My first reaction to seeing these listings was to feel very disconnected from people who like the mall so much they want to live there. But it's a fantastic idea. You don't often get the opportunity to create new dense urban cores in the Bay Area.
I'm a fan of rail in general, and the German system is fantastic. But the LA and SF Bay Areas consist mostly of sprawl and don't have good transit to begin with. You need to drive to get somewhere fast. In those circumstances, taking off from the burbs is a feature, not a bug.
Being conservative has nothing to do with it. The area of NY I live in right now is extremely conservative and there are dozens of solar panel installations from Apex Solar on homes and businesses.
Moving jobs after a year is very common in tech. If you have any co-workers who left, asking them for referral (if they like the new gig) is a great way to go about it. Lots of companies pay referral bonuses so your old co-worker will be happy about it too. I'm on my third job after graduating and have more than doubled my income in 3.5 years.
People are angry that although they can afford a perfectly standard apartment, they can't afford new construction. Apartment developments being abandoned before completion due to low demand. Market distortions caused by development restrictions during the 90s.
There is actually a cost-efficient way to create affordable housing: create luxury housing. After rich people move in, less rich people will get to inhabit those older homes left behind. Restricting housing construction creates a backlog that must be worked through for the market to adjust fully. Some of the benefits of removing those restrictions are immediate, others take over time.
For anyone familiar with the Bay Area real estate market, this is obviously wrong.
Looking at recent sales, homes in Brisbane are selling at ~$600/sqft, which is easily enough to support the construction of dense housing. For comparison, that's about the same as Toronto, higher than Seattle and many other major cities.
All of Brisbane is near 101, which makes it better than a lot of places in the Peninsula for commuting.
Also, developers in the region are eagerly building condos and townhouses on any land they can get approval for, including areas with serious issues - eg. fifty feet from the Caltrain line but far from the nearest station. If you take a look at new construction listings you will see tons of these, and they sell great because many buyers prefer them over an eighty year old bungalow with tiny bedrooms, termites, and mold.
There is a spectrum between letting everyone in on the embargo and keeping things under wraps. Given it took months for the key players to produce fixes (which Scaleway and everyone else can use), and things were already leaking before the embargo ended, it's hard to say they made the wrong tradeoff.
