Don't feel silly -- many Valley cities have strict rules on building height too. Ideally, we'd like high-rise living next to mass transit, but I outside of downtown San Jose, I doubt any city would approve.
Interestingly San Jose has had some controversy over the opposite issue. The city has a bit of an inferiority complex about not being perceived as a "real city" despite having ~1m people, so has been trying to encourage more high-rise development and fewer sprawling office parks. The goal seems to be to turn itself into a globally known tech hub, rather than being perceived as just the southern suburbs of San Francisco. Part of the city (the North San Jose redevelopment area) is targeted as a new high-rise central business district adjacent to the BART extension, and part of that redevelopment plan included minimum height guidelines, in which new developments were supposed to be at least 14 stories tall. There was considerable pushback from developers, though, because they wanted to build office parks rather than 14-story buildings, so the guideline has since been waived.
San Jose faces an upward growth limitation due to its proximity to Mineta San Jose International Airport and flight paths which traverse directly over the downtown centre. Maximum building heights are 91 m (300 ft), and lower in regions closer to the airport e.g., the Diridon Transportation Centre.
That's not to say that San Jose cannot achieve greater density through residential low- and mid-rise construction, as opposed to the single-floor, single-family housing which dominates the area. But it's a damper on generally higher density.
San Diego, also in California, has a similar situation relative to its airport. That city is also defined by a squat downtown and massive sprawl (much through incorporating outlying suburbs).
91m is taller than the vast majority of apartment complexes. Even Manhattan is comprised mostly of mid-rise buildings. There isn't any challenge in drastically increasing population under this limit. Other problems, in particular lack of mass transit, will be a much bigger problem long before San Jose runs into height problems.
There are height limitations in most of Silicon Valley (except maybe downtown San Jose?) -- I think the limit here in Sunnyvale, for example, is eight stories -- but earthquakes are not the reason for them. People just want to preserve the suburban character of the area. How that can be done when a lot more people want to live here is not clear to me.
Buildings in downtown San Jose, CA are limited to about 15 storeys due to the nearby SJC airport. In practice though that's not a major obstacle to development; most buildings there are still significantly shorter.
Many places (especially in Silicon valley) restrict the height of buildings, and the number of apartments, etc. When you can't build up, you have to build out.
Because the downtown area is in the flight path to nearby Mineta San Jose International Airport, there is a height limit for buildings in the downtown area, which is under the final approach corridor to the airport. The height limit is dictated by local ordinances, driven by the distance from the runway and a slope defined by Federal Aviation Administration regulations. Core downtown buildings are limited to approximately 300 feet (91 m) but can get taller farther from the airport.[80]
The rest of the article did a good job of arguing that housing prices harm migration and contribute to income inequality. But twisting a fact like that makes me suspicious. Hopefully fault lies with Matt Yglesias, not the author.
I'll add, Cupertino appears not to allow buildings taller than 4 storeys as well. The skyscraper idea is a non-starter unless Apple relocated to downtown San Jose.
A little bit off topic, but related to the rents in SF: I've been to San Francisco and the first impression to me is that as a city with large population, why there's so little high-rise buildings? Is there any law which limits the buildings' height?
The article is referring to the entire state which is geographically diverse. Cities like San Francisco, L.A., San Diego, and even Sacramento have some taller housing options. Also, CA has major earthquakes so high-rises are generally not as common. We've been building out vs up but can't match the demand. Part of it is also due to CA's strict building/environmental regulations that make any construction project a slow and tedious process.
That's a stereotype of highrise. Many residential highrise can have a small park or at least a leisure area built nearby. I'm living in a mid-rise in San Jose, the experience is way better than living in a common crappy SFH in Bay area.
Safely guarded by private patrol, zero break-in, no annoying solicitors. Dedicated locker for your Amazon packages and free coffee in the hallway. Utility bills are much lower too. Double gated garage. Located next to lightrail. And standard amenities such as pool, gym, lounge etc.
And for christ sake, get rid of the darn height limitations. Why on earth would you have height limitations in the first place??? the only height limitations there should be are economic and those should be determined by developers and demand, nothing else.
Around every station in the bay area, I see nothing more than 3 to 5 stories at the most, or even less.
Understanding and sympathising with this viewpoint, the issue is far more one of urban planning and transit than it is of structure height per se.
San Francisco hasn't been known for its soaring towers (though recently the leaning sort are making headlines), but it is centralised and well-served by transit both within the city and from surrounding communities. To this extent, it resembles Chicago.
At the same time, the Bay Area as a whole strongly resembles Los Angeles, with various tech hubs ranging from San Jose to San Francisco, and including Sunnyvale, Fremont, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park Redwood City, and Oakland. If you find yourself job hopping between these spots, commutes get long fast, and there's no one best place to live.
Chicago was built around rail with both the urban CTA and regional Metra rail service. Suburbs first emerged as points on spokes radiating out from downtown. Those have since filled in considerably, and inter-suburban commutes are both real and every much as horrible a mess as you'd imagine them to be.
Los Angeles grew up as an automobile city with boulevards and freeways, and looks it. Absent the constraints of terrain, what defines Los Angeles is a grid-pattern of both streets and freeways. Whilst Chicago does have a street grid, that grid does not define the city in the same way Los Angeles does.
If LA had instead opted to build distributed clusters of both high-rise (office/commercial) and low-rise (residential) towers, on a hub-and-spoke transit system, it might offer a far more reasonable set of commute and living options. There's no strict need for towers, so much as there is for connections between them.
Arguably, another element that defines much of Chicago is its greystone and bungalow residential styles. These don't reach the density of 5--6 story apartment construction typical of Europe, but are far denser than the predominantly single-story fully-separated housing of the Los Angeles area. As with elsewhere, density makes transit service, whether bus or rail, far more viable.
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