Here is 1,013 acre Golden Gate park, one of the premier urban parks in the country. Surrounded on all sides by multi-million dollar single family homes and where anything more than about 3 stories is strictly prohibited by zoning. There are a few older apartments scattered about on the parks edges that are grandfathered in from the pre-zoning days but anything new is prohibited. I challenge you to find any large apartment building within 6 blocks of Golden Gate park that is not at least 50 years old. You might manage to find a few but they are extremely rare. Which means that only the most wealthy residents and vanishingly few families are allowed by law to live within walking distance of this park that they all pay for with their tax dollars with its zoo, gardens, and open spaces.
![Image](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/34/33/15/24228685/5/rawImage.jpg)
By contrast, here is 843 acre Central Park in NYC. 150 years ago it looked exactly the same as Golden Gate Park with nothing but fancy single family residences. But today....? Now lots of those apartments and condos along Central Park West and 5th Avenue are ultra-wealthy addresses to be sure. In part because they are adjacent to the park. But 100,000 people live in Harlem up there at the far end of the park who also live within walking distance. There are probably 100-times more people living within easy walking access of Central Park than Golden Gate Park. Because New York didn't decide to freeze the city in amber ca. 1880 like San Francisco did. And prohibit anyone new from moving in.
![Image](https://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:pnp:highsm:15500:15539/full/pct:25/0/default.jpg)
Is New York a worse city than San Francisco because it allows more density? What all that density means is that compared to San Francisco, a million more people live on the Island of Manhattan than the whole city of San Francisco despite Manhattan occupying only 1/2 the area of San Francisco.
What does that mean? It means a million less people commuting in LONG LONG distances from NJ, CT, Long Island, and so forth. There are people with families who are forced to commute to San Francisco from as far away as Stockton because they can't afford anything closer. I don't consider it family friendly when your dad has an 80 mile commute to work. We are a growing nation of 330 million. We can't all live in rural Ohio. And if we did it would no longer be rural Ohio. We actually need our cities to grow unless we want the entire nation covered in endless suburban sprawl.
This is the Sunset District directly south of Golden Gate Park. That is the park in the distance. Every last block zoned for single family housing exclusively. Yes under recent changes to CA law they can now put up ADUs in their back yards but most don't have big enough back yards to do that. What they can't do is put up an actual apartment building or condo building anywhere in this photo, even under the recent changes.
![Image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Sunset_District_Drone_Shot_07APR2018.png)
And you don't need to be Manhattan to have higher density. This is a similar location to the Sunset District in Barcelona which is considered one of the most livable cities in the world and has no high rises but is about 8x more dense than San Francisco and 60% cheaper to live in. There are probably 10x more families and children living within this picture of Barcelona than that picture above of the Sunset District in San Francisco which covers approximately the same area. That doesn't make it a third world slum. It makes it one of the most desirable cities in Europe.
![Image](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/e4996b18-0a25-45e7-8a9d-caca1e8fcf89/citybreak_barcelona_AWL_ES02360_HR_2x3.jpg?w=1534&h=2302)