Honestly, having lived in both NY and SF for years, you need both - a highly dense urban core, and effective transportation from the outlying regions.
If you just add transport, what will happen is what's now happening in Brooklyn - you'll just see rents pushed up further away from the center as the wealthy utilize mass transport to buy up housing a bit further from the core. It ends up with everyone else just being pushed further away until they're again facing a 60-90 minute commute.
Manhattan is able twice as many residents as San Francisco, which means it can absorb a lot of people before they start to spread outwards. It also helps unburden the mass transit system by reducing the distance that the average resident is traveling to work - helping make room for people commuting from the edges. (And to be fair, anyone in NY now will tell you that their mass transit system is having serious problems, too.)
The Bay definitely needs better mass transit - but I'm not holding my breath waiting for Marin, or Palo Alto, to jump on board with the idea of both better transit and more housing.
In the meantime, SF should be doing everything it can to increase housing stock if it wants to remain affordable - and yes, that might mean high rises in the sunset, or near GG park, despite what the author says. That kind of "build housing, but not in a place I have to see it" attitude is a big part of why we have a housing crunch.
Build more places to live, and the cost of living will come down. It's that simple.
If you just add transport, what will happen is what's now happening in Brooklyn - you'll just see rents pushed up further away from the center as the wealthy utilize mass transport to buy up housing a bit further from the core. It ends up with everyone else just being pushed further away until they're again facing a 60-90 minute commute.
Manhattan is able twice as many residents as San Francisco, which means it can absorb a lot of people before they start to spread outwards. It also helps unburden the mass transit system by reducing the distance that the average resident is traveling to work - helping make room for people commuting from the edges. (And to be fair, anyone in NY now will tell you that their mass transit system is having serious problems, too.)
The Bay definitely needs better mass transit - but I'm not holding my breath waiting for Marin, or Palo Alto, to jump on board with the idea of both better transit and more housing.
In the meantime, SF should be doing everything it can to increase housing stock if it wants to remain affordable - and yes, that might mean high rises in the sunset, or near GG park, despite what the author says. That kind of "build housing, but not in a place I have to see it" attitude is a big part of why we have a housing crunch.
Build more places to live, and the cost of living will come down. It's that simple.