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  #41  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Sun Belt View Post

Why would anybody [besides SSP nerds] ever want to cram 2.5 million people in the city limits of S.F.? Let's get real.
It isn't about forcing it to happen but about stopping forcing it to not happen. It is also why you don't want to allow growth to happen in only a small area while the surrounding area isn't touched. If the whole bay area was allowed to naturally grow it would relieve the pressure on the whole area. So with that in play maybe San Francisco doesn't grow to 2.5 million but maybe 1.5 million.

Not trying to pick on San Francisco. The same applies to all cities. Artificially constrain supply and higher prices result. Do this long enough in areas of high demand and you get insane prices.

The current way of doing things clearly isn't working. It simply amplifies the problem. Natural growth makes for a more livable environment. Cities are a major growth engine of the economy. Constricting how they grow and who can afford to live in them is holding back the economy and pricing out to benefit from them.
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  #42  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:29 PM
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Hell, just another 200,000 units (for 400,000+ people) within city limits would double the market-rate housing inventory, and substantially shift prices lower. (My math is all wrong but the concept is right.)
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  #43  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:51 PM
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In the Bay Area I think a lot of the low hanging fruit is outside of San Francisco. San Jose transitions to postwar, single story ramblers very quickly once you leave downtown. Given demand, that city should be a sea of midrises. There is no good reason to preserve a built form of 20th century suburbia just to run a housing cartel for incumbent property owners. One of the problems with single family home zoning is that most of postwar inner suburbia is locked into that form. It may have made sense when you could just build farther out but most larger metros in the US have reached the outer limits of sprawl. Even for metros that don't have geographic boundaries, the limiting factor is people's lack of desire for long commutes. The result is that we are stuck with land use laws that made sense at the time but don't work once a metro has doubled or tripled in size. So the question is, should our cities' land use laws be stuck in amber, maintaining the ideals of the 1970s forever, or should they evolve with the changing needs of each era? Right now, declining affordability is an issue in almost every US metro that has had healthy growth over the last several decades.
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  #44  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:57 PM
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folks can fret over what SF needs to do, but i think the takeaway here is that longer term, we need to get our interior medium-sized cities up to spec for the sake of the longer term economic growth of the u.s., which minneapolis is taking a good lead on.
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  #45  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 5:07 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
yep, that's how chicago achieves so much of of its neighborhood density as well. it's not about attached rowhouses and zero setbacks and tiny little 15' wide streets. it's about flat buildings that put 2-4 homes on every little plot of land where there would otherwise only be one home. intersperse some corner and courtyard apartment buildings and you can easily get a super leafy, super green, wide-open feeling city neighborhood with 25,000 ppsm and nothing over 4 stories tall.
I may be biased because I live in it, but I think this is the ideal form of urbanism. You get the advantages of density, walkability and decent transit but you also get trees, grass and gardens. I'll take the high density version of streetcar suburbia over rowhouses any day.
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  #46  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 5:14 PM
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This is a pretty ignorant comment. A "regular old US city" we are not. But, I guess you'd have to come here and experience it yourself to know that. Why do you think we're simultaneously the coldest major metro in the country and one of the fastest growing Midwest metros?
i was saying its too nice of a city, the us doesnt have cities like the more poor areas in china. streets with no cars and people selling food all over instead of in stores.
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  #47  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 5:31 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
I may be biased because I live in it, but I think this is the ideal form of urbanism. You get the advantages of density, walkability and decent transit but you also get trees, grass and gardens. I'll take the high density version of streetcar suburbia over rowhouses any day.
lol don't summon Crawford, he'll rant about how Brooklyn brownstones is the only kind of urbanism anybody wants to live in and nothing else could possibly be ideal.
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  #48  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 5:33 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
I may be biased because I live in it, but I think this is the ideal form of urbanism. You get the advantages of density, walkability and decent transit but you also get trees, grass and gardens. I'll take the high density version of streetcar suburbia over rowhouses any day.
i'm with you, but i'm also highly biased as well.

when you're accustomed to living in a forested urban garden, those hard-surface rowhouse neighborhoods out east come off as a little too stark and bleak to my softer-edged midwestern sensibilities.

they're still really cool because they're so totally different from anything in chicago, but for residential side-streets i'll choose small front yards and trees every time.


i'll take this: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9803...7i16384!8i8192

over this: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2835...7i13312!8i6656
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Dec 10, 2018 at 5:49 PM.
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  #49  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 8:30 PM
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Or even better yet - dense AND green: https://goo.gl/maps/ndJqVJPyBzL2
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  #50  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 8:48 PM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Or even better yet - dense AND green: https://goo.gl/maps/ndJqVJPyBzL2
the trees of beacon hill are certainly a TREMENDOUS improvement over lesser foliated rowhouse neighborhoods (like the north end), but overall it's still too hard surface IMO.

don't get me wrong, it's an utterly enchanting world to walk through and explore, but for actual day to day living (especially now that i have children), i prefer a little more organics and breathing room.

if i were to live in boston (with unlimited funds, mind you), back bay would be my ideal. it gets the balance better IMO.
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  #51  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 1:11 AM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Or even better yet - dense AND green: https://goo.gl/maps/ndJqVJPyBzL2
last time i stayed in an air bnb in back bay - i DROVE to boston and parked on a densely tree covered GRAVEL lot behind the building. felt like the catskills or something behind the building.
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  #52  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 1:45 PM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Or even better yet - dense AND green: https://goo.gl/maps/ndJqVJPyBzL2
The density is cool, but the greenspace is more decorative as opposed to functional. Walk down that Chicago street in the summer, and you'll swear you're in an actual forest, be it the smell of the fresh leaves, the noise of the cicadas or birds, or the appearance of rabbits and other animals. It's something you can't convey in pictures, and a dynamic that tree planters in more concrete cities don't have.
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  #53  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:17 PM
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^ Damn right, walk down that street and you might just see Gandalf himself inviting you on an adventure to distant lands
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  #54  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:32 PM
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It's just my opinion, but I feel like the need for street trees and/or other greenery is highly contingent on the width of the streets and setback/height of the structures.

For example, in the North End link discussed above, the trees actually look out of place. It might be partially because they're small and spindly (likely due to some combination of being recently planted and getting little direct sunlight) but the roads already feel like "outdoor rooms" in terms of enclosure. You don't need a tree in your living room, and you don't need a tree on a tight street or alley either. In some cases building facades are also quite interesting, and you don't want them obscured by trees.

On the other hand, streets like the two-story Baltimore rowhouse street linked do need more trees. The road is a bit wider, but more importantly, the buildings are also shorter. The "open" feeling means much more greenery can go in (and thrive). Hell, considering the road appears to be one lane with two parking lanes, they could easily narrow the road and widen the sidewalk, which would help provide the needed room.

It's also worth noting if you look at the old European cities that most everyone on this forum loves, there is nary a tree to be seen outside of the parks and some grand boulevards. In some cities there are significant numbers of trees hidden within courtyards, but not on public display.

There's no particular reason every city needs to pretend it's in the middle of a forest.
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  #55  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:33 PM
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Sure you can, for the exact reason he stated. Paris fits 2.5 million people into a geographic area smaller than the 49 square miles for SF. Now, I'm not saying that this is desirable or possible politically, but it certainly is possible without having a single skyscraper - just upzone everything to 6-8 stories and you'd be there even without touching parks, etc.
While, yes, theoretically possible, really it's impossible.

Paris only works because it has the densest metro system on earth, and you would have to totally flatten SF and rebuild from scratch. Also, you would have to eliminate pretty much all health/safety/zoning rules of the last 150 years.
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  #56  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:46 PM
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There's no particular reason every city needs to pretend it's in the middle of a forest.
of course.

we're just talking about personal preferences here.

my preference is for urban living with a shit-ton of greenery.

i'm highly biased on this matter because that's exactly what i'm used to.



as i said earlier, north end boston (or any old medieval european city center for that matter) is an utterly fantastic place to visit and walk around and get lost in, but for living, i prefer a little more green space breathing room than that. that's why i said i'd prefer to live in back bay over beacon hill or north end in boston.

of course, it's totally fine if you prefer the opposite. we're all different, and that's ok.



bringing this back to minneapolis, it's a fairly typical midwest city with wide streets, front yard setbacks, detached housing, etc. it's never going to look like anything in 18th/19th century boston. this new plan to bring density to its SFH streetcar neighborhoods (which it has in abundance) by allowing SFH replacement with flat buildings (and other ADU's) is the most realistic and practical way to bring a higher level of urbanism to a city with a very different urban form than the colonial cities of the east coast.
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  #57  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:48 PM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Or even better yet - dense AND green: https://goo.gl/maps/ndJqVJPyBzL2
Beacon Hill, while tiny, is about as good as it gets, not only in the Americas, but globally. It's almost perfect.

Much of this discussion (tree vs. not-tree) is conflated with wealth. Wealthy areas have trees and poor areas don't. The Baltimore examples are ghettos. The Midwest doesn't have heavy tree coverage in ghettos either.
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  #58  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 3:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
of course, it's totally fine if you prefer the opposite. we're all different, and that's ok.
My point wasn't so much that I prefer one over another, but in urban planning street trees are taken to be a one-size fits all solution, when they work with certain streetscapes and don't work with others.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
bringing this back to minneapolis, it's a fairly typical midwest city with wide streets, front yard setbacks, detached housing, etc. it's never going to look like anything in 18th/19th century boston. this new plan to bring density to its SFH streetcar neighborhoods (which it has in abundance) by allowing SFH replacement with flat buildings (and other ADU's) is the most realistic and practical way to bring a higher level of urbanism to a city with a very different urban form than the colonial cities of the east coast.
The weirdly low level of density - even in pre-streetcar neighborhoods - in the Upper Midwest (with Chicago as somewhat of an exception) has always kinda confused me. It seems like it was always proto-suburban, with relatively spacious front yards, side setbacks, and detached structures.

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he Baltimore examples are ghettos.
Canton is actually a historically working-class white neighborhood which is pretty far along in terms of gentrification.
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  #59  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 3:02 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
The Midwest doesn't have heavy tree coverage in ghettos either.

they do in places:

englewood: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7842...7i16384!8i8192

auburn gresham: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7533...7i16384!8i8192

north lawndale: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8561...7i16384!8i8192

west garfield: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8788...7i16384!8i8192

austin: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8895...7i16384!8i8192
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  #60  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 3:05 PM
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Canton is actually a historically working-class white neighborhood which is pretty far along in terms of gentrification.
OK, but it's not nearly as wealthy as the neighborhoods it's being compared to. If we aren't comparing socioeconomically similar areas, it isn't a useful comparison. Baltimore's affluent neighborhoods have heavy tree coverage.

Chicago has a "green canopy" in certain affluent northside blocks. The black and Mexican areas that comprise most of the city don't have this. Yes, the Upper Midwest generally tends to have more street trees, because of larger lawns and setbacks, and generally more spaciousness, but socioeconomics play a major role.
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