazine.org/article/wild-and-domestic/)

~~~
alteria
I had the same reaction.

Every time I visit/fly over places like New York and SF I'm torn. Waterfront
properties are beautiful, but then I think back to the dynamic ecosystem and
landscape that was there 300-600 years ago and how different it is now.

It's just interesting to think about how the land we live on now was like
before us. Are we living somewhere that could have been a beautiful national
park?

~~~
mc32
Even pre WWII much of the Bay Area outside the ports was farmland or
wilderness (not built-up). So you don’t have to go too far back, well, except
for the salt evaporators, those have been around some time.

------
rhacker
> You do need to take fill into account to build in an earthquake-safe way,
> but modern engineering is well up to the task.

That's pretty hand-wavy. I'm sure the guys in 1970 said the same argument. The
word modern has been around for thousands of years.

~~~
beerandt
Soil liquefaction is better understood, in the sense that we know better than
to use certain soils for fill. A lot of these soils happen to be the ones
dredged from water bottoms.

~~~
greggman2
Even Japan doesn't handle earthquakes (according to an NHK special on quakes).
They built all these earthquake proof buildings and then the 2016 Kumamoto
earthquake came along with new behavior that none of the buildings in Japan
are built for. They did come up with new ways to build to handle this new type
of quake but of course that's only for buildings since 2016 (probably more
like 2018 when they figured out what to do) so slowly new buildings will get
build with the new mitigations and we'll cross our fingers the next quake
isn't yet another different kind.

[https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20180617/4...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/documentary/20180617/4001282/)

~~~
EdwardDiego
Question is, did people get out of those buildings alive?

------
ninth_ant
That’s a pretty big project to propose to protect the “character of
neighborhoods” for the benefit of the already wealthy!

How about instead just build densely on the land that already exists in
cities? And not pave over the bay?

~~~
lkbm
How's that plan going?

Political feasibility is relevant when deciding what to do. It doesn't matter
which solution is best. It matters which solution we can actually make happen
is best.

Personally, I doubt the political feasibility of paving over the bay, but it
seems like telling rich people to get over their selves isn't working either.

~~~
drewcon
This. Telling that it’s arguably less of a lift to fill in 50 square miles of
the bay vs. rewrite zoning with some practical common sense updates.

------
zackbloom
> This part of the Bay is primarily industrial salt ponds.

For the record, the industrial salt ponds are actually very beautiful. The
fact that they are salt ponds is not actually a refutation to the 'but you're
destroying beauty' argument.

~~~
derefr
No, but it is an argument against that part of the bay being, say, a valuable
fishery, or valuable marshland for birds, or anything else people might think
they’re protecting. Industrial salt ponds aren’t “nature” in the same sense
you’d expect a water body to represent. They’re essentially already a sterile,
man-made structure.

~~~
kragen
They're not sterile; their brilliant colors are produced by halophile archaea
and in some cases bacteria and algae that flourish in environments that would
kill anything else.

~~~
tomatotomato37
If a piece of industrial environment is so fucked that only extremophile
bacteria can live there than it is sterile for all societal purposes.

~~~
kragen
I don't know what you mean by "sterile for all societal purposes". A salt pond
is not a good place to carry out a surgery, even though the archaea (more
common than extremophile bacteria, and also more extremophilic) aren't
pathogenic. It isn't poisonous, just dry and salty.

------
darksaints
How about stop pretending like we don't have enough land in the Bay Area. The
entire population of the bay area could live within the borders of San Jose,
with room for a million more, if it were built at the density of Paris. Land
Use is the problem, not quantity.

~~~
siruncledrew
Yea, it’s pretty stupid that filling in 50mi^2 of water bodies with soil,
retaining all of that land, and then building on top of it is the smarter
thing to do than re-developing current land to fit changing needs.

The Bay Area could also just build taller buildings with more living space on
land they already have in a denser area.

Also, I like that the article complains about how bad sprawl is, and then
their solution is basically create sprawl from new land.

~~~
Liron
I suspect you're suffering from status quo bias. Try flipping the situation
around: imagine we have this same area as undeveloped land, with a button that
magically converts it into the current Bay. Would you prefer to develop the
land or not?

------
hnruss
”Making more land” requires destruction of relatively rare marine habitats.
Sure, there’s a lot of ocean out there, but many species thrive where the land
naturally meets the sea. Bays and estuaries are treasures, not just bits of
water waiting to be paved.

~~~
tengbretson
There seems to be no such thing as a marine habitat that is not rare.

~~~
eranima
That's simply false. There are many different kinds of marine habitats, and as
the above comment points out, this one is rare.

~~~
beerandt
The parent comment self-defined it as "where the land naturally meets the
sea." That's called the coast. So all coastline is rare and off limits?

If we create a new island, what about that new coastline? Is it worth
preserving for the sake of it's "rarity"?

~~~
hnruss
I'm referring to coastlines, estuaries, river deltas, wetlands, etc. In terms
of surface area of the Earth, it seems easy to make the argument that those
places are relatively rare.

Development of this land hasn't been off-limits historically, although many of
these places in the U.S. are now (rightfully) preserved. Certain types of
development are more detrimental to ecosystems than other types.

If something is rare and good, it should probably be preserved, regardless of
how natural it is. In this case, we're talking about natural landscapes and
living beings that cannot be re-created once they are gone.

~~~
beerandt
>In terms of surface area of the Earth...relatively rare

Using that definition, anything and everything could be justified as rare.

Coastlines are the most dynamic places on Earth. They change, they adapt, they
are a constantly shifting equilibrium. Geologically, they are the youngest and
most easily replaceable features on Earth. They're not fragile things.

What isn't natural is how static we've tried to keep them.

>If something is rare and good

You're romanticizing things. Coastlines serve an important ecological purpose,
and we shouldn't ignore that, but the vast majority isn't irreplaceable.

There's no reason to believe that newly created (ecologically engineered)
coast wouldn't be just as, if not more, biologically productive than what is
being replaced.

~~~
hnruss
When natural habit is destroyed by human development, it is not replaced by
something "better". It is replaced by something _different_ , which benefits
some species over others (mainly humans). Coastlines and wetlands are never
"moved", they're simply destroyed. The life that was there dies and species go
extinct, one after the other.

Sure, it's _possible_ for people to create new and better habitat for
endangered species. The problem is that we usually don't. The "make more land"
article doesn't even offer that as a suggested environmental offset. I imagine
that the cost of doing so in a way that would actually be beneficial to the
environment would nullify any gains to the developers.

I agree that coastlines aren't fragile on geologic time scales. The living
things which depend on them are. There are millions of species that we haven't
even cataloged, so how many are going extinct because of human development?
We'll never know.

------
melling
“... allowing people to live closer in is the most powerful way to address
sprawl.”

“ The second biggest is that BART doesn't have enough coverage to make living
without a car practical in most of the area. ”

I don’t know about the land, maybe it’s a good idea. However, this really
comes down to building better mass transit.

“Closer” doesn’t need to mean distance, it could also mean time. Could Oakland
be turned into “Manhattan“ with better mass transit?

~~~
bluGill
Better mass transit needs straight lines to run on more than density. When the
bus has to go down every long cul-de-sac nobody will ride because the bus
takes so long, when it doesn't few people ride because of the long walk to the
bus. If developments has more long straight streets down the middle there
wouldn't be a long walk to a bus that runs a reasonable route.

As you said, closer isn't a measure of only distance it is also a measure of
time. If the transit system can isn't too far to walk to, runs often enough
that people don't worry about when it comes, and doesn't waste time going
places the rider don't want to go: people will take it. When transit is
inconvenient to get to, doesn't run when/were individuals want to go, or takes
too long to get there: people won't take it.

Fixing that isn't easy though. Roads/streets need to be designed for transit.
Enough people need to ride that the system isn't mostly empty. It needs to go
more or less direct routes to where people want to go, not take long detours
to other destinations. Only the middle depends on density at all, if you fail
the other two density won't give your transit systems many riders. Pass the
other two and you can still get a lot of riders despite not being very dense.

~~~
Udik
It's hard when American culture seems obsessed with houses rather than flats.
You can build in straight lines, but if each 4 people dwelling takes up 400
square metres of horizontal space, there is no way distances will ever be
walkable- often not even those between two bus or tram stops.

~~~
bluGill
That just limits how many people can get on in a given distance. If the
transit is useful enough people will walk. There are farms in Europe with
better bus service than Suburbs in the US, even though farms are much less
dense.

You won't be running a bus every 5 minutes through the suburbs, but you can
support one 30 minutes, which is the minimum frequency to be useful, and
allows 1/6th the destiny to have the same riders.

There are areas of the US nearly as dense as Paris, but because the geometry
is so transit hostile there will never be transit despite the density seeming
to support it. Los Vagas for example has inward facing apartments that make
getting to any through street from the door hard.

------
jackcosgrove
There are people who dream of terraforming Mars, and there are people who
object to filling in the southern end of San Francisco bay. And I wouldn't be
surprised if there is some overlap between the two groups.

~~~
eranima
That's not really a fair comparison.

~~~
beerandt
Isn't it?

When the US surveyed (PLSS) its lands for the express purpose of selling it to
citizens and immigrants, they didn't even bother to survey most wetlands,
because they were thought to be entirely worthless and of no value. Certainly
not anything worth saving or preserving.

It sounds a lot like the attitude people currently have for the existing
environment on Mars.

------
gfodor
This should take 5 years and cost a few tens of billions.

In California, it would take several generations and ultimately bankrupt the
state.

------
jzunit
Makes too much sense to work in California. If something so sensical could be
accomplished, SF would have built more housing by now.

------
headcanon
Wetlands are some of the most ecologically valuable land around, not just for
local wildlife but for humans too, since they keep the surrounding water and
ground healthy, and act as a buffer against flooding. So you can't build
condos on it, but the condos surrounding it are in a much better spot overall
with the wetland than without it.

Any modern land management solution needs to include wetlands. We should be
building more of them, not less.

------
smacktoward
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa)

------
ummonk
I was once with a map of areas that, in the absence of dikes, would get
flooded by rising sea levels. Outside places in Florida / Louisiana /
Southeast Texas, the only major city I saw that would experience significant
flooding was Boston. Now I know why. Of course, as the author mentions, dikes
work perfectly fine (especially in an area like the Bay Area that isn't prone
to hurricanes).

~~~
jefftk
Dikes would also work much better in the Bay than in Boston because the
perimeter to area is better.

------
smileysteve
Cheaper solutions;

\- High speed rail through the mountains to places like Modesto, Keyes etc.

\- More building up in Oakland, Richmond

\- Allow more remote work

\- Second headquarters in other major cities

~~~
carapace
Or build things on anchored floating barges?

~~~
AtlasBarfed
That will at least be earthquake proof (assuming we are still discussing SF
bay)

------
kyledrake
This isn't a bad idea and I would vote for it, but I can't imagine the
political battle to build this would be any less hard than the one to fix
density and transit issues with the land already there.

Americans don't love to hear this but the political battle here is
fundamentally a class war between the people that own property in California
and the people that don't. The haves will also fight this proposal for the
same reasons they are financially incentivized to fight the proposals to
improve the existing land. You can technology your way out of some political
problems but probably not this one.

------
llamataboot
Maybe we could start by not incentivizing-vordering-on-requiring single family
homes everywhere in the US. US city density is so much less than nearly every
other city on the planet. You don't need more land to build up.

~~~
beerandt
We've already been doing that since Dodd-Frank was passed. It's part of the
reason we're having housing crisis' at all.

------
kaffeemitsahne
The Dutch made about 1400 km^2 of new land in the previous century:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevoland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevoland)

~~~
Goz3rr
For reference, almost 10% of the Netherlands consists of polders (reclaimed
land)

~~~
eru
Singapore grew by 22% since independence in 1965 thanks to land reclamation.
And they started reclaiming before that already.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_Singapore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_Singapore)

------
choeger
The more pressing question: _Can_ we actually still do such projects in
western democracies? How long would it take until the last judge has dismissed
the plea to save the nearly extinct Californian Pink Stink Beetle that by
circumstance breeds in that area? How much more expensive would the project
become over its ever longer runtime? What will happen when the seemingly
inevitable corruption scandals are brought to daylight?

~~~
asdfman123
That attitude drives me crazy. Each new high rise built in San Francisco
prevents a few several blocks of nature being paved over for suburbs somewhere
else.

I had this debate with an environmentalist who supported urban farming. Sure,
urban farming is cool and a nice hobby, but it would be far more
environmentally friendly to build a high rise. New high rises drive down the
costs of urban living, more people move to the city, and whole tracts of
nature are saved from destruction.

~~~
pyrale
Dense cities are _not_ envoronmentally friendly. You have to go get food
further, you have to use building materials that are a major cause of
pollution, etc. Any large city needs tremendous amounts of energy to work, and
we have not found clean and efficient sources of energy so far.

Vertical farming could help big cities rely on less energy, but so far I don't
see it being scaled to the extent we need.

~~~
asdfman123
How much energy does it take to actually transport food into the cities from
farmland? I remember reading that the amount of resources it takes is
laughably small, especially when your lettuce is coming from the other side of
the country anyway.

But if you don't build in the city, you have to build outside of the city.
Does it really take more resources to build a large housing complex than it
takes to build an entire suburban neighborhood?

~~~
pyrale
A quick search gives me numbers around 10-15% of the total food energy. But if
you remove processing, some of the packaging and some of the retail energy
consumption, that are in large part consequences of not having access to fresh
food, this number is much larger.

The benefit of building smaller cities is that you can afford to have lettuce
that comes from a couple kilometers away. If you build small cities, but still
keep a distribution network that spans across continents, things will indeed
not improve.

Also you compare dense cities to (american?) suburbs. Dense cities are indeed
better. My point is that they are a local optimum, and one that is not good
enough to offset the effects of climate change.

The model I would promote is cities small enough to rely on a short-distance
farm network for most of their needs.

------
hprotagonist
Fun fact, the seaport district regularly floods in storms, and the flood
waters are salty.

~~~
seibelj
If you mean in Boston, they actually built all the new buildings in the
Seaport on the assumption of floods. Everything on the first floor can be full
of salt water and the building will be OK.

~~~
hprotagonist
that will come as a surprise to all the first floor restaurants i have lunch
at in those buildings.

------
roflchoppa2
Its a good think Clark Kerr helped prevent this from happening in the 60's.
[https://bcdc.ca.gov/planning/reports/TheSavingOfSFBay_1972.p...](https://bcdc.ca.gov/planning/reports/TheSavingOfSFBay_1972.pdf)

This idea is dumb, we can build more tech hubs in other spaces, we don't need
to destroy the gorgeous wetlands of the South Bay.

~~~
karl11
Gorgeous?

------
cco
Seems easier to move companies elsewhere no?

~~~
Kalium
Both moving companies elsewhere and increasing remote work are _highly_
practical approaches!

Is it perhaps possible that there may be reasons that public policy has not
favored these approaches, and neither has the labor pool as a whole? For my
own part, I find the benefits of living in a major point of economic
agglomeration to be quite nice and not something that can be replicated by
remote links.

------
car
This is unfortunately an ongoing struggle, as outlined in this article.

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/The-latest-
battl...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/The-latest-battle-to-
save-San-Francisco-Bay-14462562.php)

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babyslothzoo
Or you could incentivize building up? That'd be a lot easier and wouldn't
create more hideous sprawl.

~~~
jefftk
(author here)

Building up is already strongly incentivised: new units would sell for far
above the costs of construction. But NIMYS use zoning and other restrictions
to prevent it. I'm strongly in favor of fixing this, but building dense
housing in places with no neighbors is another way to approach the problem.

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Eugeleo
This is mostly tangential, but the (I pressume) owner of the site, Eliezer
Yudkowski, is the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which
is a great book about rationality, cognitive biases and the scientific method
as applied in day to day life. It’s free to read on the web and has a podcast
version as well!

I’m not affiliated in any way, just a big fan of the book.

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darth_avocado
How about instead of trying to create land, use the land we already have in a
less wasteful manner? Most of the bay area is horizontal and refuses to build
vertical. And most of bay area also refuses to participate in public transit
reform. Just those two items can fix most of the problems with a much less
economical and ecological cost.

~~~
romwell
No way the thing that works literally in every other country on Earth will
work (or is possible) in the Bay Area.

No, we should fill the Bay, build more single-family units, and hope that
whatever reasons we have for not having functional transit magically won't
apply in the newly-minted suburb.

~~~
jefftk
I'm very much not proposing building single-family units. See the discussion
about density starting at "Wait, how many people are you saying would live
there?"

~~~
romwell
Alright! We can't build multi-story, multi-use, walkable neighborhoods in San
Jose now.

Is the proposition then to create more land to work around these restrictions?
Why wouldn't the same forces apply on the new land?

What I am saying is that there's enough land already for the vision you have
for the infilled areas. Your post is implicitly saying that it's easier to
literally create land than change zoning laws.

And it might be, but let's be clear on what the problem actually _is_ \-- and
the lack of land it is not.

EDIT: just to emphasize: Brooklyn has 2.5x population on (1/2.5)x area, and is
growing -- all within the confines of an _island_.

------
zarro
I wonder sometimes, is selling existing land that just happens to fall within
a certain "political" border so out of the question?

Example: It feels like Japan is trapped and can't grow where it is anymore. Is
it so out of line for them to offer to Russia or Brazil like $10B over 10
years for like 1000 sq KM?

~~~
derefr
Seems like certain pieces of land are valued low enough that they get sold
between different countries repeatedly. Greenland, for example. I wonder what
the buy-price would be for one of the small pacific islands currently owned by
the US/Britain/France? I wonder if their lack of a price is just because
nobody has offered who these countries would be okay with owning them? (And
Japan is probably such a country, given their arrangements with the US
military.)

------
papreclip
Make fewer people

~~~
gnode
I don't think the problem trying to be solved is: allow more people to exist.
Rather: cluster more people in one geographic location.

The way to avoid the problem would be to not require everyone move to the bay
area to be economically prosperous.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vKErZy7TFhjxtyBuG/make-
more-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vKErZy7TFhjxtyBuG/make-more-land),
which points to this.

------
jelliclesfarm
no. make less humans. protect habitat.

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dickeytk
Sounds like the author hasn’t heard of liquefaction

~~~
nlh
The author specifically mentions liquefaction in the article.

~~~
RiOuseR
The author doesn't really seem to understand how serious it is though.

------
Kiro
> Building dikes to keep the water out is very practical.

Yeah, good luck with that when sea levels rise 20 meters.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Far easier to raise existing dikes 20m than to build new seawalls to protect
all other coastline.

~~~
eranima
You're ignoring the fact that the water has to go _somewhere_. Where is it
going to go? Are you willing to flood your neighbors? Are your neighbors going
to let you?

~~~
bryanlarsen
The oceans are 1.35 billion cubic kilometers. If you dike off a square
kilometer with an average depth of 10 meters you've added 0.01 cubic
kilometers. Spread out over the ocean's 361 million square kilometers that
will raise the ocean level 30 picometers.

I don't think my neighbors would care.

~~~
eranima
That's not how water works. It doesn't magically spread out throughout the
entire ocean immediately

------
thedaemon
Seems to me to be the usual un-environment friendly corporate drivel. We don't
need more people in San Francisco. They are the 13th ranked city by density in
the USA.

"The world is very large, and cities are a very small portion of it. The land
we set aside for animals should be outside of cities, where far more land is
available at far less impact to people."

~~~
eru
We do need more people in San Francisco. It's one of the most productive
cities in the world.

But there's plenty of space there already: upwards. It's just illegal to use.

~~~
daxorid
GDP per capita is a poor measure of productivity, and doesn't consider
externalities.

SF is pretty good at producing emotionally manipulative adtech to opt every
Internet and smartphone user into a global panopticon, and also quite prolific
at social media that turns our lives into perpetually distracting hedonic
treadmills.

Time will tell whether the "productivity" of SF was a net benefit to
Civilization.

~~~
eru
I'm just looking at people making good money for themselves (from high wages),
and paying taxes for the benefit for the rest of the country.

