It is home to (or adjacent to the home of) the most valuable companies in the world.
The reason it doesn’t look like Shenzhen is because 1) Americans invest a huge portion of their life savings into their homes which means 2) preventing that asset from depreciating is important and 3) scarcity is the easiest way to accomplish that and 4) homeowners have disproportionate political power to do so.
As long as these (by national standards) mediocre houses keep appreciating, homeowners will fight change.
The US has also exercised eminent domain historically. We can do it. American cities weren’t all government property before Uncle Sam put highways through many of them. It might be wise to revisit this for other improvements.
When the Chinese government exercises eminent domain, my understanding is that many people want their homes to be targeted because of the (comparatively) lucrative payouts. Cash neutralizes concerns 1, 2, and 3.
Now that people in California have held their homes long enough, buying them out is a lot more expensive. There are better ways to make the numbers work, though.
It's not trivially obvious that upzoning would be bad for property values. If it becomes possible to build a giant apartment building on a plot of land in a high-demand area, that makes developers willing to pay substantial sums for it. (The homeownership paradigm does cause various other problems, though.)
Not just that, having more housing makes it possible for even more companies to move in. Apple/Google/Meta are great but they are trillion dollar companies and can afford to pay top dollar. There are many others who would like to. I believe adding more housing would induce a ton of demand.
https://www.commercialcafe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites...
It is home to (or adjacent to the home of) the most valuable companies in the world.
The reason it doesn’t look like Shenzhen is because 1) Americans invest a huge portion of their life savings into their homes which means 2) preventing that asset from depreciating is important and 3) scarcity is the easiest way to accomplish that and 4) homeowners have disproportionate political power to do so.
As long as these (by national standards) mediocre houses keep appreciating, homeowners will fight change.