Further, it has been massively defunded because the largest peninsula employers send their employees on the dirtiest, most disruptive, private means of transit rather than participating in and funding regional transit expansion. A couple years ago something like 1/3 of the caltrain stops were shuttered, and today I hear from friends who ride it that it is bursting at the seams and people are often turned away from boarding trains that are too full.
The peninsula needs to urbanize if peninsula businesses want to attract young talent who want to live in urban areas, but the suburban residents are happy to approve office developments while opposing further housing development.
When people talk about building being restricted in SF, what they don't know is that they're talking about building being restricted on the peninsula.
Also, while there are some areas of SF which have larger homes (hey, some people have kids and do not want to raise them in a studio) and room for cars, even if you presented a very strong argument and accompanying civil planning to further urbanize these areas, in a city where everyone is basically hanging onto their housing by a thread, is your proposal to evict the entire Excelsior and Outer Sunset in order to undertake this change?
Yes, it would be easier to design SF from scratch with no regard for its' current or past residents, but even if you could do this, do you think you could retain demand for housing in san francisco long enough to complete any of this construction?
"600–1500 sq. ft. apartments without dedicated parking
spots"
For the past 30 years, housing space per occupant in new constructions has grown 50%. That is an unsustainable growth in living space in places that don't have room to grow. Unfortunately because SF has gotten so out of control, the only types of units being built now are luxury apartments that house fewer people than could have been comfortably housed on the same parcel of land, even before you factor in absurdities like very low height restrictions and minimum parking mandates.
If transit were better around the city (more subway lines, more frequent trains, more express buses), I think there are big areas of the city that could support substantially more people while remaining very pleasant. (But massive high-rises suck. We don’t need those. I’m thinking mixed-use, 3–6 stories here, to replace the current 1–2 story buildings.)
I also think the city could use a lot more 600–1500 sq. ft. apartments without dedicated parking spots, if transit were better and if the streets were a bit more bike friendly.
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Better density in cities along the peninsula and in the east bay, plus improved transit infrastructure in those places, would also be a big help for the whole region. Replacing the Caltrain with something less shitty would be wonderful (though this is pretty unlikely).