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by cehrnrooth 3581 days ago
SF specific anecdote - I had a radical idea while walking up Divisadero last week. What if we removed Divisadero and Geary St. and built apartments where the road is today. You'd have European style narrow streets for pedestrians and could increase the density massively. Imagine taking out the multiple lanes across Geary St and how much housing could be built. Would there even be a NIMBY problem since the road is publicly owned?
3 comments
pchristensen 3581 days ago
Yes, huge NIMBY problem - people drive/bike/ride busses on those streets, and business are on those streets. (not saying they wouldn't benefit from a change, particularly businesses, but many people object to huge changes) You don't need to own something to be a NIMBY.

More practically, the width of even wide streets like Geary is narrower than the depth of a typical SF building - see https://goo.gl/maps/YbJmqxpgEW62. Roads overall take up a huge amount of space in a city, but no single road is all that much area. For instance, it looks like the right of way on Geary is about 110'. If it went the full length of SF (~7 miles), then the whole road takes up less than 100 acres. For reference, Park Merced is 150 acres.

It would be great if all the lightly trafficked side/residential streets could be squished from 60' to 40', you're talking about 50 blocks -> 1000' width, which is over 3 blocks wide and about a thousand acres, which is approaching the size of the Richmond district (and that's just if you squish in one direction). But you can't just pinch-to-zoom in real life :(

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dpark 3581 days ago
> Would there even be a NIMBY problem since the road is publicly owned?

Yes. NIMBYism is entirely about public policy. The fact that the land in question might be publicly owned is irrelevant. If anything, publicly owned land should be more subject to NIMBYism. Public land does indeed belong to the citizens.

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aclimatt 3581 days ago
I actually think about that all the time. But instead of doing it on Geary or Divis, I think the real win is in SoMa. Our city has six lane streets in some cases -- that's absurd. Build a strip of housing, retail, and parks down the middle of Brannan, and you've turned what I consider one of the least walkable and desirable neighborhoods in SF into somewhere potentially very nice to live.
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