Zoning and the housing crisis: at Manhattan densities, San Francisco could house 100 million people

[Otherbrother]

@_osivot

For any homeless person not originally from San Francisco, the program buys them a bus ticket back to their home town

I can see some merit to such a program, but I’m also getting a strong NIMBY vibe from the idea of just shipping the homeless away. At best, this is only a solution for a small subset of homeless folks, as I think it’s fair to assume that the majority would not be homeless in the first place if they had a safe, stable and welcoming family that they could return to.

And on the subject of taxes, I’m personally in a position where I’m willing and able to pay higher taxes in order to fund effective programs to increase affordable housing, as well as fund other social programs. But I know that there are many folks (and some in my same income bracket) who feel like they’re just getting by in expensive areas like S.F., so raising taxes could make the city LESS affordable for them.

[larrycovey]

If you build San Francisco, or LA for that matter, to Manhattan densities, which means building vertical, what happens when the Big One hits? I for one would not want to live on the 40th floor of a high-rise in either of those two cities, earthquake “codes” not withstanding.

[Urbanacus]

@_osivot

One great program is the Homeward Bound program. For any homeless person not originally from San Francisco, the program buys them a bus ticket back to their home town provided there is a parent, child or loved one to take them in. That is a program as a tax payer I would be overjoyed to help pay for.

That sounds ripe for some abuse. There was a story a while back about southern towns giving their undesirables a bus ticket to NYC and the address of some social service agency.

[Urbanacus]

@larrycovey

If you build San Francisco, or LA for that matter, to Manhattan densities, which means building vertical, what happens when the Big One hits?

In my observation hi rise density is not required, just more than 3 story individual houses with parking on the ground floor. Just look at the contrast between the 2 sides of this block. The density on the far side is easily 4-6X the near side. And those buildings have fabulous old art deco details inside. Sadly, the streetcars that ran at the end of the block when they were built are no more.

[fuzzyfungus]

It wouldn’t surprise me(at least in areas with reasonably competent code enforcement) if maximum lethality actually kicks in among smaller structures.

Sufficiently small ones, especially if built to flyweight standards because it’s cheaper and hurricane resistance or the like isn’t an issue, can be close to intrinsically safe just by not being massive enough to crush you properly when they fall apart; but once you get a few stories high or start playing with masonry and concrete that ends quickly; and you are very much at the mercy of quality engineering and competent execution.

Once in the land of structures large enough to crush you if they collapse; it’s the smaller ones that are easier to build under the radar(smaller budgets, more numerous) and which aren’t so challenging that you need to call in the engineers just to have it not collapse during construction; while the larger ones are high profile projects that are tricky to keep inspectors in the dark on; and challenging enough that you can’t design them merely with dangerous optimism.

[Otherbrother]

@larrycovey

If you build San Francisco, or LA for that matter, to Manhattan densities, which means building vertical, what happens when the Big One hits?

Actually, if the neighborhood is sufficiently dense, then the buildings CAN’T fall over!

[FGD135]

You’ll get my Soylent Green when you can wrestle it from my cold, dead hands.

[FGD135]

@MrHarley

Haber–Bosch process

@Papasan

I think that’s how you kill them…

Both. It’s classic “dual use”. The Haber–Bosch process is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia. Which you can use just as well for making fertilizer or for making explosives. (Had to do a paper on this at school for talking in class once upon a time.)

Incidentally, all that fertilizer is worthless if you haven’t got the farm land to use it on.

[_osivot]

The Homeward Bound program is pretty legit. The person is not just given a blank check bus ticket. They get a social worker who makes sure they have a home to go to, they give the person food money for the bus trip, and they do a series of follow-up calls with the returned person and their family member or person housing them to make sure the transition was a success. The program is about helping the homeless people themselves rather than just riding the city of them point blank.

[Brainspore]

@larrycovey

If you build San Francisco, or LA for that matter, to Manhattan densities, which means building vertical

I keep trying to tell everyone that you don’t necessarily have to build “up” to fit more people in San Francisco.

[Urbanacus]

@Brainspore

I keep trying to tell everyone that you don’t necessarily have to build “up” to fit more people in San Francisco.

See, there’s outside the box thinking! Aren’t there Asian cities that are mostly afloat? There’s that big bay there going to waste just being pretty and full of wildlife! Or just start filling it in like they used to do there, and have done in Tokyo. I’m sure Pruitt and Zinke would approve it in a flash.

[glenblank]

Generally speaking, small, lightweight structures are the safest in a quake, not because they won’t won’t crush you in a collapse, but because they’re unlikely to collapse in the first place - the structure has so little inertia that it rides with the quake waves instead of resisting them and breaking.

In an LA quake, a single-story timber-frame stucco-faced single-family house is probably the safest place to be. (But watch out for unreinforced masonry chimneys, and make sure any pre-1937 house is bolted to its foundation.)

(The 1933 Long Beach Quake taught Angelenos about the dangers of unreinforced masonry and the need to bolt frame houses to concrete foundations; the resulting revised Building Code of 1937 required bolting. Note that these dates ONLY apply to LA and its building code, not necessarily elsewhere.)

I’m a survivor of one of the worst-hit areas in the Northridge quake, and was hired afterward to do photo documentation of structural damage from the quake. Structural stability in a quake is trickier than it looks, and simple logic can easily mislead you. Broad generalizations are seldom useful, since structural safety is a complex interplay of building type, construction details, site specifics, and the luck of location, direction and frequency.

For a good, clear understanding of structural safety in quakes, written for the educated layman, I highly recommend Peter Yanev and Andrew CT Thompson’s Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country): How to Save Your Home, Business, and Life .

For quakes themselves, Bruce Bolt’s Earthquakes — now in its Fifth Edition, I think — is an excellent primer.

Quake lore is thick with logical-sounding factoids, many of them completely and utterly wrong . If you live in quake country, it’s good to know the actual facts instead of what “everybody says.” (-:

[Wanderfound]

@Urbanacus

That sounds ripe for some abuse. There was a story a while back about southern towns giving their undesirables a bus ticket to NYC and the address of some social service agency.

For many years, every government region except one in Australia had some form of treatment available for heroin addicts.

The exception was the Northern Territory. The “treatment” they offered was a one-way bus ticket to South Australia.