Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[Ian Livingston]

I absolutely agree with both citations, David. Especially pertinent to my
thinking is the qualifier in the second, "when done properly." My defense
of San Francisco is both pathetic (relating to the emotions, before you get
back to hurling) and ethical.

First, I like San Francisco. I have many friends there, none are wealthy or
even scratching out much of a living, but they love it there. Leveling
their beautiful old homes for new rows of apartments would raise the rents
and they would have to move away and commute, or take jobs in places that,
if they wanted to live there rather than in SF, they would move away
without the interference. Over the years, though, there has been a steady
influx of people into the area, crowding out the old residents and bringing
with them new ideas of how the citizens should comport themselves in the
city. So, the increased density, so far, has brought about a decrease in
diversity in the neighborhoods. People are not allowed to behave as they
were allowed to not so many years ago. That's sad enough, but more, it
shows that the city is not made more interesting by increased density. The
effect has been quite the opposite.

But to your points. The carbon footprint of San Francisco can't really
grow, except by adding buildings where none now are. That means the parks.
The city expanded to its limits quite some time ago. As new businesses have
sprung up in Silicon Valley and the nearby areas in tech-related
industries, many more people have moved into those areas. I really don't
think it can be argued that making increased density in SF mandatory would
alleviate any of that growth. What you might argue there is that San Jose,
Campbell, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and the peninsula cities, as well as those
on the other side of the bay and out into the Central Valley might be more
compressed. The houses there are largely built much more recently than San
Francisco's most recent population boom, and are largely built with toxic
products such as plywood and particle board, using plenty of glue and
styrofoam, etc. Getting rid of those toxic houses and building sensible
high rises in the heart of town would eliminate a great deal of waste and
potentially open up land that I remember as farmland and orchards just a
few decades ago. That might increase the sustainability of the entire Bay
Area. San Francisco hasn't produced crops in nearly a century, and
increasing density won't make that happen, now. The tech market areas,
however, have buried quite a lot of the richest farmland in the world.
Making it possible to grow more rooftop veggies in SF is a possibility,
though, as fog renders solar power negligible much of the year in SF
proper.

So, so far, the citations you offer don't change my mind about San
Francisco, but they do open possibilities for the surrounding cities, where
increased density offers some real solutions. The real business of the Bay
Area takes place away from SF, anyway. San Francisco's allure is in it's
attractiveness, it's beauty, it's location on a small point of land between
the Pacific Ocean and the great bay that shares its name. Oakland has the
greater harbor, and the waters of the Sacramento River Delta probably
provide more harborage than SF and Oakland combined. No, the business of
the region does not warrant increasing the population of San Francisco. It
is just too small an area to accommodate much more business to justify the
population increase. There will, in fact, have to be some rebuilding in the
city, as some of the old homes are now passing their credible lifespans.
That is where appropriate building can happen. I'm sure apartments are
likely in those neighborhoods, but those will drive rents up in those areas
and another stratum of San Francisco's labor force will have to move away
to make room for the people who work at Google and Bank of America, Wells
Fargo, etc. More of the people who wait tables and clean up the trash the
pigs who move here toss in the streets will have to commute. It's the way
it has always been. We're still following the great herds.

Well, and then there are the earthquakes....

I'm still open to hearing why San Francisco proper should accommodate more
people, but so far you offer nothing that addresses the issues pertinent in
San Francisco.

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 1:31 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/the-green-case-for-cities/307661/
> "Putting solar panels on the roofs doesn’t change the essential fact that
> by any sensible measure, spread-out, low-rise buildings, with more
> foundations, walls, and roofs, have a larger carbon footprint than a
> high-rise office tower—even when the high-rise has no green features at all.
> [...]
> A Thoreau-like existence in the great outdoors isn’t green. Density is
> green.
>
> http://www.planetizen.com/node/30970
> Density has become a highly charged topic in development today. In many
> communities, the news of a potential project that proposes to increase the
> number of dwelling units per acre can unleash an uproar by neighbors. This
> is unfortunate as density is a tool-arguably the most powerful one
> controlled by a municipality-to create a more sustainable city while at
> the same time helping to preserve agricultural land and the open space
> beyond its borders. Furthermore, strategic densification offers positive
> benefits far beyond an individual metropolitan area: after all, given the
> continued growth in world population and the continued migration of people
> to cities across the globe, the densification of all urban settlements-when
> done properly-can play a critical role in improving the health of the
> planet as a whole.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 3:04 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> My, you really are trying to lather on the insults, David. Please calm
>>> down. Then show me some information that might change my mind.
>>
>>
>> Fat chance that could ever happen.  You clearly don't want to know
>> anything but your own opinions.
>>
>
>
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