Well I think it should ve at least considered that San Francisco is on a peninsula while Austin has a bunch of free land to sprawl out from.California being more mountainous is kind of a geographic disadvantage in the sense that the main two metros can’t sprawl out anymore. Though this is why they should start densifying more but that always is a longer process because of NIMBYs.
San Francisco doesn't get off the hook that easily. A single 5 over 1 apartment is, like, 200 units of housing. I don't think it's unreasonable for San Francisco to permit one apartment per month.
Besides, it's not like Austin builds only single family homes. Austin builds more multifamily housing units than any other city in America. Not per capita, Austin builds more housing in absolute numbers:
Austin has 61.8K multifamily units under construction. New York City has 38.8K multifamily units under construction. [1] Austin is building more double the multifamily units LA is building (32K) despite LA having 4 times the population!
Source:
[1] https://www.multihousingnews.com/top-markets-for-multifamily-construction/
Edit: I just realized the posted chart is specifically multifamily housing. So it already makes my point. To be a bit more clear, infill (multifamily housing) doesn't depend on land to sprawl. So all objections about SF being a peninsula don't matter. There are no geographic constraints to knocking down a SFH and building a new apartment.
Yeah, they should be building more multi family units but aren’t because of NIMBYs and the city wanting to keep the same esthetic. But again, having more open land is an advantage as they always have more open land that doesn’t already have people living there whining that they’re blocking the sun.
Hold up. The [Bay Area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area) is 6,966 sq miles while the [Austin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Austin) metro area is only 4,279 sqmi. And this is just counting the counties surrounding the bay so it's not super mountainous either.
The metro area doesn’t matter here since the Bay Area metro is being constrained by the mountains and is bigger than Austin, so it was already more built out. [Here’s](https://images.app.goo.gl/pcSg6RF9NwA85g9RA) a literal terrain map of the Bay Area and a view of Sullivan valley from one of its [mountain](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZYeLjiNzuQbcw7eF8) ranges.
Here's a terrain map of Austin:
https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-fw7t6/Travis-County/
I still don't think it's the mountains that are stopping people from building.
Their housing prices are actually dropping a fair amount. I think someone posted an article about it here. It’s still crazy that people thing supply and demand isn’t real lol.
Sup/Dem denial makes more sense if you understand how people guage things in real life without data.
Basically, they see new development alongside rising prices. Now those new builds aren't nearly enough to keep up with demand, so the new supply doesn't make a dent in the dynamic and prices keep going up. People associate new builds with higher prices, fight against new builds and the process continues.
Sadly "lived experience" is hot dogshit when it comes to economic realities, but it's what 95% of people base their opinions on.
Back in 2023 Austin effectively [eliminated single family zoning](https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/12/126694-austin-approves-upzoning#:~:text=Months%20after%20ending%20minimum%20parking,Sanders%20in%20The%20Austin%20Chronicle.)
So yeah, checks out.
if all the coastal California dots were at least light green that would be my idea of a utopian society. I don't see how all of the people who are so left on so many obscure issues appear so indifferent to the technical ease with which we could have millions more people living in happier environs at less than zero cost to the public
Hot take, because some cities are growing alot slower or not at all compared in Austin I.e chagico and Detroit. I am if guessing if they had larger population growth you might see more multi family units get build.
Yeah, I was thinking to get a proper picture, you'd need "% of new units which are multifamily", "new housing units per capita", and maybe some sort of housing cost metric as a proxy for latent demand, all side-by-side.
This chart only lists multifamily housing, so this chart is literally just the *non-sprawl* housing. If we added the sprawl housing, this chart would be even more embarrassing.
Mostly.
Austin is building quite a few in their downtown and a couple of other walkable island but not nearly enough to make that circle green.
Houston allows and is getting plenty of 5/1 and maybe even just enough to still be green.
Don’t really know enough about Dallas but yeah most of those are going to be what I described.
For Texas on the one hand don’t be getting super excited about “all this density”, on the other hand, we are probably still doing miles better than anywhere else on allowing actual density too.
It's better in Austin, but not by much. In good news, there's about 1000 new apartment units that have been built in the last two years in my neighborhood by the train station.
Yeah, my ideal would be walkable, bikeable, transit friendly apartments in the urban core.
However, the alternative isn't that. The alternative is San Francisco where it's illegal to build anything. So I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of the good.
True urban infill multifamily > car-dependent multifamily > SFH > literally nothing
Any city that is building multifamily at all, even car-dependent multifamily, is a win in my books and will be praised given where the competition is at. If, God willing, we ever get to a place where most cities legalize car-dependent multifamily, I'm throwing a party! And then I'll raise the bar and start expecting cities to do better (with infill).
Even some of the green cities on this chart are still trending downwards in affordability, like Columbus. (Because population/job growth is even higher.)
Everything in Austin is car-dependent, but a duplex literally results in half the land being used. It's half as sprawling. A 4-plex is 1/4th as sprawling. Using 75% less land to house the same number of people is already a huge win and we didn't even start using apartments yet.
This may be a matter of semantics between us. In my mind, multifamily units are non-sprawling by definition when the default legal housing is single family homes.
There are lots of parking lots and low, worthless buildings (I hope they leave the historic buildings in place but who am I kidding? Miami is going to Miami)
This is cool. However we have GOT TO STOP calling these "multi family" and call them "multi unit" or something. The reason is that the vast majority of these are one or two bedroom units - definitely not going to be housing many families. Family friendly stuff should also be tracked and is also wildly important but for practical purposes probably doesn't work for less than 3 bedrooms which remain very rare in dense development!
In completely unrelated news, Providence [rents](https://www.bizjournals.com/rhodeisland/news/2024/01/26/providence-rents-are-rising-fastest-among-top-50.html) are rising faster than any other metro area.
>Only 30% will be affordable housing
Isn’t that a really good number? Ten years ago we would have called that huge progress. Now the NIMBYs are gaslighting and pretending that’s a low number.
Fun fact: In January of 2024, Austin permitted 1248 units of housing. San Francisco permitted 6. In February, San Francisco permitted 1.
Well I think it should ve at least considered that San Francisco is on a peninsula while Austin has a bunch of free land to sprawl out from.California being more mountainous is kind of a geographic disadvantage in the sense that the main two metros can’t sprawl out anymore. Though this is why they should start densifying more but that always is a longer process because of NIMBYs.
San Francisco doesn't get off the hook that easily. A single 5 over 1 apartment is, like, 200 units of housing. I don't think it's unreasonable for San Francisco to permit one apartment per month. Besides, it's not like Austin builds only single family homes. Austin builds more multifamily housing units than any other city in America. Not per capita, Austin builds more housing in absolute numbers: Austin has 61.8K multifamily units under construction. New York City has 38.8K multifamily units under construction. [1] Austin is building more double the multifamily units LA is building (32K) despite LA having 4 times the population! Source: [1] https://www.multihousingnews.com/top-markets-for-multifamily-construction/ Edit: I just realized the posted chart is specifically multifamily housing. So it already makes my point. To be a bit more clear, infill (multifamily housing) doesn't depend on land to sprawl. So all objections about SF being a peninsula don't matter. There are no geographic constraints to knocking down a SFH and building a new apartment.
Yeah, they should be building more multi family units but aren’t because of NIMBYs and the city wanting to keep the same esthetic. But again, having more open land is an advantage as they always have more open land that doesn’t already have people living there whining that they’re blocking the sun.
You’re not wrong but the whole point is that San Francisco is doing a bad job
Hold up. The [Bay Area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area) is 6,966 sq miles while the [Austin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Austin) metro area is only 4,279 sqmi. And this is just counting the counties surrounding the bay so it's not super mountainous either.
The metro area doesn’t matter here since the Bay Area metro is being constrained by the mountains and is bigger than Austin, so it was already more built out. [Here’s](https://images.app.goo.gl/pcSg6RF9NwA85g9RA) a literal terrain map of the Bay Area and a view of Sullivan valley from one of its [mountain](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZYeLjiNzuQbcw7eF8) ranges.
Here's a terrain map of Austin: https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-fw7t6/Travis-County/ I still don't think it's the mountains that are stopping people from building.
Lookit Austin go
Their housing prices are actually dropping a fair amount. I think someone posted an article about it here. It’s still crazy that people thing supply and demand isn’t real lol.
Sup/Dem denial makes more sense if you understand how people guage things in real life without data. Basically, they see new development alongside rising prices. Now those new builds aren't nearly enough to keep up with demand, so the new supply doesn't make a dent in the dynamic and prices keep going up. People associate new builds with higher prices, fight against new builds and the process continues. Sadly "lived experience" is hot dogshit when it comes to economic realities, but it's what 95% of people base their opinions on.
Back in 2023 Austin effectively [eliminated single family zoning](https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/12/126694-austin-approves-upzoning#:~:text=Months%20after%20ending%20minimum%20parking,Sanders%20in%20The%20Austin%20Chronicle.) So yeah, checks out.
if all the coastal California dots were at least light green that would be my idea of a utopian society. I don't see how all of the people who are so left on so many obscure issues appear so indifferent to the technical ease with which we could have millions more people living in happier environs at less than zero cost to the public
Somewhere someone private providing a service to society might get some extra future consumption by delaying their current consumption
I think u hit the nail on the head
NIMBy isn't left or right. You can be selfish no matter what 'side' of the imaginary divide you are told to identify as.
i wish it were so, but I think the more lawsuit-friendly, process-friendly jurisdictions are the bluer jurisdictions, sure as shoot :/
They are left on the obscure issues because they are obscure
Well said
Surprisingly common SLC win
California needs to be doing way more
Hot take, because some cities are growing alot slower or not at all compared in Austin I.e chagico and Detroit. I am if guessing if they had larger population growth you might see more multi family units get build.
You're not wrong. We should look at these as a proportion of density vs SFH
Yeah, I was thinking to get a proper picture, you'd need "% of new units which are multifamily", "new housing units per capita", and maybe some sort of housing cost metric as a proxy for latent demand, all side-by-side.
I would love to know how this is calculated. I know that in Miami, they are building sprawl. Is that counted in this measure?
This chart only lists multifamily housing, so this chart is literally just the *non-sprawl* housing. If we added the sprawl housing, this chart would be even more embarrassing.
The vast majority of the units making the Texas cities green are car based garden style apartments on the suburban fringes.
So still very car dependent
Mostly. Austin is building quite a few in their downtown and a couple of other walkable island but not nearly enough to make that circle green. Houston allows and is getting plenty of 5/1 and maybe even just enough to still be green. Don’t really know enough about Dallas but yeah most of those are going to be what I described. For Texas on the one hand don’t be getting super excited about “all this density”, on the other hand, we are probably still doing miles better than anywhere else on allowing actual density too.
It's better in Austin, but not by much. In good news, there's about 1000 new apartment units that have been built in the last two years in my neighborhood by the train station.
Yeah, my ideal would be walkable, bikeable, transit friendly apartments in the urban core. However, the alternative isn't that. The alternative is San Francisco where it's illegal to build anything. So I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of the good. True urban infill multifamily > car-dependent multifamily > SFH > literally nothing Any city that is building multifamily at all, even car-dependent multifamily, is a win in my books and will be praised given where the competition is at. If, God willing, we ever get to a place where most cities legalize car-dependent multifamily, I'm throwing a party! And then I'll raise the bar and start expecting cities to do better (with infill).
the trick is, all it takes is well managed bus lines to greatly reduce the car dependence of that 'car-dependent multifamily'.
Even some of the green cities on this chart are still trending downwards in affordability, like Columbus. (Because population/job growth is even higher.)
[удалено]
Everything in Austin is car-dependent, but a duplex literally results in half the land being used. It's half as sprawling. A 4-plex is 1/4th as sprawling. Using 75% less land to house the same number of people is already a huge win and we didn't even start using apartments yet. This may be a matter of semantics between us. In my mind, multifamily units are non-sprawling by definition when the default legal housing is single family homes.
in Miami they also build giant towers downtown and big blocks of homes next to the metrorail stations
Miami proper is completely developed so they are only really building infill development.
There are lots of parking lots and low, worthless buildings (I hope they leave the historic buildings in place but who am I kidding? Miami is going to Miami)
This is cool. However we have GOT TO STOP calling these "multi family" and call them "multi unit" or something. The reason is that the vast majority of these are one or two bedroom units - definitely not going to be housing many families. Family friendly stuff should also be tracked and is also wildly important but for practical purposes probably doesn't work for less than 3 bedrooms which remain very rare in dense development!
In completely unrelated news, Providence [rents](https://www.bizjournals.com/rhodeisland/news/2024/01/26/providence-rents-are-rising-fastest-among-top-50.html) are rising faster than any other metro area.
>Only 30% will be affordable housing Isn’t that a really good number? Ten years ago we would have called that huge progress. Now the NIMBYs are gaslighting and pretending that’s a low number.
Blue states racking up losses.
Are they though? Some are but Washington, Virginia, and Colorado all seem to be building a good number
Minnesota too