[JumpCrisscross]

There are good points here. But San Francisco is woefully less dense than most major cities on this planet, including those like Tokyo which are subject to earthquakes. Blaming anything other than NIMBYism is a red herring.

Tech is the proximate, not ultimate, explanation foe the problem. The bed was laid by San Francisco’s housing policy. At the end of the day, most other cities and polities would have turned a massive influx of wealth into an asset, not a symbol of institutional failure.

[dragonwriter]

> But San Francisco is woefully less dense than most major cities on this planet, including those like Tokyo which are subject to earthquakes.

San Francisco is denser than Tokyo by about 2,000 people/mi.² (now, whether it is fair to compare tiny—both in geography and population, for a “major city”—SF to massive Tokyo—where the “city proper” by UN terms is roughly twice the population of the 9-county bay area—is another question.)

San Francisco isn't a major city except in the sense of GDP. Which makes it more impressive that it is a major city considering economic footprint, but makes attempts to compare it to cities that are among the world’s largest urban centers kind of ridiculous.