Brisbane is 6.5 miles from downtown SF (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+downtown+san+...)

The entire peninsula is tiny, it's not fair to compare it to Zurich.

You can find both grazing cows and vineyards WITHIN the city limits of Zurich, less than 3 miles from the center.

Zurich is not located on a 7 mile wide peninsula.

This is some strange SF manifest destiny argument

Your statement appears to have nothing to do with the area that Brisbane, CA is located in.

I was just objecting to the idea that a small town was inappropriate in this context. With a suitable urban form there's no reason why you couldn't take the entire population of Brisbane and put them all on 640 acres, with 80% open space.

But Brisbane, California is not a "small town" it's a disgusting example of exurban sprawl.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brisbane,+CA/@37.679201,-1...

> Brisbane, California is not a "small town"

Brisbane is a small town. It is dense, not sprawling. It has a town square and a handful of shops. It has schools. It is surrounded by empty space on all sides. It is in a canyon of San Bruno Mountain on three sides and surround by bay water and rail yards on the north side. You don't know what you are talking about

That's not the town. That's the industrial park. The town is just south of there. It's made up of houses, not warehouses. Even including the industrial park, Brisbane is small, a town, not sprawling, and is completely detached from SF by water and a couple miles of rail yards. Tunnel Ave is really long and no one drives on it. It is effectively a country road that leads from SF to Brisbane. Go drive it or bike it or walk it some time. Brisbane is a completely separate place from SF

You obviously have no idea what the boundaries of Brisbane are.

Here you go. It's EXACTLY as I described. http://www.zipmap.net/California/San_Mateo_County/Brisbane.h...

If you look at your link, you will see the address is (142 Elderberry Ln, Brisbane, CA 94005).

Looking at the map (https://goo.gl/maps/7kvttaK8z7F2), it's not even in Brisbane proper, so I think you're wrong about your assessment.

I have been to Brisbane, the number of large McMansions is very tiny.

This one is. It almost seems designed to trick a machine learning classifier into classifying it as a warehouse or something.

Point it the existing built environment of Brisbane, CA is not worth preserving. Its car-dependent nature is a menace to the region.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6916572,-122.4087356,3a,90y,...

Your link still points to a house outside of Brisbane proper... how transit efficient is San Francisco outside of downtown? BART doesn't reach most of SF, MUNI is abysmal and buses...well, Brisbane has buses too.

I think your assessment is a bit heavy handed considering how bad public transit is in the area in general.

You seem to be defining "Brisbane proper" as the area between San Francisco Ave. and Firth Park. But Brisbane is much more extensive. The majority of its land area is taken up by empty land, single-story material handling facilities, and ludicrous sprawl at "The Ridge".

I wonder how many self-driving cars live in that house...

Oh, you're raising a non-sequitor. Got it.

That's not what we call an 'exurb', either.

I think that was part of the point. IE: "if the principal city is built properly" implies the principal city isn't built properly.

Oh, that makes sense. Instead of talking about what we could actually do -- build high-density by an existing and underused transit hub -- let's complain about the way the entire Bay Area is laid out!