It's Not Imperialism When We Do It

The tiny City of Brisbane (3 sq miles land, 4,282 pop.) is at the center of a land-use controversy. Per C.W. Nevius of the Chronicle [bold added]:

The Brisbane City Council is meeting Thursday night to vote on a proposal to develop the long-dormant 684-acre Baylands open space. That’s the simple part.

Conventional wisdom is that the council will approve the “community alternative” plan, which calls for over 8 million square feet of commercial-industrial construction and not a single unit of housing.

With the Bay Area in the midst of a housing crisis, the no-housing option has set off howls of protest. A caravan of San Francisco housing advocates will travel to the meeting to complain, and there are now threats of a lawsuit from the Bay Area Council. [snip]

San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim suggested annexing the property and making it part of San Francisco. That was not well received in San Mateo County, where Brisbane is located.

San Francisco: don't touch our green spaces, we want yours.

The sharks are circling. San Francisco and San Mateo officials each want to annex Brisbane and/or force it to build housing.

“Brisbane wants to take all the gravy and none of the responsibility,” [SM County supervisor Adrienne Tissler] said. “You’re depending on people taking public transit, which they won’t. You know what 101 is like any time of the day. You just create gridlock.”

Of course, if a proposed 4,434 homes are built, current Brisbane residents would lose voting control over their city.

Your humble blogger has had to listen to progressives natter on endlessly about American imperialism and the seizure of land for development.

But when a live example appears in their own back yard, they start talking about annexation for the "public good." If San Francisco is that concerned about housing shortages, let them build on their own open spaces.