Bigotry self-reinforces: you’re playing into their hands; their likely retort is that to the extent any do exist, their self-righteous entitlement vindicates their washing their hands of any and all parties affected while denying/ignoring the dynamics and causes of the problems involving them, similarly reflexively denying their own role in it (to say nothing of their ideology/rhetoric) to any degree it does affect them (blind and/or willfully ignorant to its contributing to their causes/exacerbating/perpetuating them), other than to attack the symptoms and inflict whatever collateral damage in the process in a zealous crusade against the universe beyond capital. Then, when they’re called out, they resent it and point to it as proof of being attacked in bad faith, which they then use as a cudgel against countenancing any substance of further debate.
It’s unfortunate that NIMBYs and local governments have completely failed to build enough housing to keep up with demand. That and the fact that infrastructure spending still largely focuses on single-occupancy vehicles only makes the situation worse. NYC is very expensive as well, but at least you don’t have to spend thousands a year on a car in order to get around.
On both your points we are agreed, as far as they do actually go, @Joe, but significant progress is being made, albeit somewhat in fits and starts: AB-68 passed this year does away with a lot of NIMBY-ism for ADUs, for example (without encouraging commodification of them by forbidding their independent sale for ownership, tying them to the owner of the lot’s main structure and preventing prospecting/“investment” exploitation) and even puts municipalities on the hook to the State Attorney General for delays. An extensive raft of bills were passed, in fact:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/10/09/governor-gavin-newsom-signs-18-bills-to-boost-housing-production/
That it took such dire straights only shows the power of the politics and lobbying power of the real estate and development interests, although at a more pragmatic level the state has been loathe to impose its will on municipalities (far from the California-hater talking-point of liberals who love to override local control).
SF & LA’s public transit systems are pretty meagre, especially LA’s (although that’s been changing in the past handful of years in big ways, FINALLY). The extremely hilly neighborhoods/exurbs of SF seem particularly ill-suited to subway per se, which means over-land routes that require right-of-way, which if that can’t be gotten readily enough due to NIMBY-ism or what have you requires something like eminent domain, one of the deep-state conspiracy theorist’s favorite boogey-men, so for that to happen if prior experience is a guide things will have to become even much worse before it’ll actually happen thanks to the din of free-market mythology toxifying public mind-share on the issue, seems to me.
I will reserve judgment in regards to any legislation until I see high-density housing being built next to public transit. Expanding public transportation and building dense housing next to said transportation is the only way to solve this problem in my opinion.
I think it’s the best available solution, but I also think it’s impossible for any amount proportionate to the geography’s livable constraints to come anywhere near meeting demand and therefore relieving prices through market forces.
I respectfully disagree. Other large metropolitan areas have done a pretty good job (Paris and Tokyo come to mind). The Paris region (12 m residents) built more housing units in 2018 than California (40 m residents).
Here’s a good article on the subject:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-the-French-are-fixing-a-housing-crisis-14931728.php
That’s where we disagree. San Francisco is such an attractive locale because it’s not a vast dense cityscape but instead is a peninsula surrounded by beautiful ocean and bay ecology. Turn it into a megalopolis, and you’ve defeated the whole purpose. Furthermore, climate change raises the impending spectre of significant sea level rise, the surrounding marshes and wetlands for which are a critical buffer but so attractive to developers who for nearly a century have been breathing down the legislature’s necks to fill-in, and locally-sited businesses meanwhile have been treating it as their back-yard dump. Even New York relies on the surrounding coastal ecology in a similar way but not all of it is necessarily within New York State’s territories.
LA has the issue of being cupped-in by mountains that trap air pollution, a problem for which it was infamous as far back as the 1950’s. The same forces behind deification of business interests are who dominated LA’s initial car-centric design. They’ve got a lot to unwind and reforge. Also, it’s a desert, and climate change isn’t trending toward more snow-pack up north to supply it.
Your article mentions Paris mandates 1/4 of all units be affordable. Try getting that to fly in Sacramento, even now. Developers tantrum at 10! The market is the wrong model for housing. Your proffering Paris to be an example of market forces is a far cry from the definitions inveighed by American free-marketeers; I caution you against allowing your superficially similar rhetoric to abet those willing and eager to eviscerate livability standards, even as I oppose you in your declining to acknowledge such standards should hew not to capital but instead to humanity within ecology.
The West Coast historically has, relatively speaking, been a sleepy back-water to the country (aside from Hollywood) having a fraction of the density in the East, a status unlikely to return and even if it does it’s now unlikely not to be hailed as proof-positive that the tolerant, free-wheeling culture its then-non-premium prices fostered in fact is its supposed down-fall.
Capitalists’ hind-brain fear of a locale asserting itself against their ability to give it a developmental wedgie and wring it for profit is I think responsible for more than a little of the invective against California culture even when it does back measures proven sensible elsewhere, and especially if done governed, shall we say, by local conditions.
Oh, I have bit my tongue so, so, so, so much on this thread. Alas, I didn’t join this forum to talk politics. And, I don’t feel like arguing on a forum, because no one ever changes their minds anyway… But man, the things I could say 
CA. was nice when I got to L.A. the only two times I was ever there. Traffic was non existent, and it was not a w/end or holiday. All hell broke loose when I left and crossed into AZ both times. One time it was the Rodney King Riots, missed that by a few hours. I was in the neighborhood a few hours earlier. And another time was the Earth Quake that took out all those overpasses that I just drove my truck over a couple hours earlier. I never wanted to go back, just in case I might not make it out next time.
LA has nice neighborhoods that are a world away from its core, where the highways run and gridlock prevails. If you’re in the upper classes, LA can seem like Shangri-La. Little different than affluent parts of for example New York, in that sense.
Was not saying anything bad about CA. I have some cousins in L.A. Just don’t want to cause any bad luck to the state by visiting. LOL
If it’s any consolation, I’m of the opinion that neither residents’ lives nor the forging of solutions to such problems as you may have inadvertently evaded are brokered by superstition.
If Lex Luthor ever gets his way, Nevada will become the new west coast.
I’ve lived in an area that had this problem. They built on the marshes and, because they were dried out and dyked up, the old-town was suddenly subject to flash floods every time it rained heavily. They then had to create a new flood-plain a few kilometres away to ensure that the excess water to flow away and be safely collected.
Splitting out and making a secondary site at a less well populated area that has room for expansion makes more sense.
Can you give me a heads-up, when you visit my area, so I can “get the hell outta Dodge!” 
On the other hand, I have a couple of addresses I would be happy for you to visit. 
The term “talent” has become so intricate that it sometimes feels misleading. Certainly, talent can be found or brought everywhere if cost is not an issue. But only few places attract talent of a certain lifestyle and set of values that may feel desirable to leadership. I am certain that there is a certain shared cultural mindset among leadership and talent that also agree that “we need to be in X”. Sure, this does not have to be to the exclusive benefit of either businesses or employees. Much of that will be preemptive group think. Most types of group think, trends, or once fashionable ideas go gradually out of fashion at some point.
Yes! It becomes an ego game of, “Well, the biggest successes are in Silicon Valley so obviously we won’t be seen to be elsewhere than there unless we’re not as serious as we could be!” As technology filters through many other sectors where its impact is more prosaic, the relevance of what I consider to be the true Silicon Valley culture, that is to say the culture which is truly responsible for Silicon Valley’s formation and success under that name, becomes less relevant to the business interests of a given industry and its market (as well as the businesses and their personnel therein other than as users). What I won’t stand idly by for, though, is the trashing and/or dismissal of that culture, especially not by conventional business culture and interests hostile to the creativity I see to be responsible for innovation key to the technology those interests claim to find valuable from it.
Yes, and at 02:07:37 he talks about how: in an RV for, so far, a duration he characterized as, “a couple months and leave it at that”, touring with no specific final destination. Guys of his class and age do this kind of thing all the time.
Don’t hurt yourself strenuously swinging around that axe you’re trying to grind, @sawgrass.
America’s 50 Best Cities to Live - Manhattan Beach, California.
Manhattan Beach is one of several California cities to rank on this list.
Reference