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Pretty cool to see one of those Titans running for Governor.
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May 24, 2014 12:36
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FRINGE posted:I was specifically criticizing your stance, based on your assumption of that lovely attitude, as per a repeated assertion: You're completely taking what I'm saying out of context. I'm not arguing that journalists should design solutions, I'm arguing that journalists should cover the solutions that are being preposed by policymakers, activists and stakeholders. Good journalists have been doing this since, I don't know at least, Edward R Murrow. This article attempts to do so, but does so poorly in my opinion. Edit: What I'm trying to say is, that in a 13,000 word essay the author would have been better off spending no time on solutions or a lot more than the ~500 words she did spend. That's just not enough space to do a fair treatment of the complexity of the topic. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 19:37 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 19:18
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I've been reading this thread all day, as I'm visiting my elderly mother in the bay area. I have to ask: How much of all these new highrises in San Francisco are office towers, rather than luxury condos? The NIMBY crowd fought office development for a long time. Part of the reason so many workplaces are in the burbs is that the largest office building in town is still the Transamerica building, and even it was attacked in the planning stages as a horrible eyesore that will be the city's downfall. You can't put Google in the city, the room just isn't there. And if I worked at Google, I'd live in the city, too. I like museums. I like nice restaurants. I like a queer scene, since I'm gay. I like living a car-less existence and getting everywhere on mass transit. I like amenities of a city. You can't get that stuff in the burbs too often. I spent almost $20 on bus fare to go to San Francisco and see Godzilla in IMAX not to contribute to pedestrian traffic in an already crowded city, but because you can't do that in the north bay. As far as Marin etc, work is underway on a rail line that is too underfunded to go past San Rafael. They have the right idea, though, to link, eventually with the ferry landing. I think boats are a bigger part of a proper transportation grid than they're given credit for. The city only seems to be recently coming around to the idea that the Ferry Building should be more than a mall at the end of Market. Talk of BART going into Marin etc is bullshit. There's no way to do that which is safe for transport ships and BART passengers alike except another Transbay Tube, and it's amazing feat of engineering that the current one has worked for decades, through earthquakes and without a huge ship dragging anchor into it or any other events. SF basically has been the first example of young emerging wealth bucking the trend of white flight and city-phobia, and it's displacing people who used to get by there by riding off the undesirability of urban living. If you listen to urban thinkers who predicted this like Richard Florida, the suburbs become the new lower-income/affordable living habitats. The situation is exacerbated by easily abused rent control laws in need of reform, but the inequality is (in my opinion, anyway) this generational shift in action.
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May 24, 2014 23:02
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Craptacular! posted:the suburbs become the new lower-income/affordable living habitats
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May 24, 2014 23:49
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FRINGE posted:This has already been predicted. The peasants are never allowed to live inside the walls. So having to ride a train to work is feudal slavery?
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May 25, 2014 00:02
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Craptacular! posted:SF basically has been the first example of young emerging wealth bucking the trend of white flight and city-phobia, and it's displacing people who used to get by there by riding off the undesirability of urban living. If you listen to urban thinkers who predicted this like Richard Florida, the suburbs become the new lower-income/affordable living habitats. The situation is exacerbated by easily abused rent control laws in need of reform, but the inequality is (in my opinion, anyway) this generational shift in action. You think this is somehow a new thing? Millennials are repeating the pattern that their Boomer parents followed: yuppies living in the city until they're ready to start families, at which point many/most of them will move to the suburbs.
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May 25, 2014 08:06
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What urban renewal happened via Boomers? As far as I can see, they were the first generation to really come of age with easy, affordable access to cars and took quickly to new unwalkable cities that covered great distances, because oil will never run out and therefore distance is irrelevant. This shortsighted planning isn't entirely their fault (Their parents were in power much of the formative years), but they didn't do much to turn it back: New York rotted and Detroit became Detroit.
Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 09:00
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Craptacular! posted:What urban renewal happened via Boomers? As far as I can see, they were the first generation to really come, of age with easy, affordable access to cars and took quickly to new unwalkable cities that covered great distances, because oil will never run out and therefore distance is irrelevant. This shortsighted planning isn't entirely their fault (Their parents were in power much of the formative years), but they didn't do much to turn it back: New York rotted and Detroit became Detroit. Yeah Bay Area housing articles is interesting since it points out the the whole knowledge economy thing meant multiple big cities actually saw positive population growth for the first time in many years.
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May 25, 2014 16:42
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Jesus Christ you guys really do believe you're exploring uncharted territory, don't you?quote:Although the term yuppies had not appeared until the early 1980s, there was discussion about young urban professionals as early as 1968. Pretty much every generation since the rise of the middle class a century ago has seen a part of itself move into the cities for a time, maybe a decade or two, before moving back out to the burbs.Gen X had slackers, Boomers had yuppies (the ones with professional jobs) and hippies, Silent Gens had beatniks, etc. These movements often meet resistance from the displaced urban residents who declaimed gentrification. The Castro was a working class Irish neighborhood until the 60s, for instance.
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May 25, 2014 18:44
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Family Values posted:Jesus Christ you guys really do believe you're exploring uncharted territory, don't you? We kind of are, because the middle class is shrinking so much that gentrification won't be as extreme as it was before. Silicon Valley is probably more of a unique case. Another way it's unique, with yuppies etc you're talking about former bohemians who become corporate in order to give up the dream and become wealthy the way their parents did (executives, accountants, bankers, etc) and, not necessarily needing to live in a city, pick up a commute. In this case, you're talking about people who are in the "artist" phase of their careers but already making executive money. They live in cities for networking etc. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 20:51
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Family Values posted:Jesus Christ you guys really do believe you're exploring uncharted territory, don't you? The main difference is that in the previous waves of gentrification in SF, from the 70s through the 80s, 90s, and early/mid 2000s, there were still plenty of relatively cheap parts of the city that the middle class and poor could afford. SF was actually losing people in the 70s and early 80s too, and also had a huge crime spike lasting from the late 60s through mid to late 2000s, both of which helped keep things cheaper than they could have been, despite yuppies/beatniks/gays/etc gentrifying certain areas over the decades. But this new round of gentrification/insane housing prices is hitting the remaining middle class/lower class areas, and unlike before there are few places left in SF proper that the non-wealthy can turn to. Even other parts of they bay area are seeing large housing price increases these days. So it's a more alarming situation for the middle and lower classes of SF than previous waves of gentrification were. The Bay Area basically hosed itself through decades of NIMBY policy strangling the housing supply. Craptacular! posted:I have to ask: How much of all these new highrises in San Francisco are office towers, rather than luxury condos? The NIMBY crowd fought office development for a long time. A lot of them are office towers. In the area around the transbay terminal and rincon hill, where 90% of new highrise construction is occurring, there are currently 5 office towers and 7 residential towers under construction. As for NIMBYs, there are various reasons why they oppose development, but a common theme seems to be "tall is bad". Many of them don't care what's getting built...they don't want it unless it's a 2 or 3-story imitation Victorian house, and even then they probably don't want it. One of the effects of the NIMBY crusade in the 80s, after the city's 60s/70s/80s skyscraper boom, is that only a set amount of office space can be built each year (500,000 sq. ft. or so, I think?). Any remaining space rolls over and adds up on subsequent years though, so after very little office construction in the 90s and relatively little in the 2000s as well, the city has saved up a ton of office space that can be built in a single year. I'm pretty sure most of it is now spoken for with current and planned developments. Craptacular! posted:Part of the reason so many workplaces are in the burbs is that the largest office building in town is still the Transamerica building This is actually not true  The Bank of America Building is the largest tower in SF by square footage. The new Transbay tower which is under construction will be the new tallest tower in SF, at 1,070 feet, but it's slimmer than Bank of America, so it has less office space in it ("only" 1.5 million square feet). Also, there have been tens of millions of square feet of office space built in SF since Transamerica went up (with millions more under construction and planned right now), and SF has by far the most office space of any one location in the Bay Area. Downtown SF has around 80 million square feet of class a/b office space, which eclipses the amount in downtown Oakland and downtown San Jose combined (each have around 10-15 million sq. ft.). Space has never been a problem when it comes to locating a business in SF, but the cost of operating that business can be a reason to locate elsewhere. It's cheaper in the suburbs, not to mention that until recently the low density/large footprint office park style of development was seen as very desirable (and still is, to a lesser extent), and there really isn't room in SF for that, even if there is enough office space for what's needed. Despite that, SF still has the largest job base and corporate presence in the bay area though. Craptacular! posted:You can't put Google in the city, the room just isn't there. Again, not true when just looking at the amount of office space (the desire for a low-density suburban campus not-withstanding). In fact, earlier this year Google was rumored as a candidate to lease the aforementioned transbay tower that's under construction, but for whatever reason they didn't, and Salesforce took it instead. Rah! fucked around with this message at 22:08 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 22:02
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I'm not Californian so forgive me if I miss something obvious here, but Prop 42 sounds a lot like it's going to result in nobody actually paying those costs after the municipalities decide they can't afford it and the state government has a law saying it isn't their responsibility. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 22:42 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 22:30
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Negative Entropy posted:This post is quite old now but I want to bring it back up because it got buried under SF talk. It seems counterintuitive to me to place full responsibility of disclosure upon hundreds of individual local governments, each with different amounts of funds, in what would probably be an incredibly confusing and red-tape laden patchwork disclosure system than just have one uniform state disclosure system. I looked into Prop 42 because I felt the same way. All the newspaper editorials I could find were in favor and I basically couldn't find anyone on record as opposing it. I did read an article that suggested the cost burden gives cities an incentive to provide more data automatically and electronically rather than responding to costly individual requests but I'm not sure how likely that actually is.
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May 25, 2014 22:47
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Craptacular! posted:As far as Marin etc, work is underway on a rail line that is too underfunded to go past San Rafael. They have the right idea, though, to link, eventually with the ferry landing. I think boats are a bigger part of a proper transportation grid than they're given credit for. The city only seems to be recently coming around to the idea that the Ferry Building should be more than a mall at the end of Market. Talk of BART going into Marin etc is bullshit. There's no way to do that which is safe for transport ships and BART passengers alike except another Transbay Tube, and it's amazing feat of engineering that the current one has worked for decades, through earthquakes and without a huge ship dragging anchor into it or any other events. I'm sorry but the transbay tube is nothing special engineeringwise, its actually pretty boring. Heck, the Posey Tunnel is more impressive, just because of its age. The SF Bay is a heavily controlled waterway, big ships only anchor at pre-defined anchorages, and all the major underwater dangers (like the pipes with 1/2 of the SF water supply) are clearly marked as no-anchorage zones. Plus, concrete is pretty thick and all. There isn't an engineering problem with a BART link to Marin, there's a political problem. Marin doesn't want it and they didn't want it when they had the chance to join BART at the very beginning. They don't want to make it too easy for people from the cities to come and use/steal their stuff (See Marin's freakout over Lucas's plan to build affordable housing).
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May 25, 2014 23:47
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm sorry but the Transbay tube is nothing special engineering-wise, its actually pretty boring. Heck, the Posey Tunnel is more impressive, just because of its age. The SF Bay is a heavily controlled waterway, big ships only anchor at pre-defined anchorages, and all the major underwater dangers (like the pipes with 1/2 of the SF water supply) are clearly marked as no-anchorage zones. Plus, concrete is pretty thick and all. Agreed, remember that seismic design and engineering have come a long way and cost is the only limit now for most big engineering projects, unsexy tunnels and bridges are pretty easy/cheap though. The bay bridge East span replacement is 5x more in cost to a simple pier/deck bridge because the East Bay wanted a signature span. They could make multiple spans/tunnels to Marin or across the South bay for metro/road access but no one wants to have those people being able to get to them easily. A more tenable solution is Fremont/Richmond building up/their housing markets rebounding. It isn't ideal but ultimately with Prop 13 and housing pressures on a very dense city means you won't squeeze much more blood from the stone that is SF proper. You have to make sure the larger pool of housing options is appealing to a wide range of people. No need to hoard development in downtown SF when most of the land area near BART is elsewhere. My experience was that a commute across the bay wasn't that bad compared to most cities I've lived in.
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May 26, 2014 03:13
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FWIW there were quite a few condos going up in Irvington, but then Irvington didn't get the BART station.
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May 26, 2014 03:15
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Regarding prop 42: it's actually weird for municipalities not to pay for disclosure. Municipalities generally have a lot of different regulations for how they operate, all of which cost money. There's rules about how often they have to have elections and how those elections have to be run, for example. They have to pay for some kind of city/town hall, they have to pay for security at meetings, etc. It's actually kind of weird to say "oh but the state will pay for your website" or whatever. Having to have your meetings open-door and accessible to the public is a basic requirement of democracy, not some kind of draconian requirement with extraordinary costs of compliance. Re a new tube: I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to run a BART spur under the north bay between the Richmond line and Marin. Granted that'd be a longer ride from Marin to SF, but it'd avoid having to run a tube under the mouth of the Bay, and also the almost certainty of having to cut tunnels into the Marin Headlands in order to route track. (I doubt there'd be support for adding a deck to the golden gate bridge, if that's even a feasible alternative.)
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May 26, 2014 03:23
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Blindeye posted:No need to hoard development in downtown SF when most of the land area near BART is elsewhere. My experience was that a commute across the bay wasn't that bad compared to most cities I've lived in. A commute across the bay isn't that bad right now, but the tube is approximately at capacity during the average rush hour. Any kind of big public event or BART system fuckup sends things to poo poo pretty fast. Add in the ongoing increase in ridership (either by the system expanding or by more people moving to remote locations) and the average commute will be getting more and more unpleasant in the future. The effort put into expanding BART south and east probably would have been better spent on a second transbay crossing before they start putting more people into the system. withak fucked around with this message at 03:50 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 03:40
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withak posted:A commute across the bay isn't that bad right now, but the tube is approximately at capacity during the average rush hour. Any kind of big public event or BART system fuckup sends things to poo poo pretty fast. Add in the ongoing increase in ridership (either by the system expanding or by more people moving to remote locations) and the average commute will be getting more and more unpleasant in the future. The effort put into expanding BART south and east probably would have been better spent on a second transbay crossing before they start putting more people into the system. I agree about capacity, but to be fair a second tube is needed regardless of the situation in with housing (for maintenance if nothing else so you can take a tunnel offline for longer). Especially with the construction South the need for a second tube is going to reach a critical mass (or the tech bubble pops again, whichever comes first).
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May 26, 2014 04:26
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I always figured the line down to San Jose should be wrapped around the bay and joined up with the Fremont line. That would take some capacity load off the transbay tunnel, and also allow trains to be run on a loop which might be more efficient at certain times of day. Being able to BART OAK-SJO could have benefits too.
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May 26, 2014 04:31
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According to Ballotpedia the only people opposing Prop 42 are the Green party and rural municipalities. Pretty much everyone else is in favor. http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_42,_Compliance_of_Local_Agencies_with_Public_Records_(2014)
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May 26, 2014 05:51
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FCKGW posted:opposing Prop 42 are the Green party I mean the real "why"? This does not seem convincing: quote:The first relates to local vs. state fiscal responsibility for complying with open government law: "Local governments are often on very tight budgets. They also have far fewer tools to raise revenue than the state, and the tools they do have are often more regressive than those available to the state." Although the Green platform is often erratic and inconsistent.
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May 26, 2014 11:35
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I've concluded that California's liberalism is largely a facade covering up libertarianism. See: Prop 13 (keeping property taxes neutral so homeowners won't pay as much money into schools), also needing 2/3rd vote from legislature to raise state taxes "I told Warren that if he mentions Proposition 13 again he has to do 500 sit-ups." -Arnold Schwarzenegger
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May 26, 2014 19:02
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Telesphorus posted:I've concluded that California's liberalism is largely a facade covering up libertarianism. Prop 13 passed before Reagan became President. If anything that just shows that California's system is very resistant to change.
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May 26, 2014 19:36
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FRINGE posted:Although the Green platform is often erratic and inconsistent. Eg. The Greens often talk about localization and decentralization of government and the economy (the state bank poo poo) (New Left) while also talking about big national infrastructure/green energy/economic regulation projects (Old Left). It also has a NIMBY element to its environmentalism. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 20:22 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 20:20
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Telesphorus posted:I've concluded that California's liberalism is largely a facade covering up libertarianism. Using property taxes to fund services in a state that is essentially run by speculators and profiteers is a lovely idea that just squeezes the middle class out of the housing market anywhere worth living. Jacking up the sales tax is a much better alternative.
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May 26, 2014 23:17
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm sorry but the transbay tube is nothing special engineeringwise, its actually pretty boring. Heck, the Posey Tunnel is more impressive, just because of its age. The SF Bay is a heavily controlled waterway, big ships only anchor at pre-defined anchorages, and all the major underwater dangers (like the pipes with 1/2 of the SF water supply) are clearly marked as no-anchorage zones. Plus, concrete is pretty thick and all. What I was saying specifically was bullshit was the old artwork with a second span on the Golden Gate Bridge for BART. Not only do I not want to be between a ceiling of cars and a watery demise when an earthquake strikes, but if you've lived here for any decent length of time you've seen those deliveries of cranes and whatnot to the Port Of Oakland, where everyone holds their collective breath and watches a ship with really tall cargo just barely clear under it. A tunnel probably makes more sense. I didn't know that about the anchors, I was wondering when the day will come that a huge rear end anchor just slices through that thing.
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May 27, 2014 01:21
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natetimm posted:Jacking up the sales tax is a much better alternative.
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May 27, 2014 01:59
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FRINGE posted:Jacking up sales tax is a lovely idea that just squeezes the lower class out of every market. Jacking up the property tax is a much better alternative. The progressive bracket system is the best idea
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May 27, 2014 02:07
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Does any state have brackets for property tax?
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May 27, 2014 02:13
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FRINGE posted:Jacking up sales tax is a lovely idea that just squeezes the lower class out of every market. Jacking up the property tax is a much better alternative. There are so many people sitting on houses they wouldn't be able to afford the tax on if it wasn't for prop 13. Creating a giant new wave of foreclosures and new renters who now probably have to commute even farther is just dumb.
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May 27, 2014 02:14
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natetimm posted:Using property taxes to fund services in a state that is essentially run by speculators and profiteers is a lovely idea that just squeezes the middle class out of the housing market anywhere worth living. Jacking up the sales tax is a much better alternative. The sales tax is one of the most regressive forms of taxation. What is wrong with you?
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May 27, 2014 02:15
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etalian posted:The progressive bracket system is the best idea
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May 27, 2014 02:18
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redscare posted:The sales tax is one of the most regressive forms of taxation. What is wrong with you? I don't love the sales tax either but it's better than creating another housing disaster.
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May 27, 2014 02:19
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natetimm posted:I don't love the sales tax either but it's better than creating another housing disaster. Over reliance on sales tax rather than a relatively stable (even during a house crash) property tax is one of the reasons why counties and cities in California are still have financial issues.
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May 27, 2014 02:30
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natetimm posted:I don't love the sales tax either but it's better than creating another housing disaster. Too late, the housing disaster is already upon is but it has nothing to do with property taxes. In fact, the only fix needed to prop 13 is to make it not apply to commercial property. As for raising the sales tax, we already have one of if not the highest rates combined with a stupid high state income tax that's not particularly progressive. Any "solution" that involves hitting the common man in the pocket is not a solution at all.
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May 27, 2014 02:30
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Maybe along with a progressive tax we could fund schools at a state level instead of a local one. When the Palo alto kids get the same funding as the east Palo alto kids, maybe we'd see more political effort put into funding schools.
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May 27, 2014 02:40
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What is the point of segregation if all schools are equally funded? That isn't what America is about
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May 27, 2014 02:47
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nm posted:How did property tax create a housing disaster? The housing market is miserably inflated still throughout much of CA. It's not uncommon for people to have bought in the last 20-30 years to have a house that's now supposedly worth 10 times what they paid for it. Most of these people don't want to move and can't afford a ten times increase in their property tax because wages haven't increased hardly at all in comparison to cost of living in the last 10-20 years. Their families who stand to inherit the property aren't exactly swimming in dough either. If they realigned the property tax to current values a shitload of people would lose their homes simply on the tax increase alone. It's great if you want to sell, but a massive influx of people being forced to sell due to taxes would be bad for the economy and housing market overall.
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May 27, 2014 02:51
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Shbobdb posted:What is the point of segregation if all schools are equally funded? That isn't what America is about It costs much less to educate rich children than poor children. On top of that, the best teachers are going to vastly prefer the working environment in schools without the major social problems associated with poverty.
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May 27, 2014 02:53
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