In the San Francisco Bay Area, much ado has been made about the current jobs-housing imbalance, which is one of the driving factors behind high costs for housing there. This is only part of the issue: California is a very desirable place to live. Specifically in the Bay Area, there are good weather and good schools in addition to a good economic climate, and all this, combined with some other factors, make the demand for housing much higher than the supply.
This is a bit of a problem. The Bay Area economy appears like it will remain strong for the foreseeable future, and other factors that make the housing market strong aren't changing anytime soon. People will continue to want to live and work in the Bay Area. Traffic, already bad, will continue to get worse, and housing will continue to lag behind the pace of job creation, forcing workers to live farther and farther away, creating and exacerbating more problems.
How to fix the problem remains a bit more problematic. Numerous methods have been tried to keep housing costs down, such as rent control and development specifically intended for affordable housing. However, these methods can only control housing prices so much. In order to truly bring down housing prices, there needs to either be a huge decrease in demand or a large increase in supply.
Looking at the opinion pages across Bay Area cities, there are a wide variety of opinions concerning growth. Many residents decry the need for more housing projects in place of business development, while others lament the urbanization of their communities, disliking how large apartment buildings and business complexes are increasing in number. However, people need to realize that as time passes and the Bay Area's population increases, there will be more of a need for large building projects in order to keep up with growth.
The real problem is that the housing projects necessary to bring down housing prices aren't being built fast enough. The Bay Area needs commercial development to sustain a strong local economy, but this must be accompanied by residential development as well. If communities continue to ignore pressing issues regarding development, these actions will have to be taken later, where the situation will be much more dire. Any problems the Bay Area has at present will only get worse of cities large and small ignore this development crisis.
People in cities all over America need to take action now in order to shape their communities before it's too late. There are a lot of great community assets the San Francisco Bay Area has, such as its proximity too, and large amounts of open space. This community treasure could be jeopardized as cities become more populated and communities run out of room to grow. As of now, Bay Area cities still have the time to invest into detailed long term community planning, making sure they have enough room for companies in the area, places to house the workers, yet still have adequate amounts of open space and a strong transportation system to help people get around.
These are important issues that communities all over the country, or all over the world, not just the SF Bay Area. If communities like the Bay Area with strong economic growth start early and plan for future, residents will be more likely to have a future community that they find appealing and desirable to live in. But only if planning starts now. If we wait too long, it will be much too late to intelligently solve the problem and more money will be spent, more headaches created, and our future cities will not be as enjoyable to live in.
In the coming days and weeks, we will have other posts exploring this issue in depth, including putting forward ideas on how to plan our future cities, how we can solve our inevitable transportation problems, and explore how to pay for all this development.
