NB I'm no claiming that the Edinburgh planning process is perfect - just reacting on my experience of owning and living in listed properties in an extremely heavily controlled area.
For SF, the whole place is heavily controlled.
From what I remember of walking around SF - parts of it are very nice and large parts of it are pretty unexceptional. Not sure why would want to apply the same rules to both. But the nice parts are definitely worth of protection in my view.
Jobs could still be a component, but I would say it's the character of the jobs, and the character of the area, that draws people.
Very often, yes. Especially in the 1960's. Thousands of people moved to San Francisco in the 60's just for its character.
Itinerant tech workers may not understand that. But once the tech bubble moves on to the next hot location, the locals who love the city and loved it before Google and Facebook will still be there.
And people forget that the reason there was so much culture in California in the 1960s was because of the booming economy, driven in large part by defense industries. Everybody was coming to California, and that drove cultural dynamism. SF was an extremely politically conservative city when the hippies came. They certainly didn't come to SF because they liked the locals; they came here along with everybody else and changed the city.
You do realize that age discrimination is a federal crime, right?
Character and cost played a part in the early post dotcom techwave. They didn't start coming here for the jobs. They came here because they already had a job in the valley (with >70% low-density housing) and it was cheaper and hipper to live in SF. They slept on my couch for weeks while apt hunting. Then that wave required busing. Then some employers decided to move/expand in the city because workers wanted to be where it has hip.
I'd be happy to bring a bulldozer to Valencia or Dolores. Problem is, a few thousand early-adopter otherwise glibertarian techies will be the first to jump in front of it.
And for some reason, it's those baddies in the zoning department who refuse to adapt to the latest fad. To think of all the strip malls we could have had. Or that freeway running thru Hayes, the Panhandle and GG.
Why does the everyone below them have to be forced into cell block apartments?
I am getting severely voted down for having this opinion, but I think my definition and the history of density in urban areas is on my side. When you put a bunch of young males in a crowded urban center, crime, violence, drug addiction happens.
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
I also dislike how MDU exhausts, particularly the laundry exhausts, are not sent out a scrubbed (E.G. water filtration) negative draw system to remove the fine particulates. I have never in my life even seen an MDU with such a setup, let alone filtered air ingress delivered to each unit.
Also, which SF are you proposing to maintain? The 1850's version? Early '90's? Whenever you decided to move there?
The only constant is change and renewal - you can't live in a museum.