Larger political entities can consider more than the narrow, selfish interests of a few "I've got mine" NIMBYs, such as future residents, the racist history of zoning, and the impact on the environment of forcing people to commute a long ways.
Local control in places like Palo Alto is two wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner.
Some of us would like our children to be able to live in the place they are growing up. And we value what newcomers and immigrants bring to the table in terms of hard work, new ideas, energy, and so on.
Also, one of the easiest ways to make people better off is to let them move to where the jobs are. That used to be very common in the United States. That has been stunted in some part by rigid land use laws that pull up the ladder behind the people who got in while the getting was good.
There is a lot of work in economics showing the benefits of clustering, rather than having a talented up and coming person move to, say, Cyanide Springs Oklahoma because it's cheap.
If you want your children to live there, perhaps allowing newcomers isn't the best idea? Our housing prices go up up up as does our population, and the only approved solution seems to be to lower our quality of life.
Unless you think living in an apartment with no garage, no yard, no storage, and no way to stockpile food (save costs) is a quality of life increase?
Our children will probably not have children if forced to live this way at this price.
Personally I don't really get it, but I don't live in San Francisco.
> Our children will probably not have children if forced to live this way at this price.
Maybe check out some other parts of the world where this is the norm, and people have plenty of kids, once the pandemic is over.
And it's not a given that that happens in any case. People might not choose to live quite so densely, but if they want to, the option is there.
Look at the 'Montreal' option in that article for instance. That'd add a lot of people without having Big Towers.
And I actually lived in Italy, in a flat, with no yard for a while. It was great - we'd go to the park with my kids where they'd almost always see friends. Way better than our big yard here in the US where "there's nothing to do".
Local control in places like Palo Alto is two wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner.