The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them, which would be a big incentive for the company to deal with it themselves.
And some cities would be happy to. Problem is, scooter companies don't want to work together with cities! They just show up and open shop, Uber style...
> The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them
...and then cry foul when that happens, because why, this is destroying innovation and assaulting honest businessmen.
Yes.
They're littering the streets. Beyond being just annoying, it creates a life-threatening hazard for the blind people. On top of that, they're used - as intended to be used - on the sidewalks, instead of the streets where they belong. This already killed many people around the world.
One idiot on a Bird copycat almost killed my then-9-months-pregnant wife, as he carelessly rode the sidewalk at high speed and didn't see passengers exiting the bus.
Cities have various policies towards innovation; some entangle everyone in red tape, others wave new ideas through. But the common thread of the famous SV startups in city space, and their copycats around the world, is building a business that dumps a lot of externalities on society, treating city councils as enemies, and then being surprised when said councils don't cooperate. If they want more friendly regulators, then perhaps they should be respectful towards said regulators (and people they represent).
Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.
The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about.
It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks" through the financial consequences. These issues are the consequence of it - that's why it happens everywhere things are gentrifying.
These stratifications produce slums, favelas, cantegrils, gecekondus, barrios, karton siti, paraggoupoli, zopadpatti, baraccopoli, putri, perkampungan kumuh... there's words in almost every language for this phenomena. Policies are machines. They produce things.
This is the outcome of the process, globally, for centuries. You can not possibly get to your goal through that method. It does not work.
I know how alluring the logic is, but like counterintuitive math and science, the obvious solution does not work and we need to stop pretending otherwise. Reality doesn't give a damn about personal belief and stubbornness in systems that don't work. You can't will a wrong answer into being right.
It's the material reality.
The problem, as you say, is the cracks that people can fall through. Nobody should be sleeping rough and hungry in the richest country on earth. Solve that with a social safety net, not by banning new construction.
A market and property based approach that locks people out, allocates resources according to ability to pay or some other social status, and sees signs of inability to pay, poverty, and hardship including death, as merely personal moral failings, and the market consequences as some amoral natural system, that's gentrification. Maybe some think that's "the right way to do it" but it's also a really efficient slum creation engine.
We're set for 1/4th the world to be squatters by 2030, that's not sensationalistic, it's the reasonable expectation.
Historically this phenomena is found in immigrant or religious minority communities because they are thought to be less deserving. It's reinforcing because then they can be pointed at, in squalor, and say "see, I told you they were filthy". Racist policies lead to outcomes that differ on racial lines, duh...it was set up that way.
It's all foolish illogical nonsense that should have been tossed in the garbage in the 1700s with the other discarded superstitious rubbish. We can do better.
> A market and property based approach that locks people out, allocates resources according to ability to pay or some other social status, and sees signs of inability to pay, poverty, and hardship including death, as merely personal moral failings, and the market consequences as some amoral natural system, that's gentrification.
Yeah this is a disagreement about terminology. It sounds like you've just described a grab-bag of local social & political systems you don't like and you're attaching the word 'gentrification' to it all. We use the word 'gentrification' to describe things which happens in other places too, to mean different things, often in a non-perjorative way. Reusing that word to mean something similar but different is pretty confusing.
This is a colonial mindset and regards the eviction, impoverishment, and exile of other human beings as nothing compared to one's own desires. Yes they'll be replaced. That's what colonization is.
> Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification.
Today's gentrification is caused by wealthier people moving into neighborhoods, and making them less affordable. BUT this affordability reduction is relative to the price we were at before.
The price we were at before is already extremely unaffordable due to insane building restrictions and a NIMBY attitude baked into regulation.
If the city allowed the building of high-rises everywhere, would gentrification stop? No. Certain neighborhoods would get gentrified, and become relatively higher priced. Overall, however, city affordability would skyrocket.
It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters,
Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama,
Also unless you literally double capacity everywhere what incentive do landlords (even new ones) have to moderate aggregate and individual rent growth? Since the state of the area is f'd today and demand is high, if there are any improvements demand can only go (dramatically) up.
This sounds like an excuse. The city of Tokyo alone builds more housing every year than the entire state of California: https://www.thenational.ae/business/property/want-affordable...
Tokyo is an in-demand city in an earthquake prone area, and they've managed to create enough housing to stay ahead of demand.
Also, personnaly I wouldn't be ready to live in a Tokyo flat and I suspect most of the target population isn't either. That we may not have a choice down the line is likely, but another issue.
For that price, you can get a bunk-bed in San Francisco [1]
[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Tokyo
[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/18/20699340/podshare-san-franci...
Because the rents are still too affordable.
That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars.
Perhaps if you're going to litter the streets with scooters you should be required to post up cash in escrow for unlittering said scooters if/when you disappear.