> I was surprised to see "sprawl" called out in the op because that is directly opposed to the flattening of building restrictions and the deregulation that is being pursued by both the state and housing activists
Strange. I understand sprawl (especially suburban sprawl) to be the direct result of housing regulations. The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings). Density being the opposite of sprawl.
More housing in an already populated area leads to denser populations leads to less sprawl.
"The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings)."
I agree with that.
Further, I would like to see cities like San Francisco and Oakland and San Jose become denser/taller in just the ways you are describing.
However, the article speaks of the entire Bay Area which runs the gamut from Point Reyes Station to Atherton to Strawberry to Dublin - and everything in between.
I don't live in a residential area and I have no financial exposure to residential housing in the Bay Area - so this is purely academic for me - but I really don't see why our inability to make San Francisco denser means people in Atherton (for instance) can't decline apartment high rises.
That outcome is, in fact, sprawl.
Further, the impacts of that sprawl go beyond the aesthetic: it starves infrastructure advances that depend on a critical mass of density.
Every unit of housing that gets distributed outside of the city center is a missing unit of density that would have gotten us closer to another subway, another terminal connection, another tunnel, another rebuilt blighted area, etc.
Strange. I understand sprawl (especially suburban sprawl) to be the direct result of housing regulations. The "natural" ("unregulated") trend seems for cities to become denser and for buildings to become higher (e.g. single family homes getting replaced by multi apartment buildings). Density being the opposite of sprawl.
More housing in an already populated area leads to denser populations leads to less sprawl.