How to get cost of living under control, part 1a: More housing in old downtowns

First, we have to change zoning to encourage more housing near the commercial centers, especially in the historical town centers.

Look at it this way: Rents in Silicon Valley are high. Rents in San Francisco are a little higher. But the overall cost of living is much higher in Silicon Valley than in San Francisco because most Silicon Valleyers have to drive and most San Franciscans don't.

This is not because Muni (SF's bus system) provides the mobility that a car does. Buses are slow and crowded, fall off schedule and don't always go directly where you want to go. But quality of life doesn't demand mobility for its own sake; quality of life demands access to goods and services. And San Francisco has good commercial neighborhoods, so a San Franciscan can get groceries, toiletries, coffee, etc. without needing to drive. And in the cases where a San Franciscan *does* need to go across town to get to work, see a friend, etc., Muni is often adequate. And it's much, much cheaper than owning a car.

Which doesn't mean that San Franciscans don't own cars -- there are about 400,000 cars registered in San Francisco, or about one per household. But that's one fewer car per household than in Silicon Valley. And at about $6000/car/year (once you add up depreciation, insurance, gas, capital cost, repairs, parking, taxes, tickets, costs below insurance thresholds, etc.), SF's overall cost of living drops well below Silicon Valley's once you take the cost of transportation into account.

In theory, of course, car ownership is a matter of choice. Certain free-market economists might argue that Silicon Valley families own more cars than San Franciscans just because they choose to, and that economist wouldn't be wrong. But it's misleading to frame the issue of car ownership as one of personal choice unaffected by environment -- it's just not possible to access a diversity of goods and services in Silicon Valley without a car, and that fact strongly influences Silicon Valley families' choices. The decision balances quality of life and cost of living -- when comparing San Francisco and Silicon Valley, a similar quality of life costs more in Silicon Valley.


So coming back to the point of lowering the cost of living without sacrificing quality of life: one good way to do that is to reduce car dependency. And one good way to do that is to focus new development around existing walkable retail areas.


Conveniently, many valley cities have healthy retail in their historical downtowns (University and California in Palo Alto, Castro St. in Mountain View, Downtown Redwood City, etc.). These historical downtowns areas are the perfect locations for increasing housing density without increasing car dependency -- the areas have walkable retail, good transit connections (almost all the downtowns are there because the train line is there) and good bike connections (and they're all flat, too).


So why don't they have more housing already? Here's where we get into zoning rules, construction economics, urban design and inter-city competition. In other words, another post.