The trouble with small cities is that no one wants to see their character changed. In New York they built the subway ahead of development, making high density possible immediately, and regularly bulldozed existing properties as demand increased to make them even higher density later.
If you don't create new cities, the people still need to end up somewhere. You can move jobs to smaller cities or create new ones, whatever. the point is, you need to move jobs to areas that want to grow.
Have you seen the new neighborhoods that are being built in places like CA? Every single tree gets chopped down, ever last one. That's because developers are forced to build with density because the cost of land is so high. if you want to prevent the slaughtering of trees, you'll need specifically create minimum distance regs or reduce the # of trees that can be cut down legally. at the current rate, there's no nature for anyone to enjoy in the neighborhoods that are currently being built.
The poop in SF is from growing rates of homelessness, not from density. SF ranks low on density compared to NYC and Hong Kong, yet only SF has a poop problem.
NIMBYism crops up in every place where there is growth, and it seems to create a system that rewards luck of being born in the right time and place over contributions to society.
There's a lot of chickens unhappy about $1600/month 200sqft apartments. (a real example from SF - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti... )
Because that's the dystopian nightmare in SF, and to move jobs out of silicon valley to elsewhere, would be to export that same dystopia to more places.
We already see this in Michigan of all places. You can make a SF salary and pay $1600/month for a micro-apartment. Or you can take a 50% pay cut, to pay $800/month for ~200sqft micro-apartment. They are equally ridiculous and equally unaffordable, once you account for the currency/wage differences, despite the fact that we have no zoning restrictions in this town.
We obviously need more housing, and need to build more housing, but housing is inherently pollution-heavy. You can not build your way into affordability alone, because the act of new construction inherently generates more unaffordability. It alone can never solve it.
> The only reason (cheap apartments) doesn't exist in CA is because of NIMBYs and their ridiculous zoning policies.
No, that's only a tiny part. Zoning is a small reason, but not the primary one. The biggest reason CA apartments are expensive, is the financial pollution generated by the companies there.
If you built a brand new city in an empty cornfield somewhere, with no laws or zoning of any kind, it would be somewhat cheaper than San Francisco, but every single apartment would still cost ~$1100-$1600/month. Because most of that price is due to the financial pollution from the companies, not the zoning.
They’re not equal. You almost certainly end up with significantly more disposable income in SF.
The whole idea that increasing supply will drop the price isn't 100% accurate. In Chicago we've had lots of new development in an area that wasn't that expensive to be in. Now we have 900sqft 2br places that are 3.2k a month and studios for 1800 in that same area.
That simply means there isn’t sufficient new supply proportional to the new demand. New supply may make an area more desirable, inducing more demand. But there is a limit to the total demand, so one just needs to keep adding supply.
That's a very tech focused idea. Chicago is currently having infrastructure issues due to demand. (the city wants to use that to show "see we need more money" the transit system is always busy.. yet isn't considering how to address that issue)
Anyways, new developers are only choosing to build "luxury" apartments.
Here's an example:
when I moved into logan square: I was paying 1350$+100$ for a garage 2br/1ba. That was about 200$ more than the places around it.
Now that 10+ high rise buildings have been built near by. A place similar to mine costs $3200, and studios are going for 1800. (Either limited parking [as in you are competing with others to rent a space] or no parking at all)
Has the area improved? Nope. Businesses are having an even harder time staying open.
Unfortunately, current regulations and voters make it impossible to create another Chicago/NYC/SF.
Moreover leaving a few trees up in a lower-density development isn't a way to respect nature; whatever trees are left are there to decorate human properties.
We need new cities designed to be high-density from the start, and we need higher density in most existing cities. When humans live in urban areas, nature can be left alone, and you don't have to go 100 miles outside the city to reach undeveloped land.
Extremely efficient high-density cities that combine car AND bike friendly streets with mass transit. Numerous green parks and public spaces as well.
The rest of the country is rapidly turning into wilderness as people move into the cities for jobs, and the elderly rural-dwellers die off. Fortunately, the government still keeps the roads well-maintained so people such as myself can drive into the countryside and get our Initial D on.
No one is doing any of that to anyone in SF.
People that find it acceptable move in, those that don’t move out
People use up remarkably little space to actually live. In dense cities, multiple stories mean you can fit 3-10 times as many people as in single stories in the same area. But even with single stories, not much land is used.
What IS important is area used for agriculture. It's vastly more than land used for roads and houses and other buildings. Cut down on that (without sacrificing amount of food produced--possible using technology and policy together) and footprint on nature is reduced. In fact, less land is now used for agriculture than was used in the late 1940s, even though population has more than doubled: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012/march/data-feature...
That is due to vastly higher yields. We can go further and eliminate much farmland altogether by growing most of our calories from single-celled organisms. Given the processed food of the current industrial food system, the end-quality would be unchanged for the most part and may even improve. Even if not used for human consumption, it can displace animal feed (and already is used to some extent). Meat substitutes can also help.
> According to calculations of the United Nations Environment Programme, the calories that are lost by feeding cereals to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people.
> Feed conversion rates from plant-based calories into animal-based calories vary; in the ideal case it takes two kilograms of grain to produce one kilo of chicken, four kilos for one kilogram of pork and seven kilos for one kilogram of beef.
- Global Agriculture[1]
Your point re: human living space density in cities is totally spot on. Urbanism is much more efficient than suburban sprawl. Rigorous public transit makes having a car optional / disadvantageous if you live in a city. It's no wonder the automobile industry has always sought to stifle transit.
Look at the successes of the Houston light rail system METRORail. Opened in 2004 and has cut back traffic and lead to high-density apartments, shops, and offices near stations.
All that is evidence of why population growth isn't a real root issue. It could be problematic, depending on what other systems are at play to mitigate increasing resource needs of people. Even so, our current food production is enough to feed the projected 2050 population of 9.7 billion[2].
[1]https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-ani... [2]https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.310...
"World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100"
https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world...