Ico Guru

San Fransokyo What would the Bay Area look like with 38 million people? Greater Tokyo is 5,200 square miles, while the Bay Area is 7,000 square miles from Napa to Gilroy. The Bay Area has 7 million people, so getting to 38 million would mean 7x population. Transport: Tokyo has 3,000 miles of train tracks and 2,200 stations. SFBA has 180 miles and 100 stations. In addition, Tokyo builds massive apartment complexes and shopping malls around most stations, mostly owned by the train company, allowing it to capture the economic rents from the transport links to fund operations rather than tariffs. This would be insane if implemented in the US. Imagine a private company building an underground train line to Cupertino and putting a giant apartment complex around the station. Need eminent domain, CEQA exemptions, permit streamlining etc. Housing: shoebox apartments directly above transit at 500 bucks a month means you can finally have all the artists not starve. Bigger stimulus to birth rates than anything else you do if families can house themselves for under a 1000 bucks. Environmental Impact: San Fransokyo’s population would be about the same as California today. This would mean that we can remove people from everywhere else in California and RETVRN to nature! It’s the ultimate YIMBY pro environment move. Imagine a Los Angeles returning to the desert, with no cars, traffic, pollution or people! The idea is to intensify land use in the desirable areas (and environment impact) and release land in less desirable areas. Our current policies simply don’t allow these tradeoffs to occur, and end up in weird local minimums (which is off course what the population wants, no one cares about environmental impact they can’t see, are you naive) Fly-Over States Will Be Over: We can once and for all get rid of of them by pulling their population away. Obviously no one wants to live in Ohio if rents in SF are 500 bucks a month. Bringing all of them to SF will also mean they become liberal democrats! They’re only bitter and red because they get bypassed! What annoys me about this vision is that it’s plausible with today’s technology!!! If Japanese technocrats can pull it off, Americans definitely can! That it doesn’t already happen is just a lack of imagination and willpower.