You have things 100% backwards. High density should mean improved public transport because the economic incentives will shift to favor it strongly.
Low density sprawl is a huge factor in traffic because it pulls people apart. You can't walk anywhere because you have to live more than half an hour walk from the local shop, the local butcher, florist, cafe, gallery. Zombie existence? The low density shit hole that is the Bay Area is a zombie existence. European lifestyle with its much higher density and much better road traffic is the antithesis of zombie existence.
Right. I agree that it should improve public transport and infrastructure. But it hasn’t in the Bay Area. We vote for propositions and bond measures every election cycle only for the state to disappoint us again and again. The end result is high density without community benefits and infrastructure improvements.
Case in point, I can’t go out to get a bottle of milk between 2.00-7.00 because of traffic. People are cutting through residential roads due to traffic apps diverting them away from freeways which are clogged anyways. There are no shops within a mile of most homes. There are shopping hubs and then there are residential developments. Due to greed, Bay Area cities (ABAG is the name of the org) has zoned everything residential and there are no shops, no green spaces, no parks..no parking and no public transport! Just homes and homes and more high density homes to extract as much property taxes as possible. So these are not even affordable homes but expensive million dollar homes. These tax dollars go to improve other areas in California that is not as well off as Bay Area. Hence the awfulness of our region.
You’d think as a cash cow we would get some benefits for shouldering the economy of this state massively, but no...we are just a place where Sacramento can milk and milk and milk more for taxes. You’d think they’d improve other parts of California.
So obviously something is off..if this is a repeating pattern, then perhaps we must correct our assumptions about the benefits of high density vis a vis sustainability and quality of life. The data doesn’t deliver the promised benefits.
In the Bay Area, we don’t have low density sprawl. We have high to medium density already and most land is built out. We have a public transportation problem with both intra and inter city gridlocks.
The solution is to build outside and developing the public transport system to connect the hubs in the state. They have already wasted millions and millions on this with no impact except creating unsupported high density dwellings leading to more traffic woes.
Fifty years is ridiculous. Most of us won’t be alive and our children would already be burdened with debt before they are born. In China, roads and bridges and homes are built in months. Not even years. Here the bureaucracy of big govt makes any project going like one is rowing a boat through a creek of molasses.
So how do we fix this? Certainly not by handing over more tax dollars to Sacramento every time they come up with another hare brained scheme.
I mean..even this post here..check the article. They only know that they need 100 billion. No plan. No ideas as to how to collect it. No way for us to perform due diligence.
That's the fault of lack of public transport investment, but you will never get that investment if you don't increase density. If you bring the entire Bay Area into the South Bay, people's commute distances will be shorter. You then build much better public transport and the traffic will be alleviated.
"High to medium density". Absolute nonsense. Have you seen the South Bay? What looks high density to you?
In the Bay Area, they merged ABAG with the transport authority last year. It’s like ..how you say..a cartel.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘bring the entire Bay Area into the south bay’? It makes no sense to me.
I see no logic in asking for more and more high density housing developments with NO plans and NO supporting infrastructure. You can’t cram people into a closed and bounded geographical region without providing adequate resources and essential services and infrastructure.
And why should the South Bay bear the burden of supporting the entire inflow? Is it punishment for being successful and productive?
You BUILD infrastructure FIRST and then plan cities around it. That’s common sense.
Yes. South Bay is high density. I believe that. Next?
I am looking at for value for money and quality of life. Bay Area is not a ‘tiny ghost town’. It’s crowded and struggling with a serious deficit in imagination wrt city planning. It’s my town. I have a vote and I intend to use it. Please use yours if you want to change the system.
That’s right. Zoning laws are stupid. Who needs trees in a city? Or parks? Right? Let’s keep building high density homes and let our kids decide if they want to stand in a queue to go to the rest room or have lunch because new schools aren’t being built to accommodate the high density homes. Sounds like a plan.
Why ON EARTH would people work their arses off if they can’t live well and be a proud NIMBY? This is such fundamental human psychology that I am amazed that so many people don’t get it. I have never met a person who is a home owner in the Bay Area who is fighting for high density. Not one. It’s those who want to get in here who wants to build more and more. It’s pretty clear why and once they get a foot in..boom! The transformation to NIMBY begins. And I completely understand that!
Build responsibly. Build infrastructure. Build community benefits. Don’t take tens of thousands of dollars in taxes from high earning zipcodes and distribute it all to lower earning zip codes. The community deserves benefits. Everyone who is productive will QUIT the Bay Area they created if they don’t feel rewarded. And space is a luxury. And omg..do we pay for it through taxes and cost of living!!
Or.
People could move to Copenhagen. It’s a dream, I hear.
Low density sprawl is a huge factor in traffic because it pulls people apart. You can't walk anywhere because you have to live more than half an hour walk from the local shop, the local butcher, florist, cafe, gallery. Zombie existence? The low density shit hole that is the Bay Area is a zombie existence. European lifestyle with its much higher density and much better road traffic is the antithesis of zombie existence.