~3/4 of Seattle land doesn't really allow new housing:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/city-repor...

But that's exactly the point - not everything ends up with a high rise on it. Clearly, not enough of a percent of "everything" has a high rise, or there would be no housing shortage! You feel there are too many, but if there was no desire for high rises, no one would build them!

This is patently untrue. Cities like LA and SF should have high rises everywhere, but instead they have 1 story homes from 1955 selling for $2 million.

They don’t even need high rises—change the 1 story 800sq foot bungalow into a 2 story 4 plex and all the units can have more living space than the original and 4x more people can live somewhere—-but that is banned in most places even

Maybe we live in different corners of SF, but I see mostly 3 story buildings in my neighborhood. What's needed are lots more 5 and 10 story buildings.

Considering the land value and demand, neighborhoods like Sunset are extremely low density. SF seems to have a lot of duplexes, even closer in where a two or three level building has two living units in it.

Housing needs to move up one level. The single family homes turn into 4 plex, the small apartments turns into 4-6 story, 6 story turn into towers. It doesn't need to be everything but it needs to be allowed.

LA and SF seem trapped by their design. Sure they need way higher density, but that would require transit that handles density better than cars on a road. But in order to build high capacity transit they want people to prove that it would be fully utilized and that won't be true if you're servicing areas that are currently all single family homes.

So high density housing can't be build because there is no transit, and high capacity transit can't be built because there is no high density housing.

At approximately 5x5 miles, SF is one of the smallest American cities while having among the worst housing crunch in the world.

SF doesn't need high speed metro. Cheap options like BRT, trams & separated bike/scooter lanes solve most of its variable demand. In SF, the transit vs housing conundrum is trivial. Build transit, and remove height restrictions in a 1000-ft radius in each stops location.

LA is harder to remedy. The city is so catastrophically designed, that any fix will bleed money before it ever stabilizes. At the same time, LA's housing isn't as expensive as SF. So, they could start with focusing on public transportation exclusively. (BRT + park-n-rides seem perfect for LA) and worrying about the zoning later.

I don't mean to nitpick, but why state it as 5x5, when it's far more popular for it to be denoted as 7x7, to the point that one of there local magazines is called 7x7.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7x7_(magazine)

What a coincidence! I had no idea there was an existing phrase for this. I merely eyeballed it from google maps.

I guess all people deal in the same tired cliches. I am not exception.

SF is trapped because there are well-organized community groups in the Western half of the city that will actively block density increase for the same sorts of reasons described here. You can get to higher density incrementally, but not if it’s always stopped at the beginning.

Yes and no. That's certainly a factor, but outside of work, people also tend to stay pretty close to their neighborhoods (I've been able to walk to my grocery store in the last 3 neighborhoods I've lived in). There's also been substantial work to build new mass transit, but housing hasn't increased substantially around the transit stops.

SF is small, hilly, and consists of many square miles of single family homes; with cars being the predominant way around town.

Less than 2000 feet from the geographical center of town, I live in a fully detached single family home with a huge backyard. My Walkscore of 35 equates to the nearest full line supermarket being a solid mile away, mostly flat, the nearest corner store is 0.8 miles away with 364 feet of elevation changes, too.

:30 minutes between runs of the bus means that all of my neighbors and I tend to drive everywhere. Trust me, this is not ideal.

Besides the financial district, SF seems like there'd be topographical complexities in some areas with large-scale projects. Perhaps pencil towers, like Billionaire's Row in New York, would work.

> Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on it eventually, like it or not.

I'd like to know what definition you're using for "everything" here because the vast majority of residential land is zoned exclusively for single-family homes and indeed that's mostly what gets built.

Developers can bribe individual politicians but NIMBYs hold all the power. NIMBYs control the votes. Developers don't.

> Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on it eventually, like it or not.

Also this is just false.