There is a nice young (22-ish) man and his wife who live in my building. He told me that he and his wife are looking for a house because "an apartment is no place to raise a family". I wanted to puke.
Would we be having this big to-do over oil prices if most of us lived in high-rise apatments built in cities that employ mixed-use zoning?
Ever wonder why San Jose (pop. 894, 943) has a less-than-world-class symphony that can't even get its website working (Capital of Silicon Valley? Ha!) but San Francisco (pop. 776,733) has a multiple Grammy winning (10 of them from 1988 to present, including one for best Rock Instrumental Performance!) orchestra?
The reason there is no world class symphony, no opera worth attending, no major league baseball team, no theater district, no interesting architecture, and only 4 good restaurants in San Jose is this: Like a woman slowly deforming, stunting, and killing her baby by taking ever increasing doses of thalidomide, in the 1870's the government of San Jose began making a series of decisions that promoted the construction of wide streets, long blocks, single-use zoning, and single-family detached houses. The sprawl intensified in the 1950's and continued un checked through 1970. Since then it has coninued, but with some limits.
Just look at these numbers. San Francisco's population, though smaller than San Jose's is squished into 49 square miles. That is a density of more than 15,800 people per square mile. San Jose's larger population is spread over 177 square miles. That is a density of about 5,000 people per square mile. 5,000 people per square mile is not enough people for there to be a civic life.
Even the wingnuts at Harvard agree with me on this: Low population density in a city inhibits cultural development. And the San Jose Business Journal does more than agree with me on the cultural aspects, they imply that there is a moral argument ( at least, a a moral argument that is different from the esthetic argument.) against low density development; That single family detatched house make homeless people, in addition to making cities less liveable.
And therefore, I conclude (no I'm not going to quote Cato) that as long as one working man struggles to find nightly shelter, it is immoral for city governments to zone for single-family detached houses, or even require houses to have garages for cars when men have no bedrooms.
11 hours ago
8 comments:
As always, it continues to amaze me when the right and left of my personal political spectrum start to say the same thing! The wiccans and eco-feminists of SF and Berkeley have been saying this for a while. It's a point on which I happen to agree with them and you. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
That site you linked is for the defunct San Jose Symphony. The "Symphony Silicon Valley" has a website up here.
And I think San Jose's pop is about 923,000 now.
And to be fair, San Francisco casts such a huge cultural shadow over the region that it's hard for San Jose to get a piece of the action. Gotta give them credit for 50 miles distance from 1 of the 2 cultural centers of gravity in the Western U. S.
Other than that you're right.
Preach it, Matt!
-Doug
I agree with Huw Raphael - it is always interesting when the left and the right circle around and meet (and it happens with increasing frequency in my life)
I agree completely with your post - my MIL grew up in San Jose, and the beautiful farmlands are lost to the sprawl.
Huw & Mimi: Even the far left can not be wrong all of the time. Though their errors are many and grave they yet bear the mark of their Creator, and yearn for something like Heaven.
Doug: In the words of the old pentecostal preacher, "Preach with me and I'll keep on preaching! Whooo! GLORY!"
Thomas: The symphony's name change proves my point. San Jose is such a non-entity (and mostly because of its own zoning and construction decisions) the symphony had to abandon the name "San Jose Symphony" for "Symphony Silicon Valley". So embarassing. There is more cachet in building the symphony's image around the computer industry than there is in attaching the image of the symphony to the city of San Jose.
Hey, don't worry, I'm sure that gigantic new City Hall will have us swimming in prestige. :r
Anyway, it was much more than a name change. The San Jose Symphony went bankrupt a few years back, and no longer exists. 10th largest city in America can't support a permament symphony orchestra, now that's embarrassing. The new symphony has many of the same musicians but no permament conductor yet.
Greater San Jose is not a city but a political fiction. Burbank's got nothing to do with Berryessa; Evergreen's got nothing to do with Willow Glen. Milpitas and Alum Rock were smart enough to stay out of it. The solution is secession!
I appreciate the secessionist sentiment, especially when one considers the cost of doing business in San Jose (I just found out that before I can have a trespassing car towed off of property I manage I have to buy a $300 license from the the government of San Jose.) but even if all of the different areas of San Jose secede they are still stuck with the problem of bad zoning. Cupertino and Campbell incorporated just so they wouldn't be annexed by San Jose, yet they both have the same problem of big lots and single family detatched houses. At least Campbell is trying to buid an urban core. Cupertino is actively fighting it with their set-backs and parking requirements.
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