>>9
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The value of land in places like San Francisco dropped so low during the mass exodus to the new suburbs that grand Victorian buildings were removed to make way for parking spaces. The Whiz Burger sits on two city lots, all of which are paved in asphalt. The building itself is about as cheap as a structure can be and still contain deep fryers and a walk-in refrigerator. Customers dine outdoors because there is no indoor seating, although this is hardly a Parisian sidewalk cafe. It was never meant to be that kind of place.
Instead, the Whiz Burger belongs to the lost world of American Graffiti and Mel’s Diner.
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All around the city there are vacant lots where buildings once were. Squat low value auto-oriented infrastructure sits next to older buildings from another era. Both the Victorians and the parking lots are remnants of earlier periods in the city’s evolution.
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Today, land values are shockingly high in San Francisco and infill development is absolutely everywhere. One by one the old parking lots, gas stations, and muffler shops are being transformed into new structures and uses. Current rules, regulations, cultural and political constraints, and the sheer cost of construction now favor a different version of urban development. In order to get the numbers to add up the buildings need to be very large. The decade long approval processes, the high cost of land, environmental remediation, multi level parking decks, seismic engineering, fire suppression equipment, infrastructure upgrades, and so on all dictate a substantial building. There needs to be enough units to amortize all the up front costs and service the debt.
I want you, dear reader, to set aside all the squirrelly feelings you may have about the political Left or Right. Perhaps you hate the evils of Big Government or the evils of Corporate Capitalism. Maybe you like cities. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like the kinds of people who live in them. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like places that are a bit messy. Maybe you need a place that’s orderly and tidy. That’s not the point I’m making here.
Look at these images of the Summerlin West development on the far edge of Las Vegas. The scale is massive and the same dynamics are at work. Everything about this place is enormous and predicated on vast amounts of institutional complexity and debt. Somehow, as a society, we’ve drifted from ordinary people being able to build their own homes on a cash basis in an interactive iterative way, to these immense hyper elaborate habitats. You may not aspire to live in a small underground home that takes years to complete. The Summerlin West homes may be better in many ways. But there are trade offs involved. Both individuals and the larger society have agreed to a set of interlocking delicate systems that are simultaneously highly effective and spectacularly vulnerable to disruption. That’s my point.