Re:Proposed CA law tells cities: Build more, or we’ll do it ...
by Johnny555 on Saturday December 10, 2016 @03:53AM
(#13144773)
Of course, Somerville has little parkland, and few commercial buildings, not even much retail, and little office space.
I'd much rather see balanced communities with parks, retail/entertainment and office space so many residents don't have to travel outside of their community for every day needs.
By contrast, a suburb full of real housing can be far denser. For example, Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston, has about 19,000 people per square mile. It’s entirely unnecessary to fill the whole of the Bay Area with 30+ floor high rises in order to increase density by a factor of 2 or more; all we need is to re-zone a fraction of the land to allow 3–6 story low rise apartment buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods instead of only allowing single family detached houses on large lots and scattered strip malls and outrageous numbers of parking spaces everywhere.
Kowloon has a density of more than 100,000 people per square mile. The Bay Area does not need anything near the density of Hong Kong to meet its housing needs.