if any municipality in the bay area were to choose to allow lots of housing, then it would very quickly get manhattanized and they would make a zillion dollars in tax revenue, while harming property values in nearby cities. so naively you’d expect that surely eventually one random municipality of the dozens in the bay area will do this. but NIMBYs are so strong everywhere that this never happens. this seems directly relevant to questions of the feasibility of international coordination on AGI, especially if facilitated by strong pressure from labor to stop AGI.
California building code alone is quite restrictive. It’s true that municipalities could allow building a lot more housing, but a lot of the cost comes from state-wide or even nation-level building codes.
nation level can’t possibly be the only reason, because there is clearly appetite for building tall buildings in e.g manhattan. (consider hudson yards, which is an entire chunk of tall buildings that opened about 5 years ago, literally built on top of a rail yard, surely adding substantially to the cost). SF land isn’t literally manhattan but it’s still pretty valuable. state wide building codes is more plausible, i don’t know much about california building codes compared to ny.
the bay area is also evidence that we can’t just assume that economically incentivized things are inevitable. the opportunity cost of not building up the bay area more is trillions of dollars. but people are willing to destroy immense amounts of value to preserve their self interest and the world they’re familiar with.
Isn’t Emeryville kind of doing this? Though I’m not sure if they’re maxing out the envelope of housing production from real costs even if a city government goes 100% YIMBY.
Don’t know how to find comprehensive data but they had a development pipeline of 1100 homes in 2022 against a population of 13k. So that might increase their population by ~15%. And about 500 units approved in the pipeline right now. I think the original 1100 pipeline includes the now-opened “Emery” development which had 500 units.
If they approved housing at the rate of Seattle, the leader among large US cities, they would be approving around 1500 per decade. So it seems fast, though at a population density of 10k/sq mile they still might take a couple decades to reach SF density (18k) on current trends.
if any municipality in the bay area were to choose to allow lots of housing, then it would very quickly get manhattanized and they would make a zillion dollars in tax revenue, while harming property values in nearby cities. so naively you’d expect that surely eventually one random municipality of the dozens in the bay area will do this. but NIMBYs are so strong everywhere that this never happens. this seems directly relevant to questions of the feasibility of international coordination on AGI, especially if facilitated by strong pressure from labor to stop AGI.
California building code alone is quite restrictive. It’s true that municipalities could allow building a lot more housing, but a lot of the cost comes from state-wide or even nation-level building codes.
nation level can’t possibly be the only reason, because there is clearly appetite for building tall buildings in e.g manhattan. (consider hudson yards, which is an entire chunk of tall buildings that opened about 5 years ago, literally built on top of a rail yard, surely adding substantially to the cost). SF land isn’t literally manhattan but it’s still pretty valuable. state wide building codes is more plausible, i don’t know much about california building codes compared to ny.
California has approximately the most restrictive building code in the country.
the bay area is also evidence that we can’t just assume that economically incentivized things are inevitable. the opportunity cost of not building up the bay area more is trillions of dollars. but people are willing to destroy immense amounts of value to preserve their self interest and the world they’re familiar with.
Isn’t Emeryville kind of doing this? Though I’m not sure if they’re maxing out the envelope of housing production from real costs even if a city government goes 100% YIMBY.
i can’t find data for emeryville specifically but alameda county doesn’t seem to have issued way more housing permits per capita than e.g SF
Don’t know how to find comprehensive data but they had a development pipeline of 1100 homes in 2022 against a population of 13k. So that might increase their population by ~15%. And about 500 units approved in the pipeline right now. I think the original 1100 pipeline includes the now-opened “Emery” development which had 500 units.
If they approved housing at the rate of Seattle, the leader among large US cities, they would be approving around 1500 per decade. So it seems fast, though at a population density of 10k/sq mile they still might take a couple decades to reach SF density (18k) on current trends.
Isn’t this basically what Solano County (California Forever) is doing?