[shse]

The more you build the more people will come. When can you consider a city to be full? When there is no land to build? Or maybe when it's impossible to provide an infrastructure to support its population? Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.

The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US. It's already happening as companies struggle to find workers in SF bay area opening offices in other west coast cities.

[TulliusCicero]

> The more you build the more people will come.

Sure, but demand is not infinite.

> When can you consider a city to be full?

No such thing.

> Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.

I'd rather that be an option than only having slightly larger apartments that are unaffordable, like the bay area currently does.

I think Vienna is a better model, though. Dense and highly livable. I live in Munich right now, which is similar. It's a great place for families.

> The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US.

Wrong. Ecosystem effects are a natural phenomenon. There's a reason you tend to get clusters for industries: they're more effective that way. Forcibly spreading out the economic success also means reducing the economic success in total. A much better option is just letting people come. The bay area isn't dense at all right now anyway.

[epistasis]

They won't come unless there are jobs.

But if there are already jobs fro them, it's absolutely 100% the responsibility of cities to make sure that they allow enough housing to be built.

Right now California cities are encouraging growth in jobs while simultaneously actively preventing any sort of balance with housing. This has great effects for the pocket books of landowners in cities, and tremendously negative effects for the environment and all the workers that come later.

It's a completely false strawman to assert that families in 400sqft condos are the inevitable result of density. But we know what happens when nothing is built, that families savings are drained until they are forced to move to other areas, displacing them. That's by far the worst consequence, and it is the active choice of wealthy people in California.

[TulliusCicero]

Yup, and then they move where they can accord: to a sprawling suburb in Texas that's energy-inefficient and cuts more into nature. A real progressive win, that!

It's like these people have infant-style lack of object permanence: if we just make these people leave my city, they disappear! Look how great it is for the environment that they vanished into the aether, never to be seen again!

[koolba]

> Right now California cities are encouraging growth in jobs while simultaneously actively preventing any sort of balance with housing. This has great effects for the pocket books of landowners in cities, and tremendously negative effects for the environment and all the workers that come later.

Interestingly since local regulation is voted on only by locals, either directly or indirectly via their elected officials, the system is naturally catered to the existing land owners. Winning the support of commuters does not win elections.