We agree on pretty much everything you’ve written here, particularly regarding Prop 13 and its effects. And that the public transit system has plenty of issues. And that we need more density. But density has a lot of barriers here, as has been well-discussed. And there is little or no incentive for developers to create enough housing to increase the vacancy rate - a low vacancy rate actually serves them well because it keeps rental and sales costs high.
As I wrote at JWZ’s blog:
“Our workers need better mass transit in order to get to work on time from their homes” is a problem that can be solved in ways other than creating a private transit service piggybacked on the structure provided by the public sector. But that would involve paying taxes, [and, I add now as an afterthought, working with government] which Silicon Valley (among others) is notoriously loathe to do.
Paying taxes would, I note, also help with maintaining the roads and freeways that get wear and tear whether by buses or private cars.
“Move fast, break things” as a philosophy has a habit of, well, breaking things. Fine if it’s your product. Not so fine if it’s a whole community.
Someone (in this thread? elsewhere? I have no idea right now) mentioned the idea of the Tech-plexes investing in making the areas where they’re located actually desirable - grants for cultural resources and good restaurants or whatever it is that their employees want within walkable distance. Seemed like an interesting idea, anyway, but it would require, again, thinking about their impact on communities.
