The real solution for SF of course is that anything within walking distance of shops should be built at > 20 storeys (or so). And 60% of the increase of value derived from this should be captured by government to build public transport, improve streets and parks, etc. to handle the increased density.
Exactly this but not only in SF "commercial areas", all along BART and Caltrain and VTA stations. They do it a little at some stations but they need much more density and radius. The 20 min walk radius from the stations should encourage 5-18 (give or take) floor mixed use but mostly residential buildings.
>20 stories is what a lot of SF residents fear from new construction. "Manhattanization" was a big fear there.
As a political compromise, consider low-rise (~5-7 story) buildings. This is what most of Paris and some of the trendiest Manhattan neighborhoods (West Village, East Village) have, and it feels nothing like what people picture when they think of densities at 80k+ people per sq. mile.
I agree mid- and high-rise buildings are best for transit and commercial hubs, but low-rise in all other walkable areas is sufficient to make a huge difference in SF with less dramatic change in character, sunlight, etc--the usual NIMBY concerns.
Political compromise is what lead to the mess as it is today. Constantly compromising with residents has lead to a ridiculous situation where there has become a false notion that "they don't have to change".
SF changed already, it changed in ways to find coping mechanisms to deal with the damage being done to its future. The entire city of SF cannot continue to be the tech hub of the world and composed of (excuse my hyperbole I don't have accurate statistics on hand) 90% comprised of historical property that cannot be torn down or changed ever in any way.
I agree there's been way too much pandering to NIMBYism. But this is politics, and as much as we'd all like to we can't just ignore them: they vote too, so we have to convince them to vote for what we want.
Lucky for us, I believe you can have your cake and eat it too: SF housing demand is actually not high enough to require huge swaths of high-rises. It'd help a ton, but so would a mixed option. In fact I think the mixed option is better: see my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11278295
What if they picked one small, area, perhaps somewhere in SoMA, and built all the skyscrapers there and not anywhere else? That way the buildings are all centralized and nobody gets gentrified.
Sure, I agree it'd be great to pick a hub and fill it with high-rise buildings. But I'd advocate a multi-pronged approach; high-rises at hubs, low- and mid-rises elsewhere. Consider the following:
(1) Skyscrapers are very expensive per livable sq. ft. and take long to build. Low-rises are comparable to single-family homes, so they're lower-risk for developers, come about faster, and have a lower minimum rent price (in the wonderful event SF builds enough housing for rents to go down).
(2) If you neglect the rest of the city and create a sharp density cliff, transit patterns will be wonky. SF is in an odd in-between stage regarding public transit, and creating a transit-oriented dense central neighborhood hurts commutes from other semi-car-based neighborhoods: they should be denser to justify an increase in buses and trains needed by the city.
(3) In a medium-density city like SF, low-rise apartments would make a huge difference in supply. Consider the fact that the NYC neighborhood East Village, comprised mostly of 3-6 story low-rises, is (IIRC) the 2nd densest residential neighborhood after a part of the Upper East Side, pushing over 100k per sq. mile. Because this avoids the problems of high-rises[1] (e.g. blocked sunlight, like Manhattan's FiDI), it's not nearly as unattractive to NIMBYs. The few I've met hate skyscrapers, not low-rises.
I think HN might have a skewed perception of what levels of density correspond to different building heights, and what those buildings cost (in time and money). You don't really see huge swaths of residential high-rises in Manhattan most anywhere. That's due to both quality of life and cost reasons[2]. SF doesn't need to become Hong Kong anytime soon--there's not that much demand--so it's worth considering other options for the sake of political tractability.
[2] You could argue that in the past 10 years, Manhattan has had an increased need for more high-rises. But because of cost and the cliff reason mentioned above, it turns out a big part of the cost pressure in NYC has come from an inability to build low- and mid-rise buildings in Queens (which has comparable density to SF).
These comparisons of midrise to highrise are common but not accurate. What you miss is (1) nobodys going to build the quality of east village or european cities (2) similarly high rises are much better now than the doom and gloom of the 60s housing estates (3) density comparisons (jane jacobs) were built on the above models where towers had masses of unusable apace around them. In reality of course towers allow greater density. (4) east village and europe dont allow parkig which is a necessity in most of SF outside centres worthy of greater density anyway (try adding 100 cars and driveway entries to your photos) (5) absolutely there is hk levels of demand built up - it will take a lot of towers in sf to dent the housing prices. Let me assure you - developers would well prefer to build high rise than low rise. (6) For a comparable density towers will actualy provide more evenly shared sunlight than a street wall approach. (7) increased infrastructure requirementts for density are far easier to provided in small dense areas than spread across a city
Vancouver is a good example of a city successfully adopting towers as a typology (as well as the obvious asian examples). You wont find something comparable with midrise as its not adoptable at the same scale for the reasons above.
Sounds like we have different philosophies on dealing with political hurdles and managing cars as SF gets denser, so I won't further my argument.
But I'm curious if you have sources for claims (1), (5), and (6), since they don't line up with any knowledge I have. And I really like this topic so I'd love to learn more :)
And just some FYIs you probably already know but just making sure:
* #2/#3, high-rises in the vast majority of non-NYCHA Manhattan aren't the (horrific) towers-in-the-park style you're referring to. I'd forgotten about those!
* #4, East Village does have parking garages.
* Asian cities vary so much in planning that both you and I can probably find dozens of examples of what we're referring to :) (I'm partial to Tokyo and Taipei myself.)
I probably wrote that a little quickly. To clarify
(1-3) the broader issue is to ensure an even comparison. Typical debates around this issue show very nice historic examples of low-rise apartments and at best mediocre high rise. Originally the density comparisons of jane jacobs who this argument derives from were arguing (very rightly) for the retention of heritage areas like grenwich village against turning into terrible 60s estates. However when comparing new with new and in todays context the result is quite different. In general terms the quality of new build high rise tends to be better than new build low rise and the streets for new build low rise dont look much like your photo (though i wish they could)
(4) im all for reducing parking. But apart from a few places (which should focus on higher densities imo) SF is not approaching grenwich village levels of walkability and will need more cars.
(5) not sure which part you disagree with. Any developer (big enough to be able) will tell you theyd rather build high rise. Comparative hosuing prices to other cities show that there ia huge pent up demand in SF. In hong kong it started from the other direction - huge amounts of public housing were built to ensure employers didnt have to pay workers too much.
(6) 'perimeter-blocks' over a few storeys tend to strongly overshadow low levels and streets while large upper storeys get good sun all the time. Towers (or rather slender, well separated towers - like vancouver) have shadows which move around more and distribute the overahadowing more
If so I think we largely agree on SF's ideal future, and differ only in how to manage the politics and our understanding of the extent to which low- and mid-rise development would benefit SF.
