Originally Posted by a very long weekend
sf is a massive outlier and should never be used in any comparative context, unless it's to something like greenwich village or beverly hills or other zero growth areas.
first off, sf and vancouver have very little in common, as far as i can tell. they don't look or feel similar, there's no similar history. vancouver doesn't have american demographics, no brown or black people like we have, with the impacts they've had on our history of development (redlining, redevelopment, etc). on the buildings side, most of our neighborhoods are much denser than those in vancouver, yet our height limits here are draconian compared with those of vancouver. a neighborhood like the west end or yaletown is inconceivable in sf. but so is a detached single family home neighborhood like strathcona right next to chinatown, or really anywhere but way up in hills or at the southern border of the city. in terms of urbanity and built form and just the feel of the place, sf has a lot more in common with brooklyn than it does with vancouver.
the development process here is also nothing like that in vancouver - our city hall works differently (we have very powerful district supervisors and a strong mayor, all heavily involved in development), independent of the board and mayor we have a planning commission that votes on projects that come out of the planning department, the planning department has nothing like the autonomy yours does, we have as of right construction. random citizens have standing to file lawsuits on any number of issues that don't exist in vancouver (far too numerous to list), we have inclusionary zoning minimums (that change based on neighborhood but stand at 12% bmr city wide), and a great deal of zoning is done at the ballot box, where individual groups will unilaterally attempt to downzone areas. if you build near the waterfront, for instance, it's now city law that your project must be approved at the ballot box. it's common for a project to take 4-5 years from application to groundbreaking. broadly speaking, our nimbys are probably among the most empowered of any large city on earth, no exaggeration. by contrast, your nimbys up there are pests but ultimately they seem to lose more than they win.
vancouver's system, by and large, from where i'm standing in the center of one of the world's great examples of poor governance, is pretty damned good.
also, since you mentioned it, the drug/hippie culture here was decades ago and nothing of it remains. and tech started in silicon valley and has gradually made its way up here, starting around 1998. sf's economy has always been more focused on banking, financial services (visa is from here), corporate offices, and professional services (accountancy, law, etc). tech is relatively new, though it comprises now maybe 15% of our jobs.
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its hard enough to cut down a dead tree near a building, let alone on the top of a skyscraper with buildings around it. I wonder what the cost of cutting it down and replacing it is and if its covered by the strata fees or paid by only by those who have access to it (and able to enjoy it) from their suite.
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