Finally, we are (in our local paper) hearing more about how ABAG, Plan Bay Area and the MTC have played (and will continue to play) such a significant role in all things development in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, the outreach done by ABAG during their first planning round was grossly ineffective, and their 2nd round of outreach was not much more effective.

Walk down the street, and ask 20 random adults if they know what ABAG is and what it does, and ask the same thing about Plan Bay Area, and the MTC. I'd be astonished if more than 50% of those adults could give you a cogent explanation of any of the three of them. This lack of knowledge isn't the fault of the citizens, it's the fault of hugely inept outreach. Deliberate? One can make that argument.

Unfortunately this ABAG train left the station years ago, and there's no stopping it now. What we're seeing presently in terms of massive development, particularly in areas that have magically been designated as PDA's (Priority Development Areas) is simply the natural progression of Plan Bay Area. We're all just here to watch it unfold.

Supposedly municipalities still have control over development in their cities, but honestly that claim is just arguing semantics on the definition of "control".

http://2040.planbayarea.org

http://www.abag.ca.gov

http://mtc.ca.gov

Mountain View should not be a target for increased housing density, the current trend to more and more needs to be stopped. Why is the Bay Area looking to Mountain View, we have done more then our share look at other cities. Consideration should be given to starting new cities in the surrounding mountains.

"The plan estimates that lower-income families will go from spending 54 percent of their income on housing and transportation in 2005 to spending 67 percent in 2040"

What on earth are they thinking? How can they think the region will be functional at all with so much poverty planned right in??

"Consideration should be given to starting new cities in the surrounding mountains."

There's no reason to create yet more sprawl, and especially not by trying to start building cities in the mountains. We should upgrade existing infrastructure and build high density housing around it.

"What on earth are they thinking? How can they think the region will be functional at all with so much poverty planned right in??"

The housing situation right now is what's creating this poverty. Without more housing to increase supply and lower costs, this poverty is only going to get worse. This plan takes into account what that poverty rate will be after being blunted by the increased housing, not as a result of.

My point is that actual poverty is always worse than whatever is planned. If they're starting with such a low bar, the actual outcome will be unspeakably worse. That, or Bay Area low-income people will get wind of the plan and focus their efforts on relocating. Which continues the downward spiral for local businesses. Increasing the supply of housing will never lower the cost when the demand is increasing at ten times the rate.

I do agree with you, though, that the mountains are absolutely not the place to start developing. There are many cities, small and large, across the country who never recovered after the mortgage meltdown. Adding jobs in those cities and taking pressure off this overloaded region would help everyone.

The other strategy (never considered) is to study the factors that are driving this "ABAG-defined" need for such ridiculous growth and SLOW THOSE THINGS DOWN!

Out of control growth, not supported by infrastructure improvements, DOES NOT have to remain on this course.

Just say "no".

@RMV

I honestly don't know what makes you think that these companies just opening up offices in random downtrodden areas of the country will make people want to move there and work there. Very, very few people are going to want to move away from a location dense with tech companies that are all competing for them as an employee, and move to a small satellite city far away where they are now locked into a single company. People want to move to the Bay Area, Austin, NYC, and other large cities dense with jobs, not small/medium sized areas with a few job sites.

Increasing the supply will, at the very least, reduce the rate of increase of housing costs. As it is right now, housing construction is so hobbled in California that to say increasing the supply of housing will never lower costs is disingenuous, because we can't even attempt to build housing at a rate that would match demand.

Large, dense cities generate more economic output and more innovation than disparate small cities. They are also more resource efficient and better for the environment than mass sprawl. There is no good reason beyond "mah neighborhood character" to densify the region. Build tall and centralized, not short and sprawling.

Good to see ABAG trying to do a regional solution, even if they are late.
This is real hard stuff.

Increasing supply and transportation will be most effective way to reduce rents
and housing prices.

Has anyone seen a case where you have increasing demand and prices go down? Or restrict supply and prices go down? I haven't. Have you?

Why centralization and density? Make public transit more effective.
Urban sprawl means more freeway/cars/distance to travel

No need to move the jobs to far flung corners of the country, just to Gilroy, Tracy and other areas in sneezing distance of Silicon Valley. There is space and as soon as one goes there others will follow. Even if employees choose not to move to Gilroy, Tracy and Vacaville, they will at least have a reverse commute.

>I honestly don't know what makes you think that these companies just opening up offices in random downtrodden areas of the country will make people want to move there and work there.

easy. 1. "random areas" is where they're all coming _from_ when they flock to here; 2. people go where the jobs are; that's why they're all flocking here. It doesn't work to have all 3million US residents plus thousands and millions more from abroad concentrate in one small region. It needs to be spread out.

The reason why hi tech people have been coming here for at least the last 40 years is the eco systems of mutually supporting companies with complementary and diverse areas of expertise. There is also a critical mass of skill sets. If you are building a large complex system, you need a wide variety of skills. Over the last 30 years, Route 128 in Boston, Research Triangle in North Carolina have all declined. I have watched the boom and bust in Portland and Denver. I have watched friends get laid off stranded with really poor quality alternatives.
When Mark Zuckerberg was starting Facebook, he said he had to come to Palo Alto if he was to be successful, and that is exactly what he did. With that said, you can put non-mission critical departments out in the boonies such as field service, professional services, call centers (and that is what has already happened) But if you are doing hard core research and development and building ground breaking advances in technology, you come here. Note, those cities that I mentioned were dreaming of taking the jobs away from Silicon Valley at one time, and they failed. Also note that every decade (less so now) there has been talk about the death of Silicon Valley (example when commodity memory chips went away). Be careful what you wish for (all the job seekers going away) because there are plenty of other cities who would love dearly to take everything away.

Jobs and housing will continue to be crowded into existing residential communties so that some huge corporations and special interests can make more money. Property values will continue to rise; the quality of living here will continue to drop. At some point, many if not most Mountain Viewers with homes will want to cash in and move out.

@Money in it

Oh yes, the sad tale of people who stalled new housing construction for decades finally cashing out their millions and heading elsewhere. Who couldn't empathize with such a plight?

@YIMBY #2, you do, of course, make some good points and mostly I agree with you. However, I don't think anyone is wishing for _all_ the job seekers to go away, nor for all the tech companies to go away. We just need some so-called "right-sizing".And are you sure about that critical mass of skill sets? On the one hand, the tech giants say that they need to be here because that's where the "talent", the "best and the brightest" are, but then they turn around and say there's not nearly enough talent here and they bring in people from all over the country and the world. They can't have it both ways. And meanwhile, our schools have become so undermined that potential home-grown talent gets left by the wayside because our own kids are being deprived the education they would need to be able to score some of those tech jobs.

@Anke

Silicon Valley being a critical mass of talent, and companies needing more talent to move in are not exclusive concepts.

Improve the schools then. Man, if only we had some sort of tax that was pegged to the market price of property that we could use to improve infrastructure and schools.

The one thing not mentioned in this string is that over time, peoples lives evolve. The high energy, single life style and its high density, dorm like living conditions, become unsuitable when children come along. We are not building Leave it to Beaver neighborhoods, and that is what becomes desirable for parents. Homes with real yards, white pickett fences and neighbors who actually talk to you, are extinct here. As previously stated, these newcomers come from places where these living conditions still exist, and will seek them our for their children. Silicon Valley in general is not a good place to to raise children. Using only GPA as a measurement we shine, but that same GPA competitive environment is why we have the highest educated children to ever jump in front of a train. More and more people want to raise their children in communities with a slower paced lifestyle. Gilroy, often named as the next move to area, has seen what is happening in MV and surrounding areas, and last year passed a no growth/ green boundary initiative, a sort of firewall against becomming another Mountain View.
You won't find ABAG positions on your ballot, and most likely never will as they are appointed, and thereby not directly accountable to the voters. This is generally not remembered or considered when voting for the elected politicians who appoint them. Unless we get direct control of ABAG and similar government agencies via the ballot, we will be subjectto whatever they mandate.

@Bob

How am I supposed to even afford a child if rent and property costs are so high? You guys are putting the cart before the horse.

@YIMBY, think about it for a sec. Where we're headed is a peninsula and the rest of the Bay Area crammed full of sky-high housing towers where $5000 a month gets you an 8x20 unit that you furnish with "smart" furniture equipped with electric motors so at the push of a button your living room folds up and your bedroom opens, and vice versa (see recent Chronicle article). The bottom floors see almost no daylight and the higher floors mean spending half your life waiting for and riding in elevators. There's mass transit, but with the crush of people it's overwhelmed so getting around is inefficient and painful, and the traffic crush makes bicycling impracticable plus our region's utter inability to understand the need to park a bike once you're at your destination mean you always risk your bike being stolen, vandalized or damaged by the elements. The local shops have long since closed so your only options are ordering from Amazon. And that's even before we talk about where your children will play, how they will get to school, how they will "be kids". Is that really what you want?

I hope it didn't take you too long to build that strawman idea of what a city is like.

Who decided that Mountain View was a "priority development area"? What about Palo Alto? Tons of jobs there. Why should a small city (probably the smallest if you look at square footage) have to provide all the housing for everyone who works in other cities on the Peninsula? And services like public schools won't keep up, so our schools will continue to struggle. All the new housing being built is rental units which over the years won't provide as much in taxes to offset the number of kids they add to the schools. Just look at all those apartments on California Ave. That was our last attempt at building high density "affordable" housing and it didn't work out so well.

We've been taken for suckers people. People in other communities have allowed Mountain View to become the dumping ground. We moved to Mountain View 15 years ago because we wanted to live in a small town, but it looks like soon we won't get that. I would move, but we could never afford to buy anything else at this point, so I guess we're screwed. I deeply regret ever buying here in the first place.

YIMBY, have you been to SF recently?

Yes, have you been to any modern city outside of California where a single resident can't delay a development with one complaint? Where zoning laws don't restrict over 75% of the city to 3 stories? Where property taxes are pegged to the market rate and go back into infrastructure investments? Cities can be dense and yet vibrant, pleasant and liveable.

"Cities can be dense and yet vibrant, pleasant and liveable." Affordable needs to be added to that list...you know, since you seem to spend so much time harping about UNaffordability evidently created by the lack of density. Now, please name a few cities that tick all those boxes:

1) dense and yet vibrant
2) pleasant and liveable
3) affordable

I'd like to look at the living standards of those cities, cost of living, crime statistics, poverty statistics, unemployment numbers, quality of schools, etc. -- so we can REALLY analyze how "pleasant and liveable" those cities really are.

Web Link

You should travel sometime.

@YIMBY, you say:
I honestly don't know what makes you think that these companies just opening up offices in random downtrodden areas of the country will make people want to move there and work there. Very, very few people are going to want to move away from a location dense with tech companies that are all competing for them as an employee, and move to a small satellite city far awa

You couldn't be more wrong. A prime example is Austin, previously a laid back college town, now a bustling tech center. We have friends who relocated there specifically because this area is too expensive. And they tell me half of their neighbors are ex-Californians.

So it's absolutely possible to create other vibrant areas that would be much less expensive and less taxing in our environment and resources. It just appears that this isn't something that suits your needs so you can't admit or accept it. Who's the selfish one here?

@NIMBY

I literally listed Austin as one of the multiple tech hubs around the country that people are congregating at. The point is that these are centralized locations in desirable places to live, be it for culture or weather. That's very different than saying that Google and Facebook should go build offices in Detroit simply to appease NIMBYs and go build somewhere else.

Let's be clear here: you do not own Mountain View. No one is selfish for wanting to live here, nor for wanting Mountain View to expand and grow, as cities do, in order to accommodate an expanding population. The only reason you even get to sit there from the comfort of your home and go on about the selfishness of those who want to build more density in Mountain View is because your property tax is being subsidized in order to shield you from the impact of rising housing costs, which is exacerbated by not building new housing supply. Take that away and you'd be singing a different tune.

YIMBY, your posts are getting really hard to parse. Most of us have been taking you seriously up to this point, but I'm beginning to wonder if you're just having fun messing with us.

What exactly are you having trouble parsing? I just linked you to a list of top livable cities in the world.

For one thing, your comments about wanting to start a family are 180 degrees opposed to your comments about being ok with the increasing crush that is happening to the Bay Area. Most parents want to raise their children in an environment that is safe and clean, where there's room to play and explore, and those parents often go to great lengths to be in such an environment. In the past, it meant choosing to live in Mountain View or Palo Alto or elsewhere on the Peninsula instead of in SF. Today, it increasingly means leaving the no-longer-nice Peninsula.

As for the list you posted, I've lived in several of the cities on that list, and spent time in a number of others. What they all have in common - both the cities themselves and the countries that they are part of - is.... wait for it.... balance. How 'bout that, eh? They all have strict limits on what any given company can do. A Google or Apple would never be able to go in and take over like they do here with impunity. They also have limits on both housing supply and housing cost. The result is that _if_ you can find a place to live, you can afford it, but finding an apartment generally requires connections - for example, you have a friend who's moving out and their colleague works for or knows the landlord.

One thing those cities do indisputably 1000 times better than anywhere in California (or possibly anywhere in the USA) is manage density. Mass transit systems do work, you can really truly get around somewhat efficiently using them, and they are affordable on local wages. In contrast to BART, Muni etc which are fraught with delays, breakdowns, escalating fare prices, crime, filth and everything else riders bitterly lament.

And yet, talk to the people who live in those cities, particularly the ones in Europe, and know what they tell you? They dream of living in the US, where there's so much space and it's not crowded and everyone has their own house and their own yard and their own car and children have room to play and there aren't all these rules that make every fun thing you want to do impossible.

I have yet to meet someone foreign that wants to live in the US specifically because of space. Also, your comments are derisive to any family that grew up in a city. If you think that children must be raised in suburbs then good for you, go pursue that. But don't try to act like others are wrong for being fine raising children in urban areas.

@YIMBY

Can you provide me with a link to Mercer's US affordability ranking for the cities listed on the link you provided above?

According to Mercer it takes into account the following metrics to judge which cities made the list for the best quality of life:

Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement).
Economic environment (currency-exchange regulations, banking services).
Socio-cultural environment (media availability and censorship, limitations on personal freedom).
Medical and health considerations (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution).
Schools and education (standards and availability of international schools).
Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transportation, traffic congestion).
Recreation (restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports, and leisure).
Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars).
Housing (rental housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services).
Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters).

> I have yet to meet someone foreign that wants to live in the US specifically because of space.

Ergo no such people exist. Yep.


>If you think that children must be raised in suburbs then good for you, go pursue that. But don't try to act like others are wrong for being fine raising children in urban areas.

There you go twisting my words around again. It really seems like you're just messing with us.

@ICU, I don't have the specific link you're after, but qualitatively I can offer that many of the cities on the Mercer list are in countries with a strong middle class and without the income inequality issues we have here. If you live and work full time in those cities, you are making a living wage. In that sense, the cities on that list enjoy much higher affordability than Bay Area cities.

@Anke

Ergo I countered your anecdotal argument with my anecdotal argument.

Oh sure, you didn't just dump on people who raise children in cities. They just clearly don't want to raise them in a safe and clean environment.

I rent a "nice" house in the Monta Loma neighborhood and have 2 children. I 100% agree with @YIMBY. I moved here from Texas and sold a nice house and can't afford pretty much anything on the market in Mountain View.

The controls on the development here are perverse. I don't think I could design a more broken system if I tried.

Now, I knew what I was getting into when I moved out here, so it's not news to me, but given a choice of renting a 1950's starter home for $4000+ a month with a yard or owning a decent size condo/townhouse at a more affordable price, it's a no brainer to me. I'm completely blown away by the bizarre resistance to the northshore plan.

My only solace is that people are cashing out or fading away in the older neighborhoods and that change in demographics will create the political pressure to jump start development.

It's simple math. You can develop as much as you want, but as long as big tech adds 10 jobs for every housing unit built, the cost will never come down.

How about we try actually building more housing at a faster rate and in higher densities before declaring the endeavor impossible?

How about we encourage tech jobs and people to move to other parts of the country? It's actually quite selfish of us to assume all the jobs should be in the Bay Area. And we wonder why the whole middle of the country hates Californians. Let them have some tech jobs too. Maybe this will help even out the income disparities between the coasts and the rest of the country that has helped bring Trump to the presidency.

High housing costs here should serve to encourage businesses to open offices in other parts of the country. Mountain View City Council (and other Peninsula cities) can encourage this too by not allowing for more office building construction beyond what has already been committed. The answer is not to pack more people into a small space. That's not fair for the people currently living here, and it's also not fair for the rest of the country who are not able to benefit from a growing tech-based economy.

I was born and raised in another state and my friends and family back in that state would greatly appreciate Silicon Valley residents and companies sharing the benefits of a robust tech sector with other cities and states.

You should lead the way.

Well said, @share; I've been saying the same thing. It's all about balance. We're out of balance in many ways here and across the country, and regaining some of that balance would improve everyone's quality of life.

@Anke

Tell you what, since things are getting too dense for you around here, why don't YOU move to the middle of the country where things are more quiet and rural?

In response to "@ Share the wealth"

I have NO idea what you mean by your comment. It makes no sense. Lead the way how? Petition the MV City Council to stop the building office and otherwise? Move back to my home state to work? What do you mean? I would happily move back to my home state if there were tech jobs there. There are not currently, which is unfortunate. The government there has tried to attract tech jobs, but since you all make it so easy for all the tech companies to build here, the companies have little incentive to build and help support other areas of the country. I'm not sure how you would advise me to help in that situation, but if you have constructive ideas (as you imply you do) I'd love to hear them so please share.

Resisting development isn't always NIMBYism, its about not selfishly hoarding all the opportunities and good jobs to yourselves.

Where will the natural resources come from to sustain enormous growth? How about schools? How many more spare the air days? Who will pay for the infrastructure?
It is a bad answer to tell the people who made this place what it has become and paid their taxes and bonds all along, they will be ignored and can leave.
Maybe the large employers could have satellite offices to relieve congestion and the seeming endless construction of tenements.
Maybe they could construct company towns like Amazon does in Nevada.
Whatever happened to the google ship? That was innovative thinking.

I hope the city officials and others in power bother to read the overwhelming consensus here, which is, Mountain View has already bent over backwards to help the problem. It's time for other cities to step up and for the whole Bay Area to work together to stop the factors that contribute to the problem, rather than just trailing behind the problem in a panic like a mom picking up after her kids (No offense to moms.)

STOP THE GEOWTH, STOP THE BUILDING, STOP, STOP, STOP!
Re-evaluate and find solutions rather than creating more problems.
Work together, let go of the greed and fear. Do the right thing and start taking back land and converting it to open space rather than selling open space for development.
Creating open space is a trait of every successful developed community. So far, we get a failing grade in this.

This is addressed here: Web Link

Mountain View is like every other city in wanting the high taxes and low service requirements of tech industry and NOT wanting the low taxes and high service requirements of residential. My own city of Sunnyvale is the same as are Cupertino and San Jose, etc., etc.

all that happened is that Mountain View lucked out and got Google and Cupertino got Apple and Sunnyvale got Yahoo. Companies come and go. Nothing lasts forever.

From Michael G/'s link:

"As a problem for the SF Bay Area, the only real solution is for companies located here to expand to other less crowded and less expensive areas. Tech cos. have done just that in expanding to Austin, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Raleigh-Durham, NC; and lately Seattle and Portland, OR. Companies need to consider other areas as well. The US is a big country, with a lot of beautiful areas and lots of smart people. "

Exactly.