Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

Re:Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart by kurthr on Thursday July 21, 2016 @05:12PM (#12140114)

Population density in "Tokyo" is much higher than you describe at 15k/km2 on average with many wards of 300-500k persons that are OVER 20k/km2. The Tokyo Metropolis includes Yokohama which is 30km away (it's like including all of Marin/San Mateo/Oakland), while the Met Area you describe would be like the whole Bay Area down to San Jose and halfway to Sacramento. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo

Seoul, HK, Beijing are similar and I think India has much higher densities still. Population densities in many parts of the world are much higher than SF. I could take a picture out of my window right now of a block of ~200x30story apartment blocks right next to each other standing like soldiers. It's not rare.

Do I want that for SF? No, but the density isn't that extreme... unless you're talking about total $ borrowing power of the individuals involved.

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Re:Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart by WildUtah on Thursday July 21, 2016 @08:24PM (#12140989)

Tokyo's built-up area has population density near 150 (in persons/hectare, the SI unit of population density). It's nearly the same in the central wards and in the outer suburbs. Tokyo achieves that density with almost no one living in buildings over five stories high and the vast majority in free-standing single family homes under four stories.

San Francisco County, not including any suburbs, averages around 90, excluding big open spaces like the Presidio. The Bay Area is closer to 30, just in built-up areas, not including parks and open space.

Manhattan is about 500 and Paris 300.

Gp, of course, has fallen into the trap of including open space in his calculations. Most metro statistical aggregates include a lot of surrounding farmland, ocean, and parks and don't reflect density experienced by residents or development intensity on available land.

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Re:Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart by ghaff on Friday July 22, 2016 @04:02AM (#12142303)

And here's the subway system that moves all those people around in Tokyo: http://bento.com/subtop5.html

San Francisco has BART at least (plus Muni to be fair). Oh, and the cable cars. https://www.bart.gov/sites/all/themes/bart_desktop/img/syste...

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Re:Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart by kurthr on Friday July 22, 2016 @06:45PM (#12147315)

I agree... most of Tokyo is only ~3 stories high and it has quite a few parks... there are wards as dense as Manhattan, but only of a few 100k, and it has truly spectacular subways, like Paris, and Manhattan.

There are portions of Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, HK, Shenzhen that are at incredible densities. Having 6 neighboring blocks of 20-30 30+ story apt buildings isn't rare. I don't now how many people live per floor, but 15-30 seems very reasonable (they aren't empty). Each block has it's own schools and police/fire supporting 10k people in an area the size of a city block with Malls on the lower floors. Those neighboring blocks (still much less than 1km sq) are close to 100k/km2!?

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