> It will obviously fail on the ballot due to NIMBYism but I’m not sure why would that even need to be on ballot.

Translation: The people who live there won't vote for a thing they don't want.

So allll the people who sit hours and hours each day in traffic, pay a fortune for a shack don't outweigh those that just want to preserve the neighborhood's character?

Not if they don't live there.

Because of it's size and market influence, California laws can effect the rest of the country, should the rest of the country vote in California elections?

The people who _choose_ to sit in the traffic are getting what they signed up for. I could be that person and I choose not to be in no small part to that situation.

What do you mean they don't live there? The folks who live in CA and commute all day (BART or cars or whatever), or are priced out of their old neighborhood, or sleep in their car? Or pay a fortune for a room illegally sublet? Can't they vote on CA elections?

We're talking about local (county or city) regulations that prevent the building of high density structures in a lot of these cities. Those regulations exist because the residents want them. Non-residents don't vote on those regulations because they don't live there, just like non-CA residents don't get to vote on CA laws even though those people are affected by them.

This is not completely true, as the cost to build high rise condos is extremely high and the land is very expensive. Every place in the USA that has kept housing affordable has done so with sprawl, which California's government doesn't allow.

You can see a detailed study of it here: https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/cities-expansion-slowing

The land is very expensive, shouldn't that be good enough of a reason to build high rises? It works in NYC and most of Europe, the only reason there are few high rises in SF is because of the government that prefers artificial scarcity.

Building sky scrapers is way more expensive than building single family homes on empty grassland, where the land is also cheaper. Of course the city should build up, but building out is the real way every US city has kept housing affordable (look at the study I linked above)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake enters chat

Luckily, earthquake-resistant structures have come a long way since then. For example, Tokyo is home to the second-tallest structure in the world, and they're not exactly unfamiliar with earthquakes

It doesn't go on the ballot directly, it goes on the ballot in the form of voting in local city officials (specifically the city council) who set the zoning laws/rules.