
Mountain View approves 10,000 homes by Google's North Bayshore project (2017) - luu
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/12/13/mountain-view-google-north-bayshore-approval.html
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baron816
Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are
more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house
and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or
school is amazing too.

People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look
more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t
sustainable, nor is it even that pleasant. Much of SV looks like it did in the
1970s, and you have to sit in a half hour plus of traffic if you want to do
anything. I think we would be in pretty good shape if maybe we didn’t go to
the extremes, but took a housing model more like Paris, London, or Amsterdam.
We can limit heights, but still build dense and create a place people really
want to live in.

~~~
jsolson
If by mixed do you just mean residential over retail?

Is the Bay Area actually opposed to that?

~~~
pkaye
Not sure about Mountain View but I've seen a bunch of new complexes in San
Jose and Santa Clara with the residential over retail construction.

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russellbeattie
Every time they mass-build housing, the results are horrible. The quality of
the homes is always "transitional". In Europe or even New York, you can rent
flats which are large enough for a family and constructed to give you a sense
of privacy, even with density. Floors and ceilings and walls are solid enough
you barely notice you're sharing the building. Shops are always close by, as
well as public transport and schools. California high-occupancy buildings are
always in the middle of nowhere, made on the cheap, meant to last years - not
decades - and aimed at single 20 somethings without any thought to the long
term or general community. If you can't buy a bottle of milk and some bread
without getting into a car, you're doing it wrong.

I grew up in and around Boston, where three family homes and corner groceries
were the norm, schools were in the neighborhood and the T could get you just
about anywhere. I remember seeing Karate Kid when I was young and boggled at
the apartment he lived in (with the empty pool and all the doors facing in
like a motel) and couldn't imagine that was a real apartment building, but
even 30 years later, they're still everywhere in California, and newer
versions aren't much better. Apartments are for collecting poor people and
built as such, and suburbia everywhere else.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Not sure that's true about Europe, most mass-built housing globally suffers
from the same issues.

~~~
russellbeattie
I have to admit that when I say "Europe", I'm talking about Spain where I
lived for 4 years, and a few other countries I've visited over the years. My
son's family in Spain bought into the real estate boom and the flat they
eventually got in a new highrise is actually great and just like I described.
It's smallish by American standards, of course, but not insanely so. And you
can't hear anyone else. It's a real home.

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salimmadjd
(Dec 13, 2017) -

This is a great start. But I think we really need more like 100,000 new units
built. Just to help reverse some of the astronomical housing prices.

I have no idea how a teacher would be able to live in SV and plan to have a
family and everything else. At this rate, the housing costs are unsustainable.
We wont be able to have a functioning city with all the needed staffing like
teachers, nurses, sellers, etc.

I'm rather disappointed by lack of vision from SV and SV companies in this
regard.

Apple has enough money that they could buy a huge block of land across the
hills in Santa Cruz county. Build a large housing community of 10,000+ and
hire the boring company to dig tunnel connecting that community to their new
campus. Probably using autonomous electric shuttles.

That kind of housing project probably lessens the salary demands and I would
imagine the project could not only pay for itself in 5-10 years, but it could
also help increase Apple's retention rate.

~~~
epistasis
Unfortunately Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz have anti-housing factions similar
to everywhere else in the Bay Area, and the pro-housing faction is in earlier
stages of organization than in the Bay Area. Scotts Valley City Council
actually had a member say in open meeting that they don't want "those type of
people" living there, in reference to renters and presumably others without
the means to buy a home. Santa Cruz is similarly non-inclusive, and both are
extremely homogenous communities that tend to scare away the typical racial
diversity seen in a tech company. Many people of color in tech I've met say
they simply don't feel welcome here like they do in the Bay Area.

Santa Cruz also has a green belt. But instead of encouraging density and all
the environmental benefits of density, the aging political crew that enacted
it now prefer sprawl, since they have their single family single story homes
that continue to appreciate at astronomical rates. (At least until the homes
are bought as tear-downs and replaced with single-family two story homes that
extend to all corners of the property to maximize square footage.)

But if anybody can change attitudes, it's probably Apple or Google.

~~~
ryandrake
I would stand up and oppose dense urban housing plopped down in the middle my
suburban single-family home neighborhood, too. I guess that makes me an evil,
dirty NIMBY, but oh well, I'll live with the label.

When your message is "dense urban is the only acceptable way to live" don't be
surprised when people who don't want their neighborhoods to turn into
apartment complexes push back.

~~~
epistasis
Yikes, stop with straw men. Live however you want! Nobody istearing down your
house. Nobody is making you move. And NOBODY is plopping down density in the
middle of single family homes, or even proposing that.

But please just let me live the way I and many others want. Just stop
interfering with mixed use buildings in the middle of commercially zoned
areas. So you might drive by a commercial area that has housing on top of
retail, in a commercially zoned areas. What skin off your back is that?

And yes, it really is one of those small evils to make up crap like this in
order to deny others housing, or a chance at opportunity like previous
generations had.

~~~
ryandrake
I wish it were a straw man. Whenever one of these threads starts here, half
the responses are "we need high rise condos, town homes, and dense urban units
everywhere in the bay area!". If that's not the message intended to be sent,
it's often the message received.

I don't care what you do to an already-urbanized area. Build housing on top of
retail, knock yourself out. Pack another apartment high-rise next to the last
one. Just please respect the desires of people who went out of their way to
find one of the fewer and fewer affordable single family neighborhoods in the
Bay Area to hang on to _their_ lifestyle, too.

~~~
kevinburke
The places where people are proposing new development are almost always along
existing transit corridors or adjacent to job centers, like El Camino Real or
Caltrain.

Even those projects generate opposition. San Mateo just rejected a 10-unit, 35
foot condo building fronting El Camino Real, that had 26 parking spaces,
because... it was "too tall."

Millbrae residents fiercely oppose 5 and 8 story buildings located... adjacent
to the Caltrain and BART station we paid $400 million for two decades ago.

~~~
makomk
The proposed bill I've seen people supporting - SB 827, by the SF state
senator - defined "along existing transit corridors" so broadly that it
covered the entirety of San Francisco and anywhere else with a vaguely
functional bus service, and used state preemption of local laws to set a
minimum height, remove parking minimums, and require local planners to allow
dense mid-rise apartment buildings in the entire area. Its more keen
proponents insist that it's absurd to call this radical in any way because
it's obvious that dense buildings around transit hubs is the way to go.

~~~
MBlume
I mean, if you want to live in a suburb, don't live in San Francisco?

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w1ntermute
10k is a drop in the bucket. We need blocks of high rises going up around all
the Caltrain stops, and a corresponding increase in Caltrain capacity.

~~~
ex3ndr
For what? To turn them into ghetto in 10 years? Examples are almost everywhere
in the world.

~~~
maksimum
There are high rise "settlements" all over the former Eastern Bloc countries,
and none of them have become ghettos. It's social inequality, lack of access
to good health care, and education that lead to ghettos; not density and
public transit.

~~~
adventured
Your points are sound, however you're simply wrong about Eastern Europe not
having high rise ghettos.

Bucharest has several that are among the most dangerous urban areas on earth.
And Romania is better off than some of the poorer Eastern European nations
such as Moldova or Bulgaria.

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RestlessMind
I hope they also invest in roads and mass transit. A lot of residents in those
10K new homes will be working outside of North Bayshore. Heck, even if one is
working at Google, it could be at any other myriad campuses across Sunnyvale /
San Jose / Mt View. There would also be kids, who need to be transported to
schools.

Without roads and transit improvements, North Bayshore can easily turn into a
nightmare.

~~~
andys627
Building roads/auto-dependence will exacerbate said nightmare:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

It's time for a serious change to building around transit, walking, and
biking.

~~~
jonursenbach
The peninsula isn't really walkable.

~~~
closeparen
For it to become walkable, we would have to build buildings close together.

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luka-birsa
Having lived in the valley a couple times for months-long stints I never quite
understood how the Valley doesn't get how cities should be built.

I live in Ljubljana
([https://www.google.si/maps/place/Ljubljana/](https://www.google.si/maps/place/Ljubljana/),
~300k), a capital of a tiny nation of Slovenia. I live in the city center and
have in 5 minutes on foot radius (50m): multiple grocery stores, schools,
kindergartens, parks, market, cafes, restaurants...

In the valley, it's impossible to live without a car. Just getting a freaking
coffee usually includes a ride. ATM = ride, burger = ride, ... You guys spend
hours in your car just to get the basics done. I actually didn't know what to
do in Palo Alto until I got a rental.

And SF ain't any better. Sure there are parts of the city that are actually
similar to what you would expect in a normal, livable European city, but most
of it is not really. And you still need a car to move across town.

I find east coast much better - Boston is quite walkable and New York even
more so.

Can anyone explain to me why do you have this shitty setup in the valley?
Feels so random that it must be some kind-of wierd policy enforcement that
caused this.

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bamboozled
No mention of high density apartment blocks. I find the fascination with urban
sprawl in California really unusual. Maybe I'm missing something but why not
built up instead of out and focus on better transport etc?

~~~
epistasis
Though there are many that agree with you, all it takes is a small minority to
completely block development. And if it's not completely blocked, it can be
delayed with enough changes of plans to significantly increase building costs.

Why cause such problems for others? There are some people, even in this
thread, that view the existence of such options as threats against their way
of life. See for example the quotes in this opinion column about a San
Francisco project in its 26th (!) public meeting:

[https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/a-housing-
crisis-c...](https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/a-housing-crisis-case-
study-the-th-balboa-reservoir-
project/article_2078c688-1609-11e8-8073-539d11304f08.html)

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beambot
Those have to be condos, right? There isn't acreage for 10k single family
homes in that area...

~~~
s0rce
Ideally a mixture of medium and high rise condos and some higher density
single family homes, duplexes and town/row houses would be great.

~~~
hkmurakami
10k in that space has to be midrise condos throughout given that high rises
will meet stern neighborhood resistance.

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kqr2
Article is actually from December 2017.

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austincheney
60,000 per year - [https://qz.com/1189388/conservative-californians-are-
moving-...](https://qz.com/1189388/conservative-californians-are-moving-to-
texas-for-the-home-prices-and-politics/)

The bad part about that is that if the valley already seems like an extreme
mono-culture a mass exodus certainly won't help.

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dolguldur
I fail to connect the renderings shown in the article to 10,000 homes. There's
no way 10,000 units fit into this building. Why are they so obsessed with
building low?

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TaylorGood
The elephant in the room wasn’t addressed. There is an affordable living
developer involved yet no mention of pricing strategy? That said, hard to
imagine it being any different than the highest of comps.

~~~
briandear
Supply and demand. If you increase supply, prices overall will go down.

“Affordable” or other non-market schemes simply raise the prices for everyone
else — including the non rich that don’t win the “affordable” lottery.

More market housing everywhere solves the affordability crisis.

~~~
jartelt
Yes, more housing of any type will help! But, it seems like developers are
only building high end housing, which means only units priced at the very top
of the market are added. It would be great if developers built normal
apartments that do not include every single possible amenity. Not every renter
wants to pay a premium for granite countertops, a fancy gym, a pool, bathrooms
for every bedroom, etc. I just want a well-built apartment that is within a
mile of a caltrain stop, not a $5,000 2 bedroom luxury apartment...

~~~
MBlume
If you passed a law that car manufacturers could only sell 1000 cars per year,
you can bet those would be some really fancy, expensive cars. Just let them
sell cars and they start doing market segmentation and producing budget cars
all on their own. Same with homes.

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zavi
How long will it take for people to actually move in?

~~~
teacpde

      ... it will likely like take years or even decades to 
      build out the 9,850 units that Mountain View has slated 
      for North Bayshore, depending on market conditions.

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fishbone
Slightly off topic, are there any good books on urban planning? It’s a topic I
want to educate myself more on.

~~~
ghaff
You might take a look at the OpenCourseware for the MIT Urban Studies and
planning department: [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-
planning/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/)

A classic is Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. There
was a fairly recent documentary on her as well. This book is a bit of a
Rorschach test though. People who rail against cars highlight her opposition
to Robert Moses' highways. But opponents to large-scale high-rise construction
highlight her general opposition to urban renewal projects.

~~~
fishbone
Thank you for the suggestions

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debt
The housing crisis in the Bay Area will never be fixed at this rate.

~~~
jcriddle4
"....a culmination of more than six years of planning and nearly three years
of public meetings....". Now why would you say that? /S

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Cw67NTN8F
I wonder if it works: Company buys land to build office but sets apart a
certain percentage for employee apartments. In essence a company town. Hires a
management co to run it, no buys just lease. When the company folds, downsizes
or whatever, the apartments are part of it. It costs, but it's cost of doing
business.

Otherwise a huge company can distort the home market .

Maybe not enough land is available, especially in places like NYC or the city
wont let them build 50 stories high apartment buildings?

~~~
kevinburke
Companies could certainly do more, but a lot of cities don't really want them
to. Cupertino stands out in this regard; they wanted the huge office space but
none of the housing for the 14,000 workers the new Apple office would
generate.

~~~
nikanj
My Microsoft HQ friends tell me Redmond is in the same boat.

A lot of millionaires from Microsoft competing for a relatively small supply
of homes close to the office, and everyone else commuting for miles and miles.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
When I worked at MS in Redmond, I lived in Seattle and my commute was 25
minutes. I knew people who had houses in Redmond, and their commute was around
5 minutes. This is not "the same boat" as Cuptertino and MV.

~~~
StudentStuff
MS has moved so much out of Redmond, pushing employees to Downtown Bellevue &
opening up a satellite office in Vancouver, BC. Its quite a change from just a
decade ago, but apparently talent retention is better in Bellevue than out in
the hinterlands of Redmond.

Then again, I don't think I'll ever take a job or live on the Eastside,
perpetually trapped in my car!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I live in downtown Bellevue and rarely drive my car. I wanted to live in
downtown Seattle, but wife and baby objected.

