What do you get when you have some of the most stringent affordable housing requirements in the United States? You might think that you get lots and lots of affordable housing, but that is not the case in San Francisco. Paradoxically, you still get some… Read More
Over the past few years, I have been writing about the fall off in public transit ridership that we have seen as a result of the pandemic. Most recently, I mentioned it in my predictions for 2023. This topic doesn’t seem to get a lot… Read More
It has become tradition around here that at the end of each year I write down my predictions for the following one. And in 2022, I did that here. The overarching point of writing something like this down publicly is not necessarily to be right… Read More
Cruise, which I wrote about earlier this year, has just announced that its autonomous taxi service will soon be available to the general public 24 hours a day, across all of San Francisco. Initially the service was only available between 11PM and 5AM (when traffic… Read More
This short video by City Beautiful makes the case for multi-way boulevards. The way to generally think about a multi-way boulevard is that it is a really big street that has been subdivided into areas that move cars relatively quickly and into areas that are… Read More
Here in Canada, there is often a belief that Americans tend to be more mobile than Canadians. Don’t like the cold weather? Just move south. Taxes too high? Just move south. Housing too expensive? Just move south. But just how mobile is mobile? A new… Read More
Venture firm a16z just announced that it will be “moving its headquarters to the cloud.” At the same time, it announced 3 new offices in Miami Beach, New York, and Santa Monica. These will be in addition to their existing offices in Menlo Park and… Read More
I received an email from a reader over the weekend saying that my comments around rent control have been too critical, and that they are not doing proper justice to the challenges that renters face in today’s cities. I thought this was a fair comment… Read More
The headline sounds pretty promising: San Francisco is on the verge of abolishing single-family zoning, and will soon allow 4-plexes across the city and up to 6 units on corner lots. It is also clear recognition that, “hey, we have a housing problem and should… Read More
I just finished reading this article by Nellie Bowles about how San Francisco became a failed city. Here’s an excerpt that relates to housing supply: Consider the story of the flower farm at 770 Woolsey Street. It slopes down 2.2 acres in the sunny southern… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 