The thing is, by not building housing and allowing rents to skyrocket, San Francisco has pushed out most of its culture. The steady exodus of artists and musicians has by and large gutted the Bay Area's culture.
SF are by under no obligation to grow, where the vast majority of times when they grow, they aren't doing so due to interest from residents, but from the interests of businesses.
The only areas in the US that I've seen that truly want this sort of growth are ones in the sunbelt regions, and especially Texas. While these areas don't often have the same urban feel that NIMBY cities have, I'm sure part of that comes from the fact that theres less that's worthy of being preserved.
Yeah, more government meddling in the housing and jobs market will solve the problem! /s
The dichotomy you present of it being the interests of residents vs. the interests of business is false. I am sure many businesses want to build more housing for residents but the government prohibits it with zoning laws. If more companies were allowed to build new housing in and around the city it would be to the detriment of the landlords and businesses benefitting from the currently sky high rents as there would be more openings for residents and prices would be driven down accordingly.
And it's absolutely a battle between residents and businesses. Cities subsidize multinational companies to grow within their borders and then allow them to contribute very little to the infrastructure needed to support these people. Due to the lack of proper transportation and educational investment, enabling high numbers of new comers just leads to more congestion and overcrowding.
If we had employment head taxes (or any other sort of program that could solve infrastructure challenges in a 1:1 way with job migrant growth) around solving these sorts of problems, they wouldn't be problems.
How is a city going to resolve a housing shortage by collecting a head tax? Is the city going to get into the housing development business and build more housing themselves?
> And it's absolutely a battle between residents and businesses. Cities subsidize multinational companies to grow within their borders and then allow them to contribute very little to the infrastructure needed to support these people. Due to the lack of proper transportation and educational investment, enabling high numbers of new comers just leads to more congestion and overcrowding.
Again, the government is the problem here. Why is the city treating certain businesses with favor over others (i.e. multinationals over the housing industry)? It is corruption! If the government was removed from the picture there would be more housing (i.e. no zoning issues) and multinational companies wouldn't get sweetheart deals (i.e. subsidies) which would mean growth would happen at a more natural rate that the infrastructure could support.
SF is trying to pull a Palo Alto where they reap the benefits of having many jobs, but push the cost of housing to neighboring cities. It's irresponsible.