How much land is left?
"There's no land left to build on!" is a saying that I've heard uttered from time to time by really intelligent people, as one of the reasons housing is so expensive. It's used to shrug off the supply issue to instead try to push for economically unsound or illiberal programs like rent control and restricting job growth.
That is, however, completely incorrect. It seems exceedingly obvious to me, but maybe it's because I'm in the business and I pay closer attention to this. I mean, the shorthand is, if there really is no more land left to build on, how can I still be working on residential architecture in the Bay Area?
But do people really drive around and not see the raw land that is available for development? Here are just three examples in extremely high traffic areas.
I know that there's hyperbole involved in the statement "no more land!" It is true that large single family detached master plans are far and few between in the urban areas, but this doesn't mean that there's no land available. There are still large empty plots of land in Dublin, including an army base that is barely used now. Even with a fairly large portion built out on the southern end of it now, it constitutes well under half of the land the army base retained. There is a plot of land ripe for a large development south of the 580 corridor that I am currently not at liberty to discuss. If you head east on 580 and look north as you pass Livermore, you'll see thousands of acres of farmland that is currently not developed only because it has been designated beyond the urban growth boundary, an artificial and arbitrary decision. Some cities in the region will require that housing developments deed a percentage of land as permanent open space. And all of this is without even leaving the southern tip of the Tri Valley area.
Further, raw land is not the only land type that can build new housing. Building uses become outdated or poorly matched with the area they're in all the time. For an example of some of the sites we've been designing on, are churches that sell off their buildings to developers to turn them into housing, as populations become less and less religious. Certain businesses that hold land in certain city centers have seen land values go up enough where they decide it's more worth it to sell their land to developers. For another example, we completed a condo project recently that will go on a used car dealership in Santa Clara. The owner likely saw that he could get millions of dollars for the land so why continue to operate his business there, when he could either retire or relocate his business to a less costly piece of land and pocket the difference? Malls, of course, have been becoming more and more passé. Valco Mall in Cupertino has been a ghost mall for a while and efforts to turn the mega structure into condos have been met with fierce resistance. Luckily, a new California law now forbids the city of Cupertino to continue to block the project from moving forward, providing much needed housing in the area.
Enough of 2D talk. What about 3D? Why can't people seem to think in three dimensions? We live in a three dimensional world, do we not?
San Francisco is a large swath of land. Almost 47 square miles. How much of it contains high rise (12+ floors) condo buildings? It is an exceedingly tiny portion of the city, limited pretty much from the Financial district to the newly developed Dogpatch District. How much of the city contains skyscraper condo buildings (40+ floors)? I think they're almost exclusively in the SoMa District which had been popular to develop due to its lack of neighbor resistance when it was a more industrial area.
In any reasonable discussion of land availability in the context of a housing crisis discussion, it must be fully reasonable to include a three story office building or a warehouse in a highly dense region as "available land" to build a 40 story condo building in the SoMa District. If insane San Francisco politics wasn't a part of the housing discussion, the vast majority of San Francisco could expand by tens of thousands of housing units without even breaking a sweat.
And that's what it really comes down to. Politics. The soul sucking institution that causes the cost of living to skyrocket so hard that people can't make ends meet. It is next to impossible to expand toward the sky in San Francisco due to NIMBYs and zoning laws that severely restrict heights in most of the city. For every high rise crane you see, there were numerous more projects you don't see that never made it due to political pressure.
In reality, single family dwellings account for 30% of the housing stock in San Francisco, but takes up 60% of the land. Although the heart of the city is dense, San Francisco is a giant basket case of sprawl.
Even the state's own study states that there are 24 million acres of raw land available for development in the state. Excluding all areas far from urban services, wetlands, unique farm lands, environmentally critical areas, and severe slopes, the study states that there are still 8 million acres of land. It states that there is enough land to sustain population growth past 2020 several times over. Granted, the study was done twenty years ago (sorry, I can't find a more recent version), but as we all know, housing targets have fallen embarrassingly and comically short of population growth, so there is no reason to think that most of that 8 million acres are gone. The study also projects that Alameda and Contra Costa Counties will start to run low on land soon after 2020. As I've shown above, we're not even close to that.
We need to stop boxing ourselves in with our lack of vision and imagination. We have land. We have space. We know how to build tall buildings (well, maybe not the people that built the Millenium Tower and its developers should rightly pay for the cluster of a project that was). Places like Hong Kong, that has land use restriction issues of its own, have been extending land out into the water to build new skyscrapers. Hong Kong and San Francisco have nearly identical rents, the top two cities in the world for high rents and far above third place, New York City. Hong Kong has a density of 68,000 people per square mile, one of the densest regions in the world, and cut off at the China border to Shen Zhen. San Francisco has a density of 18,000 people per square mile, practically farmland by comparison, and surrounded by thousands of square miles of nearby cities with far lower population densities. The densities of the two other major metropolitan cities in the Bay Area, Oakland and San Jose, have densities less than half of San Francisco's. The fourth most populous city, Fremont, has a laughable 2,440 people per square mile per the 2010 Census, though if we remove wetlands and even permanent open space, the latter of which constitutes 45% of Fremont's land mass, we end up with about 4,400 people per square mile. Even after adjusting for this, the density matches the Central California city among farmland, Turlock. Fremont essentially has no downtown, no real density to speak of, and is composed largely of a sprawl of single family detached housing and strip malls.
Although Hong Kong highly restricts land usage for 63% of its land for various purposes including recreation and watershed, it's much more understandable to say they have an issue with available land to build on. What's San Francisco's excuse?
That is, however, completely incorrect. It seems exceedingly obvious to me, but maybe it's because I'm in the business and I pay closer attention to this. I mean, the shorthand is, if there really is no more land left to build on, how can I still be working on residential architecture in the Bay Area?
But do people really drive around and not see the raw land that is available for development? Here are just three examples in extremely high traffic areas.
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| Downtown Hayward is three blocks southwest of these parcels. The streets that run northeast to southwest that split the parcels are very high traffic during rush hour (when there were rush hours) // satellite image from Google |
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| One of my favorite areas I liked to point out. This swath of land in Fremont sat empty until just a few years ago. I know that some of the people who told me there's no more land has driven past this very site when it was empty numerous times. The empty portion is currently under construction and the total will add hundreds of new housing units. // satellite image from Google |
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| This is right in the heart of Mountain View. The highlighted sites are one block away from Castro Street, the main downtown street. The green areas are currently city public parking. Not pictured here is a large public parking garage just to the north. Also, there is a garage underneath city hall, just to the south. There are more lots like this to the north a few blocks . The yellow highlighted area shows cars in the satellite, but whenever I've been there, it's been blocked off and just a dirt lot. // satellite image from Google |
I know that there's hyperbole involved in the statement "no more land!" It is true that large single family detached master plans are far and few between in the urban areas, but this doesn't mean that there's no land available. There are still large empty plots of land in Dublin, including an army base that is barely used now. Even with a fairly large portion built out on the southern end of it now, it constitutes well under half of the land the army base retained. There is a plot of land ripe for a large development south of the 580 corridor that I am currently not at liberty to discuss. If you head east on 580 and look north as you pass Livermore, you'll see thousands of acres of farmland that is currently not developed only because it has been designated beyond the urban growth boundary, an artificial and arbitrary decision. Some cities in the region will require that housing developments deed a percentage of land as permanent open space. And all of this is without even leaving the southern tip of the Tri Valley area.
Further, raw land is not the only land type that can build new housing. Building uses become outdated or poorly matched with the area they're in all the time. For an example of some of the sites we've been designing on, are churches that sell off their buildings to developers to turn them into housing, as populations become less and less religious. Certain businesses that hold land in certain city centers have seen land values go up enough where they decide it's more worth it to sell their land to developers. For another example, we completed a condo project recently that will go on a used car dealership in Santa Clara. The owner likely saw that he could get millions of dollars for the land so why continue to operate his business there, when he could either retire or relocate his business to a less costly piece of land and pocket the difference? Malls, of course, have been becoming more and more passé. Valco Mall in Cupertino has been a ghost mall for a while and efforts to turn the mega structure into condos have been met with fierce resistance. Luckily, a new California law now forbids the city of Cupertino to continue to block the project from moving forward, providing much needed housing in the area.
Enough of 2D talk. What about 3D? Why can't people seem to think in three dimensions? We live in a three dimensional world, do we not?
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| San Francisco city limits in red. The green area in the upper right indicates areas that contain residential buildings taller than 12 stories. I may have missed some small areas, but green area contain large expanses of buildings shorter than 12 stories. // satellite image from Google |
In any reasonable discussion of land availability in the context of a housing crisis discussion, it must be fully reasonable to include a three story office building or a warehouse in a highly dense region as "available land" to build a 40 story condo building in the SoMa District. If insane San Francisco politics wasn't a part of the housing discussion, the vast majority of San Francisco could expand by tens of thousands of housing units without even breaking a sweat.
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| San Francisco view from above Twin Peaks, approximately the center of San Francisco. It is looking at the densest quarter of the city. The rest of the three quarters of the city is mostly 2-3 story single family homes. Compare this to what NYC looks like. Or HK. // satellite image from Google |
And that's what it really comes down to. Politics. The soul sucking institution that causes the cost of living to skyrocket so hard that people can't make ends meet. It is next to impossible to expand toward the sky in San Francisco due to NIMBYs and zoning laws that severely restrict heights in most of the city. For every high rise crane you see, there were numerous more projects you don't see that never made it due to political pressure.
In reality, single family dwellings account for 30% of the housing stock in San Francisco, but takes up 60% of the land. Although the heart of the city is dense, San Francisco is a giant basket case of sprawl.
Even the state's own study states that there are 24 million acres of raw land available for development in the state. Excluding all areas far from urban services, wetlands, unique farm lands, environmentally critical areas, and severe slopes, the study states that there are still 8 million acres of land. It states that there is enough land to sustain population growth past 2020 several times over. Granted, the study was done twenty years ago (sorry, I can't find a more recent version), but as we all know, housing targets have fallen embarrassingly and comically short of population growth, so there is no reason to think that most of that 8 million acres are gone. The study also projects that Alameda and Contra Costa Counties will start to run low on land soon after 2020. As I've shown above, we're not even close to that.
We need to stop boxing ourselves in with our lack of vision and imagination. We have land. We have space. We know how to build tall buildings (well, maybe not the people that built the Millenium Tower and its developers should rightly pay for the cluster of a project that was). Places like Hong Kong, that has land use restriction issues of its own, have been extending land out into the water to build new skyscrapers. Hong Kong and San Francisco have nearly identical rents, the top two cities in the world for high rents and far above third place, New York City. Hong Kong has a density of 68,000 people per square mile, one of the densest regions in the world, and cut off at the China border to Shen Zhen. San Francisco has a density of 18,000 people per square mile, practically farmland by comparison, and surrounded by thousands of square miles of nearby cities with far lower population densities. The densities of the two other major metropolitan cities in the Bay Area, Oakland and San Jose, have densities less than half of San Francisco's. The fourth most populous city, Fremont, has a laughable 2,440 people per square mile per the 2010 Census, though if we remove wetlands and even permanent open space, the latter of which constitutes 45% of Fremont's land mass, we end up with about 4,400 people per square mile. Even after adjusting for this, the density matches the Central California city among farmland, Turlock. Fremont essentially has no downtown, no real density to speak of, and is composed largely of a sprawl of single family detached housing and strip malls.
Although Hong Kong highly restricts land usage for 63% of its land for various purposes including recreation and watershed, it's much more understandable to say they have an issue with available land to build on. What's San Francisco's excuse?
