[sologoub]

In California (can’t speak for other states), much of that “stuck in <x time period>” is largely driven by NIMBYs and at what point the place became more or less affluent.

SV seems to have figured out that some land can be redeveloped into apartments relatively recently, but otherwise it looks like 60s was a pretty active development era and most of that stuff is still here. By contrast, in LA much of 50s - 60s sprawl has been replaced by 70-80, or even 90s sprawl.

California is basically screwed as long as prop 13 applies to businesses and apartment buildings - what incentive do you have as the owner to raise your tax base, especially with rent control where you can’t charge more.

[chrisco255]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, because it's absolutely true that much of CA is stuck in the mid 20th century in terms of real estate development. The zoning laws and NIMBY-ism are very important to call out for restricting progress. Somebody above tried to blame the market. It isn't the market when you own a piece of property but you are restricted to building a single-family home that meets 200 different regulations and restrictions so tight that you only end up with cookie cutter homes in a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs. It's not just CA that suffers from this but it's certainly the most extreme case. Zoning laws are among the key reasons why city design has stagnated. There's little wiggle room for innovation. And if you look at attempts to build high speed rail, for example, and the debacle that is with the amount of money spent and the never-ending construction and you compare that to the achievements of the early 20th century and it looks like a sad situation.

[Animats]

Bear in mind that 1) only a few areas of California are increasing in population, and 2) the SF bay area has had two huge empty-house plenty-of-downtown-parking foreclosure-signs-everywhere recessions in the last 20 years. Next one is probably coming up soon.