San Francisco turned ghost town?: Dave Chappelle ‘what the f happened to this place ?!’

I like San Francisco.

 

Well they can't build in downtown or near campus... Just like the bay, it's a nightmare to work in SF proper if you live in the burbs and have to commute an hour+ away by rail or car. The lots alone in some burbs can be a million plus just by proximity of a decent school district.

Austin had it's own problem of minorities leaving the city and moving into the burbs like Pflugerville because of rapidly rising real estate costs. That trend's never going to reverse because of Austin's poorly planned highways and public infrastructure. But let's prop up more "outer loop" tolls and hope everything fills out evenly.

 

What do I know: I only live in SF. But it's not a ghost town at all. If anything, most of our city is a little too lively right now in the pandemic. Traffic is nuts again. Parks are full of families walking / biking around. Sidewalk cafe culture is back stronger than ever, and I wish people would actually rein it in a little more.

Weird thread is weird.

 

Wait, you NorCal folks are supposed to be our betters. Who's going to shame SoCal into acting more responsibly?

 

One word about Austin: They engaged Landscape Architect Ian McHarg to develop a plan for the City's growth around 1980 ish when the city was 250,000 people. Being environmentally sensitive, his team found a unique landscape on the Balcones Escarpment with vital aquifer recharge zones. His plan adopted by the city then was to restrict impervious cover, probably the main reason why the Westside highway intersections do not have flyover lanes. The plan was for the environment and never ever imagined Austin would become a megalopolis of 2.5 million people.

 

Austin is one of the best planned cities in the nation.

 

This goes back before the tech boom. The city has made it almost impossible to build anything above a certain height and have prevented increased housing as a result.

 

Honestly minorities being pushed out is a selling point for a lot of people.

 

I'm not sure about that. Recently high rise luxury condos have been built including the ill fated Millennium Tower. When I was in school in the 90's there was a lot of opposition to building new high rises but those were defeated and several high rise projects were built.

 

It was 10-15 years ago we tried building large scale affordable housing in San Francisco. My firm represented the builder and we could get no where. The home owners associations, zoning restrictions dating back to the 1950's and 1960's. They made it very clear to us that we would have to go to court and that there would be appeals filed should we prevail. We were told we would not have our building permit approved, and that only about 1/3 of all building permits in San Francisco are approved.

Go look at pictures of San Francisco from the 1950's and compare them to the city now... there is very little change.

For example in most of the city no new building can be over 40 feet tall with the purpose of preventing high rises and sky scrapers.

No where in the country is homeowners more powerful than San Francisco. They can object and prevent the building of new buildings in the neighborhoods.

Also San Francisco is rent controlled, which limits the amount of available housing for rent.

I am really familiar with it because I was hired to try and get the building project off the ground........

 

I hear you, but it won't be us.

 

I've heard that SF is very strict and that homeowners wield a lot of control. I've seen skyscrapers built in SF in the last 20 years. What neighborhood was your project? That might've had something to do with not building over 40 feet. The Millennium Tower and other recent projects are in SOMA.

 

No one lives in SF anymore, it is too crowded.

 

Not really a GHOST TOWN price point.