In my opinion this is one of the worst aspects of the bay area and california in general. It is my understanding that it is very easy to get land set aside for environmental reason in california and that is used to stop development. Then I read about minimum lot sizes in places like San Jose and locals getting together to block new construction. 
 I think that San Francisco should look like Tokyo at this point with high density sprawl that takes an hour to cross on a bullet train. Keep in mind they get earthquakes over there as well. 
 I know it is unlikely but this is the kind of thing that I could see causing a &quot;Detroit Type&quot; situation to emerge with US tech. Other countries figure out the software thing and we get hit with global competition that we can not respond to quickly enough. Rather than pointing our fingers at the autoworker unions we will point it at the nimby types that kept San Fran from reaching its full potential.