[capkutay]

Zoning is important. The issue is that it is often abused and poorly thought out in San Francisco. For instance, Mission Bay [0] was a rail yard with no inhabitants sitting at the foot of San Francisco, just south of urban SoMa. It was a prime opportunity to make it a dense, metropolitan extension of the city with little voter backlash since there were no residents in the area. Not to mention, it is also the most accessible, commutable part of the city with 2 Caltrain stops and 2 freeway on-ramps. Instead, they made it it a low-rise biotech neighborhood with primarily 40 ft zoning.

There's another development in Downtown SF (SoMa to be exact) where current residents are suing to block the transformation of a PARKING LOT into a housing/office complex with over 200 units of affordable housing[1]. The area is already dense and urban, the building itself is not out of character (there's a 400 ft hotel right next door). It also introduces a lot of much needed open space to Central SoMa. However, some residents in the area are suing, claiming that development would cast shadows on nearby parks (0.08775% and 0.167% of sunlight in winter months) and increase traffic to the area. The lawsuit will probably delay the development for years. It's just sad to see such an irrational attempt to impede the progress of a potentially great city.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco

1: http://www.5mproject.com/

[kqr2]

Unfortunately there are many examples of this in SF. Over time, this leads to very poor land use. Other examples:

1) Balboa reservoir : people prefer to keep it as an empty parking lot

http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/05/08/at_balboa_reservoir...

2) Francisco Reservoir : although there is already a park nearby, they chose to turn this into another park

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Francisco-Reservo...

Current residents are unfortunately much more vocal than potential future residents or housing advocates.