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BAYING_AT_REBECCA
April 21, 2014
November 8, 2021
A comment on a Rebecca Solnit piece:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n04/rebecca-solnit/diary
Christian Nicholson, San Francisco wrote:
"First, neither San Francisco nor New York figures on
a list of the world's fifty most densely populated
cities, which is the only true benchmark."
The really dense cities have been around for over a millenia,
and grew under vastly different circumstances. San Francisco
and New York are new kids, in comparison.
Comparing their density to other places in the United States
seems to me like it might be a true enough benchmark for some
circumstances. In particular-- you may have heard me say this
before-- pointing the finger at NY and SF and not at the
surrounding low density regions in the same part of the country
that they're in, seems like an odd blindspot.
"Second, New York has added new housing units at a
much slower rate per capita than US cities such as
Jacksonville, Houston and Atlanta: it is hardly in
the midst of a housing boom."
But how many housing units are being added in Brooklyn
and Queens as compared to Nassau County? Why is there
some magical change in our expectations at that border?
"Third, San Francisco developers are actively building
only 4900 new units, an order of magnitude less than
Solnit claims. The remainder of her 48,000 units may
be approved, but most are unlikely to be developed for
many years because of the sclerotic regulatory process."
In other words, the commentator has hand-waved away a reality
in favor of his expections.
"Anyone who has visited San Francisco knows that
outside a few neighbourhoods lining Market-- the
Financial District, the Tenderloin and northern SoMa--
the city is about three storeys tall. Paris, the city
I left to come here, is seven storeys high almost
across the board."
Ah, we'll always have Paris. In these dicussions.
(You have to wonder about these biographical
interjections in anonymous internet
discussions. We have no way of knowing if
this guy is from San Francisco and Paris, It's a well known
there may not be any reason we should care, technique of on-line
but he gets to claim Local Knowledge and shills to pad out their
disputing the point would make you seem like a remarks with irrelvant
rude jerk-- not that that ever stops me.) biographical remarks.
"On a recent trip to
the city, I stopped by
here with my wife, and
we both thought the
food was wonderful."
"Major Asian cities are much taller."
Yes, there are gigantic hives of modern apartment
buildings in massive complexes throughout asian
cities. They look perfectly awful to me, and with
luck I'll never have to live in a place like that:
You don't have to be a horrible nimby to wonder if
this style construction is the best modern
civilization can manage.
"San Francisco could double in height without
greatly hurting its open space or aesthetics."
Right, let's rip down all those Victorians and
replace them with faux Victorians of double the
size. No one will notice the difference.
"The scarcity of shelter in San Francisco
is artificially imposed, the result of a
decades-long resistance in many parts of
the city to any kind of development."
You can see how that could be. But there are places
with *even stronger* barriers to development than
San Francisco, and some of them are right next door.
I think the main reason people like this commentator
complain about San Francisco's building restrictions
has to do with the appeal of the *idea* of San
Franciso, the attraction that the *name* has for many
people.
If you think San Francisco is such a cool place
compared to Daly City, shouldn't you be arguing
that Daly City should become more like San
Francisco? Why are you suggesting San Francisco
needs to be more like Tokyo?
"That resistance comes from several quarters. A
recent high-rise on the waterfront was voted down
by a coalition of local wealth and the political
left, which is also leading the fight against THE_COAST_LINE
evictions."
The fiends, refusing to let housing developers slap
up whatever they like on the waterfront. How are
you supposed to sell new occupants on the view if
you can't get in the way of someone else's view?
"San Francisco's incumbent residents would
prefer the postcard life of a low, sparsely
populated city to the high-rises of an Asian If you invoke esthetics
megalopolis. Fine. But that means homeowners at all in these
are forcing the burden of adjustment onto discussions, someone
tenants. You can fight development or you can will bring up this
fight evictions, but you cannot logically "postcard" sneer.
fight both.
No, you can *logically* fight both, but it
would involve a determination to stop
managing this resource via "market forces".
You might, for example, have a
city wide housing authority that
controls both construction and I guess those waiting lists
prices, and manages a long are okay for immigration
waiting list on prospective *into* the United States,
immigrants. but if you're an American
you deserve instant
The city-run "affordable housing" gratification by birthright.
that exists is already run in
manner something like this, as I
understand it.
"Like all American cities, San Francisco
is for sale, and its real-estate market
speaks through price movements. Rents in The shout I hear is
San Francisco are shouting at us to build "we wish there were
more now." more real cities out
there, and less
And what are we to make of the willingness suburban sprawl".
of tech workers from Silicon Valley to sit
in busses for hours a day so they can work
down there without being subjected to
living there? Does that shout loudly
enough?
"That's the only way we'll have enough
space to go round."
Strictly speaking, you mean *units*, not *space*.
You could, for example, subdivide existing buildings into
teeny-tiny capsule apartments and pack in way more people
without putting up more buildings.
"Rather than deal with the fundamental dynamic
of supply and demand,"
It's a peeve for another day, perhaps, but I'm getting
really sick of hearing from people who think they know
what the "fundamentals" are-- they all speak with a
tone of perfect certainty, just as this developer shill--
I mean *concerned citizen*-- does.
"Solnit mounts a fairly predictable attack on
tech workers, pushing a narrative in which two
groups, so unlike in dignity, enter a fight to
the death. To read her, one would think that That sounds like a
San Francisco's brave natives face a horde of good sequel to
villainous drones and gold diggers, who have "Escape From New
descended on a pristine city to pillage its York": "Defense of
neighbourhoods and hunt down its idealists." San Francisco".
Liberals arts folks do like to bitch about techies,
yeah. To someone with an arts background the HIPSTER_GENTRY
gentrification cycle is pretty annoying-- People
move near the artists, and transform the character KRUGMANS_TURF
of the neigborhood to the point where the artists
can't live there any more.
Instead of just shrugging and saying "free market!", it
might be worth trying to address this issue directly:
cities work best with a diverse range of people who can
live near each other, letting the market control prices
tends to create monocultures... so what else might we do?
"This is not the first time she has tarred
the industry.
You have to wonder about someone who follows someone
they dislike so closely.
"In January, she called the tech business a
monoculture (every group looks like a
monoculture to outsiders)."
*I'm* a tech worker, and I have no interest in living
in a monoculture of tech workers.
And we're talking about *places* not *groups*--
the goal, I submit, is a dynamic place with a large
range of different kinds of people living and
working there...
"But if she made the morning commute to
Embarcadero, she'd see a lot of Indian and
Chinese and Eastern European faces there. In
San Francisco's start-up hostels, you hear half
a dozen languages spoken every day."
Despite some range of ethnic backgrounds, it's still a
single-industry group with similar educational
backgrounds-- you can talk about a "monoculture"
without claiming everyone is a clone of Zuckerberg.
(Speaking of
movie plots...)
"In a previous essay, Solnit compared tech
workers to insects, aliens, Prussian
invaders and German tourists in the space of
a few paragraphs (LRB, 7 February 2013).
The implications are clear."
Actually, the implications aren't that clear to
me-- is he suggesting Solnit is proposing a
Final Solution for the Tech industry?
"Applied to any other group, these
attempts to dehumanise would have
invited howls of indignation."
Okay, fair enough. (Except you know,
there's a difference between punching up
and punching down...)
"This is not a battle between the
natives and an invading species; it's
a negotiation between two different
invading species over shelter and
tenants' rights, stasis and change."
A long-standing population might very well regard
themselves as having a stronger claim in the discussion
than a recent arrival-- if there's some question about
what kind of people you want to attract, that's
necessarily going to be a discussed by the people who
are already there.
And as should be obvious, there's a difference
between gradual changes and a sudden influx of a
population...
"Solnit's parents moved to the
Bay Area in the 1960s when she
was a girl. She grew up in
Novato."
And I wonder who would carefully keep track of
where a writer you dislike is from-- it may be
useful if you want to make cheapshots, but it
actually says next to nothing about whether
Solnit's ideas are worth considering.
Checking against wikipedia, I see Solnit moved
to Novato in 1966 when she was five years old,
a place 30 miles north of San Francisco.
It doesn't actually seem to me that it is
obviously hypocritical for Solnit to complain
about a recent wave of immigrants suddenly
transforming the character of the city.
Maybe this line would make more sense to me
if I was stuck on the idea that markets are
the sole way of managing living space, but
that's the point the author is supposed to be
trying to establish.
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