Paris's characteristic "beautiful" architecture is six stories tall stone, SF's is three stories tall wood. Unfortunately SF was started on a major fault, and probably without nearby quarries (which would be insane to use in an earthquake zone anyways).

So now we're stuck in a dichotomy between 4+ stories steel and glass, and the "original" SF Edwardian architecture, which doesn't scale as well as Paris's stone.

And Paris was started on a muddy riverbank. Also not ideal substrate for heavy stonework.

There are plenty of quarries nearby, that I’ve seen in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. It would be a better idea to build using reinforced concrete, though.

But even wood is not so limited. Most parcels here are limited by zoning to 2 stories. We could easily build 4-story wooden buildings, and double the city’s density. Some of the oldest wooden buildings are 5-story buildings in earthquake country,[0] and allegedly there are plenty of 10-story wooden buildings that have survived earthquakes in Vancouver.[1]

I think some of the appetite for reinforced concrete is because housing is so difficult to build around here, that it’s only worth going through the effort if the prices are high enough to justify expensive materials. Also, steel and glass allow you to have big windows.

[0] http://gizmodo.com/5846501/how-japans-oldest-wooden-building...

[1] https://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2015/07/how-tall-can-...

DC's architecture is converging on 12-14 stories steel and glass and it looks great while allowing a lot of density.

Speak for yourself. Considerations of urban policy and planning aside, I think the massive identical condo blocks popping up everywhere, and especially the developments in Navy Yard, are awful to look at and unpleasant to live around.

I agree. DC is really unfriendly at street level in a lot of areas. Giant blank-walled buildings that take up multiple entire blocks.