The empty land is not empty. To develop there, we would need to tear down the trees and pave over the land, reducing the drainage and increasing the chance of floods. In the Bay Area, the consensus is that climate change is a bad thing caused by humans, so we would rather not do that.
It’s quite some distance from the existing transit lines, so we would suffer even more traffic and large expenses to bring the trains there.
The big public relations problem is that too many people cannot think of life without a car. We need to convince them that we don’t need cars, so we can build more housing without destroying any more wilderness anywhere.
]]>Go to the satellite view
]]>Additionally, with so much talk about and appreciate for issues related to density, there’s no mention of the relative density of cities, or whether these figures are based on city centers, include suburban areas or even rural areas as some areas are drawn — some cities are essentially giant suburban sprawls, while others are heavily concentrated.
There’s also not even mention of the baseline of affordability in different cities. Surely the change in affordability from 2006-2013 is interesting and relevant, but nobody believes rents and incomes are entirely divorced. If you believe they are tied together even partially, you need to know the overall rate, not just the change — it’s possible that Miami has a stagnant ratio because it’s already maximally burdensome, etc.
To an extent, you are preaching to the choir for me — I had the same view against restrictive housing policy in NYC, LA, etc. before I even started reading the article. Maybe because I was already familiar with the message though, I gained little from the facts and figures presented — the backing for the message presented seemed extremely weak.
]]>It’s a modeled calculation. It’s not a measurement of any reality.
]]>