Georgia Turning Blue

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K1052

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When it comes to California(or the West Coast in general from Cali all the way to Alaska)there are numerous Environmental considerations as well. Being on major Fault Lines with high risk of Earthquakes makes some terrain unsuitable for High Density buildings or you may want to control Densities in order to better respond to such a disaster. Another big issue is Water which is in short Supply. When you are already reaching the limits of Water Supply, increasing the Population does not seem wise.

No. Asia builds both dense and tall despite earthquake risk. This can be substantially mitigated with technology and building codes. Urban areas are the most efficient users of water there are, it is the inland ag guys using flood irrigation to grow crops (often for export) that are the problem as the supply has wained. The irony is that we don't need to build Tokyo to fix this since allowing a couple extra floors to be built, eliminating parking minimums/min unit sizes/setbacks, and zoning more widely for housing would do it. The first one was actually proposed in SF when I lived there and the prospect of turning a 2 floor building into a 4 floor building caused people to shit bricks. We're not exactly talking about turning the Sunset District into Shinjuku here.

California has a housing crisis because California, chiefly it's municipalities, obstructs housing from being constructed. The issue is non-partisan. Go see what reaction trying to build apartments in the Beach Cities of Orange County gets you where there are conservatives aplenty.
 
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fskimospy

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No. Asia builds both dense and tall despite earthquake risk. This can be substantially mitigated with technology and building codes. Urban areas are the most efficient users of water there are, it is the inland ag guys using flood irrigation to grow crops (often for export) that are the problem as the supply has wained. The irony is that we don't need to build Tokyo to fix this since allowing a couple extra floors to be built, eliminating parking minimums/min unit sizes/setbacks, and zoning more widely for housing would do it. The first one was actually proposed in SF when I lived there and the prospect of turning a 2 floor building into a 4 floor building caused people to shit bricks. We're not exactly talking about turning the Sunset District into Shinjuku here.

California has a housing crisis because California, chiefly it's municipalities, obstructs housing from being constructed. The issue is non-partisan. Go see what reaction trying to build apartments in the Beach Cities of Orange County gets you where there are conservatives aplenty.
Not to mention that 80% of water in California is used for agriculture, much of it extremely wasteful.

Now they will of course come up with new reasons to oppose development, all while claiming to care about regular people, the homeless, etc.
 

fskimospy

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When did I make this about Democrats vs. Republicans little buddy ;) ?

Glad to see your partisanship is in full force little billy. Go make me a sammich.
You explicitly made it about Democrats vs. Republicans and the others are right.

Stupidity about development is a bipartisan affair. The main difference is that it’s worse when liberals do it because they claim to care about the poorer and less fortunate while conservatives don’t give a shit.
 
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Dec 10, 2005
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No. Asia builds both dense and tall despite earthquake risk. This can be substantially mitigated with technology and building codes. Urban areas are the most efficient users of water there are, it is the inland ag guys using flood irrigation to grow crops (often for export) that are the problem as the supply has wained. The irony is that we don't need to build Tokyo to fix this since allowing a couple extra floors to be built, eliminating parking minimums/min unit sizes/setbacks, and zoning more widely for housing would do it. The first one was actually proposed in SF when I lived there and the prospect of turning a 2 floor building into a 4 floor building caused people to shit bricks. We're not exactly talking about turning the Sunset District into Shinjuku here.

California has a housing crisis because California, chiefly it's municipalities, obstructs housing from being constructed. The issue is non-partisan. Go see what reaction trying to build apartments in the Beach Cities of Orange County gets you where there are conservatives aplenty.
Yep. As long as every housing project in HCOL areas has to be fought for plot-by-plot, things will remain expensive for most (and only premium housing will be built). Simplifying building rules by being transparent upfront with some wholesale rezoning could go a long way towards fixing housing issues.

But alas, NIMBYism is strong in many places and many residents have a rather poor understanding of why housing is so expensive.
 

fskimospy

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Yep. As long as every housing project in HCOL areas has to be fought for plot-by-plot, things will remain expensive for most (and only premium housing will be built). Simplifying building rules by being transparent upfront with some wholesale rezoning could go a long way towards fixing housing issues.

But alas, NIMBYism is strong in many places and many residents have a rather poor understanding of why housing is so expensive.
And to add to this most of the people with the most input into local land use issues are incumbent property owners, meaning they directly profit from preventing more housing from being built.
 
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And to add to this most of the people with the most input into local land use issues are incumbent property owners, meaning they directly profit from preventing more housing from being built.
Yep. Another way to view it is that most of the beneficiaries of an expanded housing market don't live in the area yet, so their voices are not heard. Local politics on the issue are very one-sided towards the people already living in the area.
 

fskimospy

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That is not what's happened in Denver at all. Former old warehouse districts are being massively developed-

It may not always happen but broadly speaking incumbent property owners are the main NIMBY force and who profits from extreme housing scarcity? The people who own the houses.

NIMBYism’s end result is a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the better off.
 

fskimospy

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A quick google search's first result said Denver build 66 new houses per 10,000 residents despite having a growth rate double that of cities that built similar amounts. This is not even close to enough.

This is one of the problems, we've gotten used to housing construction that's so ludicrously low that we see merely insufficient levels and think they are a building boom.
 

hal2kilo

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Restrictive zoning laws are not something exclusive to progressive areas. There are many areas of the country, and I've lived in one, that are not so blue but don't want to allow anything but single family zoning. Everybody wants to hold onto their property value. This is not an exclusive mindset. In some areas it makes total sense - infrastructure can only support so much population. Especially in red areas, they have zero idea of what it means to have public transport and amenities. This is why when I visited Houston it was such a concrete jungle of shit compared to NYC in regards to public transport. Same with Dallas. In other areas it does make sense to allow more density, if you provide the supporting infrastructure. This is something progressives can sometimes have a hard time with, but conservatives? They are hopeless, they have zero shot of figuring this part out. Our only hope lies with progressive leaning people, this is why the vast majority of people leaving big cities bring this mindset with them and move to more blue areas and vote in the same way. They don't think like regressives like you.
It so much better having real estate developers plan out your community, than having input from the masses.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
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Even if larger development does happen, and I've seen it happen here, there isn't much in the way of affordable housing. That's another problem.
 

fskimospy

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It so much better having real estate developers plan out your community, than having input from the masses.
This is actually 100% true. Real estate developers have to make housing that people want to buy or rent. Incumbent property owners however are incentivized to PREVENT anyone from building things people want to buy or rent as it diminishes the value of their own holdings - this is why they use the power of government to block people using their own land.

As for the masses, they aren't asked for input as it is anyway. They would have far more input with their wallets and their feet than they have now.
 

fskimospy

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Even if larger development does happen, and I've seen it happen here, there isn't much in the way of affordable housing. That's another problem.
New housing that is also affordable is kind of a non-sequitur. When new housing is built it is generally nicer than existing housing so it is more expensive. Rich people buy that and vacate their previous housing, which people of more modest means occupy.

The old shitbox that people look down on today was often originally some new, nice building.
 
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MrSquished

Lifer
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New housing that is also affordable is kind of a non-sequitur. When new housing is built it is generally nicer than existing housing so it is more expensive. Rich people buy that and vacate their previous housing, which people of more modest means occupy.

The old shitbox that people look down on today was often originally some new, nice building.

That's not really how real estate works in many cases. Higher end housing is built, driving up prices in the neighborhood across the board, pricing people out of their old housing at some point. It's gentrification in action. Also you are telling me someone leaving a desirable apartment in Brooklyn to head to a newly developed but larger luxury place in Hoboken, NJ, is going to make their desirable Brooklyn address now less valuable? Not happening. The landlord in Brooklyn might even raise the rent on the same exact place (pre-Covid)
 

fskimospy

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That's not really how real estate works in many cases. Higher end housing is built, driving up prices in the neighborhood across the board, pricing people out of their old housing at some point. It's gentrification in action. Also you are telling me someone leaving a desirable apartment in Brooklyn to head to a newly developed but larger luxury place in Hoboken, NJ, is going to make their desirable Brooklyn address now less valuable? Not happening. The landlord in Brooklyn might even raise the rent on the same exact place (pre-Covid)
It’s not how real estate works now because zoning regulations MASSIVELY limit what can be built and where.

For example Prospect-Lefferts Gardens has seen a lot of gentrification in recent years, and considerable new housing construction. Who are the people living there? The people who used to live in Park Slope. Since new construction is effectively banned in Park Slope though, it’s impossible to build new housing so they could stay there. Instead, they move down the train line another stop.

This is another incredibly destructive effect of NIMBYism that is rarely taken into account. They think new construction causes gentrification when it’s really the prevention of new construction where people already live.

Think about it this way too - the fundamental anti development argument is that building more houses will make the average house more expensive. An inverted supply/demand curve. Does that make sense?
 

MrSquished

Lifer
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It’s not how real estate works now because zoning regulations MASSIVELY limit what can be built and where.

For example Prospect-Lefferts Gardens has seen a lot of gentrification in recent years, and considerable new housing construction. Who are the people living there? The people who used to live in Park Slope. Since new construction is effectively banned in Park Slope though, it’s impossible to build new housing so they could stay there. Instead, they move down the train line another stop.

This is another incredibly destructive effect of NIMBYism that is rarely taken into account. They think new construction causes gentrification when it’s really the prevention of new construction where people already live.

Think about it this way too - the fundamental anti development argument is that building more houses will make the average house more expensive. An inverted supply/demand curve. Does that make sense?

It truly depends on the rules. As long as the local infrastructure can handle or be added to handle additional density, I think we need to seriously expand housing in metropolitan areas. I am experiencing that myself in my neighborhood. It's mostly one, two and three family buildings, a 4-6 unit building peppered here and there, with a medium density building on the corner of every other block or so. They knocked down a two story commercial space near me and are building about 25 new rental units on the site. I think about 5 are two bedroom units, and they have to build parking for them, but that leaves about 20 studio and one bedroom units with no parking spots. Now it's permit parking here only, so you have to live here to buy a permit from the city, but I've been living here three years and finding a legal street spot anytime after 7pm is pretty much impossible most nights. I struggled with that for two years until I rented out a garaged spot from a local homeowner. I am happy that we are adding new residents to help support the small businesses around here so I am all for this development - but there are two issues - Parking and Mass Transit - both things that won't affect me personally. Since I rent a parking spot and I don't commute to the city for work so I don't take mass transit except for recreational purposes. I'm wondering where everyone else is gonna fit though.

Out of those 20 units that have no parking let's say half have an auto. They'll get a street permit but where are they gonna fit? Pre-Covid when people were commuting to the city for work, I spoke to some folks and they said the busses were often full before they got to the bus stop here. So we are going to need more busses too. Anyways that's just a local anecdote.

Space is much easier to find in the suburbs, you can build medium density buildings with parking easily enough. Just need things like park and rides and good rail systems to ferry people in and out of cities. The issue is that conservatives hate investing in public infrastructure like trains and buses. They want everyone to have cars. It's just not feasible in our big city areas anymore.
 

fskimospy

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It truly depends on the rules. As long as the local infrastructure can handle or be added to handle additional density, I think we need to seriously expand housing in metropolitan areas. I am experiencing that myself in my neighborhood. It's mostly one, two and three family buildings, a 4-6 unit building peppered here and there, with a medium density building on the corner of every other block or so. They knocked down a two story commercial space near me and are building about 25 new rental units on the site. I think about 5 are two bedroom units, and they have to build parking for them, but that leaves about 20 studio and one bedroom units with no parking spots. Now it's permit parking here only, so you have to live here to buy a permit from the city, but I've been living here three years and finding a legal street spot anytime after 7pm is pretty much impossible most nights. I struggled with that for two years until I rented out a garaged spot from a local homeowner. I am happy that we are adding new residents to help support the small businesses around here so I am all for this development - but there are two issues - Parking and Mass Transit - both things that won't affect me personally. Since I rent a parking spot and I don't commute to the city for work so I don't take mass transit except for recreational purposes. I'm wondering where everyone else is gonna fit though.

Out of those 20 units that have no parking let's say half have an auto. They'll get a street permit but where are they gonna fit? Pre-Covid when people were commuting to the city for work, I spoke to some folks and they said the busses were often full before they got to the bus stop here. So we are going to need more busses too. Anyways that's just a local anecdote.

Space is much easier to find in the suburbs, you can build medium density buildings with parking easily enough. Just need things like park and rides and good rail systems to ferry people in and out of cities. The issue is that conservatives hate investing in public infrastructure like trains and buses. They want everyone to have cars. It's just not feasible in our big city areas anymore.
Well personally I don’t consider parking to be an issue because I don’t believe street parking should exist. Why should we use vast swaths of incredibly valuable public land for free property storage? If people want to store their cars they should pay for it, same as you are doing and same as you would have to if you wanted to store anything else.

As far as full buses go...couldn’t they just run more? A full bus is a profitable bus.
 
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K1052

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As far as full buses go...couldn’t they just run more? A full bus is a profitable bus.

Making busses faster, more frequent, and more reliable would pay huge dividends across the city and not cost an absolute fortune like basically any subway work does.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
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Well personally I don’t consider parking to be an issue because I don’t believe street parking should exist. Why should we use vast swaths of incredibly valuable public land for free property storage? If people want to store their cars they should pay for it, same as you are doing and same as you would have to if you wanted to store anything else.

As far as full buses go...couldn’t they just run more? A full bus is a profitable bus.

NYC should be a permit-based parking system based upon your residency and paying a fee, and taking into account different neighborhoods of which some are less dense and may be a subway/mass transit desert. Buses are cheaper and easier to expand. They did that experiment on 14th street where they made it a primary conduit for buses to go crosstown and got hit with a lot of NIMBY backlash, that turned out to be unfounded and it has worked out well from what I read. They need to expand bike parking in the city as well, a lot more people would ride their own bikes if they could safely park them somewhere. CitiBike is great in certain areas but is not everywhere yet, especially in less gentrified areas.

Unfortunately options are limited - Port Authority is outdated, the train tunnels from NJ to Manhattan are in trouble to Sandy damage and repubs blocking funding for a new one. PATH trains were limited due to signaling mechanisms that were outdated only allowing trains to run X amount of minutes apart. Those have been upgraded, now they are trying to expand platform length in some stations to allow more cars. Meanwhile they are plopping down massive buildings left and right by these stations.

But in general around this country mass transit is vilified usually by right wing interests. John Oliver or Hasan Minaj, I forget which one, did a good piece on a referendum to expand the light rail in Phoenix, and Koch Brother founded entities launched a massive campaign against expanding mass transit. Luckily they lost but it's what we are facing.
 

fskimospy

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Making busses faster, more frequent, and more reliable would pay huge dividends across the city and not cost an absolute fortune like basically any subway work does.
Of course we could also work to get our construction costs in line with international standards.

Or really just get them even remotely close.
 

K1052

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Of course we could also work to get our construction costs in line with international standards.

Or really just get them even remotely close.

Yes, but absent Cuomo being gone and the wholesale reform of the entire MTA I doubt that will happen.

Relatedly NYC is going to be in for an ah interesting time now that so many more cars are fighting for fewer spaces.
Truly emblematic of the city's inability to navigate transportation policy like at all.