[ChrisBland]

If you think about some of the really interesting architecture of San Francisco, do you think they could be built now? Imagine trying to get the golden gate bridge built today. At some point you have to accept that not everyone is going to like every aspect of your plan and tell them to go pound sound or nothing will ever get done.

[rootusrootus]

At some point I think we went off the rails and decided that democracy has to occur at every level of a public project. E.g. First the governor announces a vision, then the legislature allocates funds, then it goes to a design committee, etc, on down the line. At each level we try to get public participation, and at each level just a few loud voices can derail the whole thing for an indefinite amount of time.

Perhaps we could reign that in. Democracy is how we elect leaders. If enough of our leaders decide to do something, then we do it. Maybe we have one public comment period for really big projects. But it gets done. Don't like what they did? Vote them out.

[bombcar]

The US was setup as republic for reasons that are becoming more and more apparent. We used to select representatives for a town or locality that would then group together and select representatives for the next level, etc. Much of this was due to communication limitations at the time, but there's something to be said to saying "I trust Bob here to make good decisions on my behalf" instead of everyone injecting themselves into every aspect of everything.

All I can to personally is not vote for or against these various things.

[moduspol]

It's certainly going to be tougher (not just in San Francisco, but elsewhere) because it was previously standard practice to choose cheaper areas for these projects to keep taxpayer costs low. Of course, in reality this disproportionately affects marginalized communities, so it'd be a political dumpster fire nowadays to propose that.

If you can't build things in the cheaper areas, all that's left are the expensive ones.

[davidw]

This is exactly the problem. As someone who has been observing 'the process' closely in my own city, as we struggle to build enough homes, this piece really hit home:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/local-gove...

[carapace]

We just built a new bridge.

> The eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was a construction project to replace a seismically unsound portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored suspension bridge (SAS) and a pair of viaducts. The bridge is in the U.S. state of California and crosses the San Francisco Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. The span replacement took place between 2002 and 2013, and is the most expensive public works project in California history,[5] with a final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun from the original estimate of $250 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...

[antognini]

There were critics of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s who complained that it ruined the view.

[maxwell]

It was quite a challenge to get it approved in the 1930s:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Golden-Gate-Bri...

The detractors did have a point though:

> Any bridge with a clearance of less than 250 feet could blockade the harbor as the size and height of international vessels increased.

How much has the 220 foot air draft restriction affected the Port of Oakland (and SF, if Pier 80 ever got running again)? Does this factor into imports (that aren't bound for NorCal) seeming to goto the much busier container ports in Seattle/Tacoma and LA/Long Beach instead?

https://container-news.com/top-10-the-busiest-container-port...

Meanwhile, there's been a flurry of new construction across the street from my local container port in Old Portland (Maine), which sees 2 orders of magnitude fewer containers than Oakland, but does have a stranglehold on the nation's supply of imported fish sticks. It seems like a key in getting approval to build right on Commercial St has been proposing buildings that look pretty good and fit the area, e.g.

https://hobsonslanding.com

https://goo.gl/maps/uAgZepV25qzRxrtG6