1) That's an absurd straw man.

2) Expecting your groundskeeper to drive a century on top of his (or her) actual job is pretty sick and cruel too

3) I'm pleased you mention Southern California as it's a useful case study of how to turn a pleasant area in to a dystopian hellscape. I've lived in Westwood (near UCLA), Santa Monica, and most recently San Diego (South Park - a fairly upscale neighborhood).

I routinely attended meetings of the planning group for South Park, where the attendees, all of whom were homeowners aside from me (and elderly), opposed ANY new housing of ANY sort ANYWHERE. They were blunt about their reasoning - it might hurt their home values. Of course, keeping homes expensive is a great way to ensure your groundskeeper can't live near work.

They also hated bike lanes, because they thought it would affect parking. It's rather sickening they cared more about places for cars to sleep than for people to sleep.

https://www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/profiles/greater... if you care to go yourself. The area's taxpayers will even give you free parking welfare.

Thankfully I escaped SoCal (and the US), but not everyone (including, perhaps, your gardener) is able to do that.

Its almost as if buying and responsibly maintaining your property gave you privlidges.

Over your own property, yes, Don't tell me I have to pay for your "free" (aka taxpayer subsidized) on-street parking. Or stop me from turning a lovely old 4 bedroom home in a nice neighbourhood in to two apartments because you want to live on a skidpad.

It says a lot more about your worldview than the original poster's that you jump to assuming a 50 mile bike, rather than the simpler notion that people live close to where they work.

Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?

> Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?

I think it's not that people refuse to live next to a gardener, it's that the job of gardener does not allow for an income that someone could afford to live close by given the housing market. It might not be 50 miles, but there are areas of affluence where it would take awhile for a low-income person to reach. There are also areas of affluence right next to considerably run-down (but famous) areas, such as Hollywood. Then again, I'm not sure how much housing there is in the run-down portions.

In many areas like DC, poor streets are a few blocks from rich areas. Land is plentiful, and density is cheap. It’s only artificial constraints that cause high housing costs.

Well of course not. That's exactly why the person you are responding to talked about zoning. Without NIMBYs, you could upzone and solve most housing cost issues.

Southern California is dense and sprawling. Not very vertically dense, mind you, but I'm not sure there's a lot of existing room for new development without displacing people, and I'm also not sure any new development would lower housing costs enough to support the workforce in question. It would take a massive amount of high-density housing to get costs low in certain areas, and low-cost housing doesn't exactly draw in the developers.

It may have started as NIMBY, but I think natural market forces eventually reinforce it to the degree that NIMBY isn't necessarily the largest factor at play at this point.

Name one place on Southern California that breaks 25,000 people per square km. It’s all low density.

Manila by comparison is 71,263/km2 in it’s core. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila

Given the 500 square miles of Los Angeles and the 4 million people population, that's about a 60' by 60' plot of land per person. Given that doesn't include roads, highways, industrial or commercial zoning, and that people will group in housing (families), I think that's fairly dense for the type of housing which is currently in place, which is homes homes with yards.

It's not dense relative to other types of metro areas, but I think it's probably fairly dense for single level housing in an industrialized nation.

My point wasn't to imply that Southern California was very densely housed, but that there may not be a huge amount of unutilized land left to build high density housing one, at least not enough to really change the dynamics. And once the conversation shifts from just what to build and where to also who to displace to build it, it's an much harder conversation.

I could be entirely wrong, I don't live in LA, but my impression every time I visit is that there's not a lot of unused land, even if the land that is used isn't used efficiently (population density wise). If that's true, it's not just a NIMBY situation (even if it might have traditionally been one), as it's also a "don't displace historical group X that's been living in this area for decades" situation (whether entirely accurate or not).

We have not been limited to single story buildings for thousands of years. Saying this is the kind of housing currently in place really is irrelevant, because that argument would apply to farming communities etc. Instead High density means something and nowhere in California applies which is why housing is expensive.

PS: It’s a question of underutilization, where it would be economically profitable to take each of these buildings down and replace them with more useful structures.

As efficient as it may be, demolishing homes is about as bad an image as you could project. Few with political ambition would touch it with a pole.

Demolish the parking.

Whwn the vikings settled Dublin they set up some huts along the river.

Therefore the riverfront should be low density huts forever I guess.

That has little to do with what I'm saying. I'm not saying development shouldn't happen, I'm saying it won't on any quick timescale because of the existing infrastructure and how people fight to avoid change. All I'm saying is that rezoning to allow different building types won't lead to enough new housing immediately starting, nor even the change a decade from now being sufficient. A lot of things are required to fix the problem, and new zoning is just one of them.

The assumption that increasing development leads to displacement is misplaced. Homeowners could turn a single family home into a triplex, adding two new units without displacing anyone. There are also always people trying to sell and move in any housing market. Building new housing leads to less displacement: http://cityobservatory.org/if-you-want-less-displacement-bui...

As a homeowner, I bought my home so I would not have to live in a goddamn apartment. Its going to be a very tough sell to have me rent to strangers, even with the equity boost. I value my space, therefore real estate is expensive.

So.. don't? Not sure what the problem is here.

Out of respect for property rights though, please don't make it illegal for your neighbour to do this to their home should they choose.

I specified Southern California. If you’re unfamiliar with the dynamics of the region it makes sense that you think it’s outlandish.

The "dynamics" of SoCal are atrocious, you get the privelege of wasting your life away in traffic to do the simplest things.

Public transit is a bad joke too, the light rail in LA waits for cars to pass at intersections! I've never seen that in other metros, as rail always gets signal priority, but it is a great way to drive away riders...

We can discuss the practicalites of commuting on the sun, too, if you like.