Many NIMBYs aren't purely financially driven. What they want is for their neighborhood to stay exactly as it was when they moved in, with the same type of people, and same amount of traffic.

Bay Area has plenty of this type. Many of them already have had property value skyrocket (50K -> 2M is not uncommon), so they can just have both (high property values, and preserve their neighborhood exactly as they want it).

Honestly I think this would be fine. The problem is they allow FANG to build giant offices, which brings new 400k-income jobs and bids up the restricted supply.

I think they should be forced to choose one or the other. Keep their SFH and say no to FANG, or accept townhomes and condos to balance out the new jobs.

This is also in part due to tax revenue. Because of Prop 13, residential units in CA generate very little property tax revenue (revenue which doesn't grow much until the property changes hands, which is unpredictable). Commercial units don't have this problem, so municipalities can depend on a decent amount of property tax, with predictable increases over time.

Prop 13 applies to commercial property too, I'm pretty sure.

I think commercial property just doesn't burden the city. A Google office has private security, a fire suppression system, and doesn't house kids who need to attend the school district.

Commercial property does burden the transit systems (LOL for CA) and roads. The road issue is pernicious because they take up enormous amounts of real estate to begin with and are extremely difficult to expand after the fact. This is one of the primary arguments against building high-rise housing in SoCal. Neither the transit systems nor the roads are able to deal with the additional people. The roads probably never will at this point--there is no room to expand them. Yet the transit systems are woefully underdeveloped for the size of the population and would take years to catch up even if the local politics supported them.

I see a lot of this from People on Nextdoor. They see their favorite landmark demolished to build yet another block of apartments and condos. I've seen a sporting goods store gone, a furniture store gone. A bowling alley was saved but it will be built around. Some places I've seen low density industrial being replaced with housing. Some people fear that at the end it will just be housing and big box stores left.

That’s only true up to a tipping point when poor people move in. Parts of Detroit are a great example where poor people are diving down the value of houses around them.

People essentially want to be surrounded by people of almost exactly their economic class to somewhat richer. To rich and stores they can’t afford to stay ie gentrification, to poor and you have to move ie white flight.

I'm not sure what parts of Detroit you're talking about, I can't think of a single neighborhood that is struggling with that problem, blight and abandonement? Sure.

Blight is a direct result of people in the area being to poor to afford to maintain infrastructure.

As to driving prices down, some houses in good condition are selling for ~25-50k which would be worth more basically anywhere else in the US.

That's not because a bunch of poor people moved into the neighborhoods. That's because the middle class moved away or lost their jobs.

It’s not just a question of the middle class moving away, people die which means you need more people moving in. As soon as the mix of people moving in starts to include less affluent people it eventually gets dominated by them simply because their are more people as you move down the income curve.

The transition within a city is rarely about some specific employer shutting down. The more general case is homes age and different areas become attractive over time. You can find areas where nearly identical homes where build across a wide area, yet one community falls into disrepair while another becomes desirable simply based on school zoning.

Honestly, Detroit had nowhere to go but up. The city was so poor that even a decade ago downtown was a hot mess where there was virtually nobody there after 6 PM.

I think you have it exactly backwards the cost goes down due to the area being a less desirable location allowing the poor to afford the houses there. If you analyzed the situation better it is extremely likely that there is an underlying cause that isn't poor people moving in. The economic situation in Detroit has been shit and getting shittier for years now leading to the people who are more capable and therefore able to command a higher salary to tend to move elsewhere.

A house that a doctor and a lawyer are competing to buy is going to be go for more than the one an auto mechanic and a fireman are competing for.

It is a little bit of both, at least when it comes to maintaining a local public school’s rating. People will oppose lower income housing to prevent the children of lower income people from attending the same schools, which might cause the school’s rating to go down. Which would then be downward pressure on the price of the land.

Every real estate website has school ratings for each house listing because it is such a sought after amenity.

It also means you can get walkability and nice things like shops and leisure activities without having to buy a car and drive literally everywhere.

Maybe. If zoning is fluid and organic, you might get those. And they are nice things that many people value.

But, in existing zones? Maybe not - you'd have to convince people to change residential to commercial/retail. And changes to parking minimums, which always seem to screw up projects (they almost always require more parking than a "free market" would dictate).

That also means "those people" can walk into your neighborhood, and many are motivated not to let that happen.

I lived in an area that, for years, refused to let an old railroad track be converted into a trail because it would connect a working class area of the town to an upper middle class area via a miles-long footpath.

That needs a commitment to commercial space on the first floor and underground parking for tenants so that surface parking is available to customers without the need for massive lots. Builders who want to extract maximum profit with the cheapest construction won't go for it.

So, the status quo has to change. Not an easy job, but the rest of the world shows how it can be done.

More homes and more people doesn't necessarily make an area more desirable. Many people prefer space, privacy, and quiet. Those things are more important to them than property values.

That is fantastic for retirement but 80% of people who live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly proximity to jobs which are driven themselves by the proximity of many people which is often driven by the proximity to desirable features like ports.

Retirement isn't the issue. Most people who live in suburban areas today close to live in low density areas. They don't want their neighborhoods to become urban regardless of what that would mean for proximity to jobs and other desirable features.

Stop trying to tell people what they ought to want. Not everyone agrees.

Not the parent, but upthread we're talking about density and zoning in cities, not in suburban or rural areas. I get that people who want to live in a suburban or rural environment have different priorities, and they're free to set building policy to achieve those goals.

But it feels like (in SF at least) we have people with conflicting goals: they want to live in a city, but they want their experience to be similar to suburbia.

I want to live in a city and for it to actually feel like an urban environment! I want to walk everywhere for my day-to-day needs, and take transit for everything else. I want to sell my car and rent one only for the times I want to leave the city. But we're in this weird middle state where that often doesn't work. My guess is that the only place in the US where it really does work is NYC, and then maybe even only really in Manhattan.

>My guess is that the only place in the US where it really does work is NYC, and then maybe even only really in Manhattan.

It's probably the case that it's the only place in the country where it's considered perfectly normal as an adult not to own a car even if you have plenty of money.

There are--especially given Zipcar/Uber/etc.--other cities where people can get buy without owning a car, especially if it's a young post-college lifestyle. But it probably requires organizing your life around not owning a car to a certain degree.

"[T]hey want to live in a city, but they want their experience to be similar to suburbia". I would agree for all quadrants except the northeast quadrant. That is the most dense for population and mass transit. There is a real urban vibe in northeast quadrant.

I have been told that central Washington D.C. and Chicago are also very transit and pedestrian friendly. It is not a requirement to own a car in those places.

>who live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly proximity to jobs

Many jobs are in the suburban areas near metros rather than in metros themselves. SV is somewhat unusual in that a large swath of suburban area is as expensive or more expensive than in the city itself. This isn't the case with a lot of cities.

Look at any typical city in North America, your priciest neighborhood likely has low density.

People tend to work away from where they live (at least for high paying jobs) and prefer having ample space at home therefore I don't think higher density would increase property value as you stated.

The priciest neighborhood ($2MM+) in my city is low density and full of mansions for sports stars and execs for of all the local F500 companies. But the next tier in price ($1MM-$2MM) is actually pretty high density housing abutting downtown.

Once you get into the $500-$1MM range density falls again, as these are the McMansions in suburbia. Density keeps dropping as price goes down until you get into the slums territory, which are basically the pockets of urban blight that haven't been redeveloped yet.

Can you share the city name? I'm curious to learn more.

You're looking at one half of a normal distribution and seeing "more is less" (more money is less houses per square meter), and you're reacting to someone looking at the other half of the normal distribution and he's seeing "more is more". You're both right, just not looking at the entire picture.

When I worked in New York City, there was a stark contrast between senior management. Some lived very rich & urban -- West Village single family townhouse or Upper East/West side high rise, and others lived in a huge suburban home in Greenwich, Connecticut or Long Island. It was a weird mix. I could never figure out why they chose one over the other.

You are probably looking at price per home, not price per acre.

> They are thinking "will this make the property value go down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the property value skyrocket in the next 10 years".

Not even. Near here, there was a proposal from the city to increase middle-density housing.

They hired economic forecasters. Their projection, that property values would "decrease" from 13% YOY increases (we are in one of the highest increasing cities in the country) to 9% YOY.

In other words, you'd still see your home value _increasing_ 53% in five years (versus 84%), not decreasing...

... and people still acted like the city wanted to shoot their first-born in the streets.

Exactly. Parents bought a house in relatively scarcely populated area. Then 10000 neighbours moved in. Now they own the largest property in the neighborhood. Guess what that does with the price...

Not everyone cares about greed-driven financials (houses as "investments") nor wants to live in a "lively" place. I'll take my peace and quiet, thanks...and my stable property values and town size.