Last week, Reason.tv (the multimedia outlet of Reason Magazine) published a video about San Francisco's YIMBY movement. The video describes the decades of underdevelopment in San Francisco as the result of community activism intended to limit the supply of new construction. As a result, San … [Read more...]
San Francisco Turned Sisyphus: Why the City Can’t Fix the Housing Crisis On its Own
Housing prices in San Francisco are obscene. And, in large part, that’s because the city hasn’t permitted enough new construction. But that’s not the entire story. For as hard as San Francisco has resisted development, the Peninsula cities have resisted it even more. And in so doing they’ve pushed … [Read more...]
Laying Reagan’s Ghost to Rest
In a recent 48 Hills post, housing activist Peter Cohen aimed a couple rounds of return fire at SPUR's Gabriel Metcalf. The post comes in response to Mr. Metcalf's own article critiquing progressive housing policy. Mr. Cohen bounces around a bit, but he does repeat some frequently used talking … [Read more...]
Seamless Transit: Thoughts on the new report from SPUR
Seamless Transit is the new transportation policy report from SPUR. Main author Ratna Amin proposes integrating the Bay Area’s balkanized transit systems to improve lackluster ridership. Given that the region has 23 separate transit providers--more than any other metropolitan area in the … [Read more...]
How to Fix San Francisco’s Housing Market
Want to live in San Francisco? No problem, that’ll be $3,000 (a month)--but only if you act fast.In the last two years, the the cost of housing in San Francisco has increased 47% and shows no signs of stopping. Longtime residents find themselves priced out of town, the most vulnerable of whom … [Read more...]
Five union work rules that harm transit productivity
Since Alon's comment a few weeks ago that union work rules, not wages and benefits, are the real problem with labor unions at America's transit authorities, I've been looking into the matter, which seems to be something that a lot of transit boosters don't like to talk about. It's an uncomfortable … [Read more...]
Links
1. The fact that we even have to have a debate over whether residential development should be allowed in Midtown, where new residents will have perhaps a smaller impact on transportation infrastucture than anywhere else in the country (they can either walk to work or do a reverse train commute), is … [Read more...]
Links
1. NYT reports on dense suburban projects being scaled back across Long Island not because of financing constraints or the recession, but because local governments are refusing to accept the density. At the end it cites AvalonBay as saying that after the its rebuke on the Island, it will reconsider … [Read more...]