
The Unaffordable Urban Paradise - piquadrat
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607957/the-unaffordable-urban-paradise/
======
akanet
The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes
how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build
more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major
Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple
rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra
units of housing.

We believe this to be in violation of the Housing Accountability Act, and have
brought a lawsuit against Berkeley that you can read about if you're
interested! [http://www.carlaef.org/berkeley](http://www.carlaef.org/berkeley)

More broadly, the Bay Area needs to build housing as quickly as possible. If
you work at a tech company, please consider getting your company involved. If
you can't participate directly, there are increasingly many groups in the Bay
Area dedicated to lifting outdated zoning restrictions and accelerating the
pace of housing development. We would love to have your patronage!
[http://www.sfyimby.org/](http://www.sfyimby.org/)

~~~
muninn_
Or you can move if you can't afford the area. There are plenty of places with
lower costs of living. You can't live in what is perhaps the most desirable
area in the world and then be upset that people want to protect/increase their
property value or not change how their community is. Not everybody wants to
live in a sea of imposing skyscrapers.

-edit

So I see a few comments discussing things like commuting, urban sprawl,
etc.... Those are fair comments and I largely agree. But the solution proposed
is not the right answer either. We need mixed-use developed walkable
neighborhoods. We need our work places to be mixed within our neighborhoods
along with our parks, convenience stores, and everything in between. Obviously
I'm not a fan of sprawl, but I'm not a big fan of skyscrapers, and I'm also
not a fan of others being upset about the affordability of the world's most
desirable areas. While it is true that there is much more economic opportunity
in a place like San Francisco than, say, middle-of-nowhere Arizona or
something, it would be incorrect to suggest that there is no economic
opportunity. Frankly, the assessment being made here is that you're choosing
to suffer a 2-hour each-way commute and unaffordable rent for the opportunity
to work at really cool companies, but the solution, which is to force other
people to change their way of life, even if you find it contemptable, is an
inherently immoral stance. If a town votes in a mayor who does what the town
wants, what is more American, and democratic than that? Is overrunning the
town with lawsuits and fights an ethical thing to do? I don't think so. Pack
your stuff, and move. When (insert company here) can't get employees to
relocate to the insanity that is the Bay Area, they'll move their offices, and
things will resolve naturally and peacefully.

Disclaimer: I have never lived long-term in the Bay Area and I have no vested
interest in how any of this turns out. If anything, reading the horror stories
about people subletting camping spots in their backyard and the like amuses me
(obviously I feel bad too). I do confess I have a vested interest in promoting
mixed-use development neighborhoods and I would like to see more people move
out of the Bay Area and back into the rest of the United States as I believe
that the concentration of wealth and knowledge in one (or a few) areas is
contributing to the fractures in our society and anti-competitiveness of our
second and third-tier cities.

~~~
twobyfour
1) A city can't survive if the people needed to work the jobs to make it an
appealing place to live can't afford to live within commute distance.

2) The more affordable places tend to have less economic opportunity (which is
part of why they're in lower demand and more affordable in the first place),
so moving there isn't necessarily a win.

~~~
muninn_
To your second point. The large issue here has more to do with moving to the
areas with more economic opportunity instead of creating economic opportunity
where you currently reside. The culture of moving on a whim, not creating a
stable network of family and friends in your neighborhoods, and other factors
are contributing to our social problems.

~~~
twobyfour
Well, creating economic opportunity can be a chicken-and-egg problem. For
instance, there are extra challenges to starting a tech startup in a location
without a large existing pool of software developers.

------
shawnee_
_Now everything’s changed. In 2016, the San Francisco metro area was the top
location for venture capital investment in the country, hauling in $23.4
billion—more than triple the VC investment in Silicon Valley proper._

Interesting numbers, what seems to be evidence of inflation chasing inflation.
There's no logical justification for such a concentrated purse of investment
dollars benefiting so few people. Furthermore, it would seem that it's
benefiting the same people over and over ... the most obvious driver here is
turnover. Probably there are a lot of PMCs in SF who absolutely bet on (hope
for) the failure of most of the companies getting these investment dollars,
the second they've signed their leases. Because who doesn't lose out when a
startup fails and has to shutdown? The rent takers, the leaseholders prepared
with aggressive litigation... everybody else loses. (As a side note, I'm
pretty sure this is how the current US president's family empire was built:
[http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcpnews-
trump-s...](http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcpnews-trump-s-son-
in-law-is-a-baltimore-slumlord-and-that-s-not-even-the-worst-of-
it-20170523-story.html))

 _In the 1980s, I was part of a team doing research into the geography of the
high-tech industry. We couldn’t find a single significant high-tech company in
an urban neighborhood. Instead, they were all out in the suburbs—not just
Intel and Apple in Silicon Valley, or Microsoft in the Seattle suburbs, but
the Route 128 beltway outside Boston, and the corporate campuses of North
Carolina’s Research Triangle._

Because companies in the 80's were smarter. They knew that if you wanted to
build a company that can build equity, you cannot be beholden to the lease
holders and the rent takers. They built in the burbs because that is where
they could establish equity. Today the "barriers to entry" for owning in SF
are just too high for most; the continual delusion of people who think they
can build a sustainable business model while being based in SF is mind-
boggling to me.

~~~
ams6110
Renting has been the standard model for suburban office parks too. Most
companies do not own their own office buildings. It's more common for
specialized space, e.g. manufacturing facilities but not usually done for
offices.

~~~
maxsilver
> Renting has been the standard model for suburban office parks too. Most
> companies do not own their own office buildings

For small business, sure. But is that really true in SF for mid-size to major
companies? I know this is a midwest-skewed perspective, but most mid-sized and
large companies really do _own_ their suburban office buildings / HQ buildings
here.

The only office space I know of that they rent, is the expensive monopolized
spaces downtown. Which would seem to reinforce parent posters point.

~~~
kasey_junk
> most mid-sized and large companies really do own their suburban office
> buildings / HQ buildings here

I'd love to see some statistics on that because it doesn't jive with my
experience in large companies in the midwest. Ownership of land was considered
a major negative when I was working in large companies but its definitely been
a while and the sample size is small.

~~~
bluedino
A lot of companies (or at least the owners of the company) do own the building
they are in, through a holding company of sorts that the company then rents
from.

~~~
kasey_junk
Thats clearly true of smaller companies. And there are larger companies that
have significant real estate holdings as that is a major component of their
business (McDonalds for instance).

But office/operations space being owned was generally viewed as inefficient
for large companies that didn't have real estate ownership as a core function
because its a pretty bad asset for a company both as a store of value and as
an investment in innovation.

------
ptero
Be careful what you wish for -- setting the minimum wage to half the
prevailing wage at a municipality is likely to create very weird setups,
especially where a richer cluster is next to a residential or poorer one, e.g.
Manhattan and Jersey City.

Bank tellers and janitors in Manhattan would be getting a fortune compared to
the same job being done (by the same company) less than a mile away. I suspect
the "bonus" jobs will quickly have all sorts of semi-illegal strings attached
to them; there will be a rush by employers to reclassify jobs as being done in
a poorer area (we do not work there, we are just visiting / delivering), etc.

While the current state has problems, the proposed fix may be worse than the
disease it is trying to cure. My 2c.

------
ionwake
Please do correct me if I am wrong.

But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was
simply because they had just won a world war?

I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it
was in large part to success in the war?

If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it
causing mass unemployment in the present?

I must be misunderstanding something.

~~~
zucchini_head
Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not
necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but
because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely
flattened.

Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the
two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to
smouldering ashes and took around 30-40 years to recover.

That's why the USA auto industry declined on an enormous scale after the 80's,
because in the end the USA was never automobile king. There was never the
"good old Detroit days". It was just a temporary market vacuum that the USA
capitalised on, while Germany and Japan, who simply were better at making cars
(debatable of course, but they make more money and that's probably the most
reliable metric here), were rebuilding their entire country from catastrophe.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hm, doesn't seem to add up. Flattened countries were not buying cars - so the
foreign market for US cars would actually go down post-war? As for reduced
competition - how many foreign cars did America import before the war? We're
talking the excess capacity of pre-WWII Germany - a depressed economy (the
indirect cause of WWII) which couldn't have been much.

I'd credit an increased US appetite for goods, a huge influx of trained
workers (trained by the military for war purposes) and a excess war-related
manufacturing capacity turned to domestic goods with the prices reduced by
volume manufacturing.

All of which could be called "because the US won".

~~~
zucchini_head
Yes but was the decrease in demand greater in magnitude than the increase in
sales due to less competition? I'de disagree, but getting numbers on these
things is very difficult since it's a long time ago. Most of what you'll get
is "general ideas" that the industry was "fairly big/small".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. Which puts the claim that 'decreased competition in markets from
flattened economies of the losers helped American manufacturing', in an
equally foggy light.

~~~
zucchini_head
Hmm, i've definitely heard that story about decreased competition being a
factor in USA post-war prosperity, but I seem to have been misinformed, since
after looking at [1], it was due to a lot of things - namely increased
fertility and farmers learning how to do more economically valuable jobs - but
not from them winning the war.

What's very sad is when you read a little further on about the USA economic
decline after 1970 to today...

Anyway thank you for letting me know I was being a dingus!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States#Postwar_prosperity:_1945.E2.80.931973)

------
awkward
This article is a pretty big turnaround for Richard Florida - he's credited
with the ideological underpinning of a lot of the urban renewal that has
caused gentrification and other problems.

------
sevensor
This piece is by Richard Florida, who helped create the very problem he
laments. Ten-fifteen years ago, he was talking up the same cities as magnets
for the "creative class." Now all of a sudden he's concerned about the
janitors and street sweepers? I'm not taking Florida seriously if he can't
acknowledge his past myopia.

~~~
kasey_junk
Isn't this him doing just that? The creative class came back to the cities,
changing what the problems are?

~~~
sevensor
We needed better transit and affordable housing ten years ago too. Florida
just didn't care at the time. That's what I think is missing -- a _mea culpa_
for ignoring crucial urban issues and promoting the kind of growth that would
muscle out the non-"creative" people a city needs to function. Big scare
quotes for "creative", by the way. My other pet peeve with Florida is that he
thinks creativity is the exclusive province of the affluent.

~~~
maxsilver
> (Florida needs to issue) a mea culpa for ignoring crucial urban issues and
> promoting the kind of growth that would muscle out the non-"creative" people
> a city needs to function

To his credit, he did sort of do that, about a year ago.

"I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities,
become a new middle class like my father's, and we were going to live happily
forever after," Florida said. "I could not have anticipated among all this
urban growth and revival that there was a dark side to the urban creative
revolution, a very deep dark side."

[http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/texanomics/article/...](http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/texanomics/article/The-
Reeducation-of-Richard-Florida-10165064.php)

~~~
sevensor
I was unaware of this statement, and I agree that it's to his credit to have
said it. Personally I think he needs to keep saying it until he's righted the
balance, but it's a start.

------
sgt101
Or tech companies could pay taxes that allow for proper urban development just
like real companies do? Apple, I am looking at you and your $200bn pile of not
taxed money and I am not impressed!

------
dasmoth
This is an incredibly "urbanist" piece. No mention at all of companies moving
to less-populous locations, let alone alternatives such as remote work. It's
hard not to be left with the impression that the author isn't going to be
happy until everyone is living like ants.

~~~
stupidcar
Hard not to be left with the impression that you consider people who enjoy
living in cities to be insects, and expect every piece you read to reflect
that bizarre prejudice.

~~~
dasmoth
There are many variations on "living in cities". Some of them involve single-
family dwellings and lots of private space. It actually seems to be those
models which are most strongly under attack right now.

~~~
TulliusCicero
They're under attack because they make those cities unaffordable to most,
they're a cash transfer from immigrants to the emplaced, from the young to the
old.

They're under attack because they can't possibly scale.

They're under attack because they take more energy and are more hostile to
walking, biking, and transit.

They're under attack because they're not the natural outcome of people
expressing preferences in the market, but rather the result of enforced
government zoning regulations.

They're under attack because said zoning regulations are social engineering
designed to -- in concert with neighborhood-based school district boundaries
-- segregate people based on class.

~~~
maxsilver
> (single family homes with reasonable space) they make those cities
> unaffordable, they can't possibly scale, they are more hostile to walking,
> biking, and transit.

None of that is actually true.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU)
Apartments are great for those who want them, but there's nothing wrong or
anti-urban about family housing.

You can easily give everyone (edit: everyone who wants one) their own single-
family detached housing (with privacy, and parking), inside a major city, for
really cheap. It would still be 100% supportive of walking, biking, and
transit, and can scale for at least the next 100 years. I can state this as a
simple fact, because it is, it already exists on Earth today.

Wealthier Americans just refuse to let that happen in our own cities. We
simply don't build urban housing for families (even in instances where zoning
rules do allow it) so families literally can't make that choice. Cities force
sprawl, and then complain that decisions must be made to service the sprawl
_they themselves_ made.

~~~
jacobolus
“Everyone”? The first video you linked shows that the specific neighborhood in
Tokyo is filled with low-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings.

~~~
maxsilver
"Everyone" meaning everyone who wants one.

The average family making average wages in Tokyo, can afford a _brand new_
detached home inside central Tokyo.

The same is not true in any of the top 50 cities in the US. Even the smaller
unpopular cities, even the cities that have slower population growth than
Tokyo, or have cheaper land than Tokyo.

~~~
aninhumer
What exactly do you mean by "central Tokyo" here? I'm fairly sure the average
family cannot buy a detached house in Ginza for example.

~~~
maxsilver
"The 23 special wards that make up the core and most populated portion of
Tokyo" \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo)

You should watch the videos linked above, it explains all of this in simple
but detailed language.

~~~
aninhumer
While it's laudable that people can afford detached housing in the extended
metro area, I think calling the special wards "central Tokyo" is a bit of a
stretch. (Especially given that they reach the border of Tokyo prefecture to
the north and east.)

But in any case, as far as I can see your vision doesn't even conflict with
the urbanists. They want the dense urban cores and excellent public transport
that allows Tokyo's suburbs to exist. Where they are hostile to suburbs, it's
where they are enforced by zoning and are getting in the way of density in
places where it makes sense and making single family dwellings more expensive
in the process.

Indeed many would argue that the success of cities in Japan can be largely
attributed to their laxer zoning laws, which is one of the primary things
urbanists argue for.

------
petraeus
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses, the great American dream.

