What technology are you referring to?

At the extreme, these things can hold a lot of people without too much land:

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

But you don't really need those in most places. Simply building 'in' more and up 2/3/4 stories would add a ton of housing in much of the bay area.

> At the extreme, these things can hold a lot of people without too much land:

They can hold a lot of people without too much land, but they don't reduce the land requirements for transporting goods and supplies to and waste products away from those people.

Sure, you can hold a lot more people in San Francisco if you fill the city with high-rises, but that's not going to, e.g., suddenly give the city a greater supply of water to support that population, or a greater ability to handle the solid waste produced by that population.

Cities are greener than suburbs by and large, so actually putting more people in cities that otherwise would have lived in a burb is a win for the environment.

Is that true when you factor in utilities? IE - Where does all the water come from? At least in the burbs, you can set up your own well.

Yes, it is, especially when you consider utilities. Average house in the burbs has some lawn or shrubs or something that uses water, and it's not like well water is ultimately 'free' - it comes from somewhere. Also, it means less land developed, less extensive electrical and water distribution systems, and so on.

What makes cost of living so much more expensive in cities vs. suburban or rural areas if they're really so much more efficient?

Demand.

Yes. Cities, dense cities, are efficiency machines.

Look up Geoffrey West, of the Santa Fe Institute, who does all kinds of research on scale and scale effects. Including of cities.

They also do best in areas where there is a large amount of bedrock close to the surface. NYC is geologically blessed in this regard. The Bay Area has far less geologically stable ground to build on, and a lot of what there is makes up our gorgeous parks and nature preserves.

There is ample room to build in San Francisco - not much construction even needs to be skyscrapers. More 4/5/6 story construction would help a lot. The problem is entirely political.

Chicago seems to do ok. I don't know what the ground is like in SF, but Chicago is basically a swamp.

Those are very expensive to build, approaching $1000/sqft. Also require utilities, transit, and other city services (schools, police, fire, etc).

It's about as expensive to live here as it is in many skyscrapers in Manhattan. NYC seems to have those other problems pretty well figured out. I've never heard a very convincing reason that SF can't be more like Manhattan in terms of density, except that the existing residents who've "got theirs" don't like the idea.

There isn't a cheap way out of SF's situation.

> Also require utilities, transit, and other city services (schools, police, fire, etc).

High rises don't require those things. People require those things.

For some of them, the requirements (for the same number of people and the same overall outcomes) increase with density, so, in a sense, high-rises (or other arrangements which increase density) do require them.

I didn't state my point well enough; people are the driving factor here. The density is caused by people wanting to move to SF. High rises are a way to deal with the reality, not providing housing isn't going to solve the problem in any way people are going to be happy with.

> The density is caused by people wanting to move to SF. High rises are a way to deal with the reality, not providing housing isn't going to solve the problem in any way people are going to be happy with.

Quite likely, just as many (if not more, in both absolute and proportional terms) people in SF will be unhappy with adoption of high-rises as the solution; the lack of availability under the current regime constrains some of the problems because it limits the ability of people to move in regardless of their desire to do so; relieving that constraint -- especially if the problems besides finding places to store the bodies aren't addressed -- just makes all the other problems of density worse.

Prices are high enough in San Francisco to pay for them.

2/3/4/5/6 stories are significantly cheaper to build.

Presumably building high-rise apartments.