Mixed-use Haussmann buildings like those on Montorgueil Street are typical throughout Paris. The French capital is about the same land area as San Francisco but houses more than twice as many residents.

San Francisco has a habit of framing its housing debates in extremes. Density or “neighborhood character.” Growth or preservation. Victorian or nothing.

It is a binary that has proven politically useful to generations of politicians and functionally disastrous for our housing market and for developing a coherent urban vision for the future.

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San Francisco has spent decades treating density as something to be negotiated, deferred or railed against. That’s in part because single-family homes are the norm here — a strange thing for a city, if you think about it. Vast areas are locked into low-rise, while taller buildings are clustered in just a few designated zones. It’s a pattern that produces scarcity by design.

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Paris, meanwhile, though about the same size as San Francisco, manages to house more than double the number of residents. It does so with a particular building type that is not exceptional; it is the default. Yet these buildings bring density without overcrowding and reinforce the city’s social fabric.

Six stories, no notes.

The housing at 588 4th St. in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood is reminiscent of the Haussmann buildings in Paris

A recent trip to Paris had me falling in love all over again with these ubiquitous — and I’d argue, perfect — Haussmann buildings.

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Built in the late 19th century during a sweeping redesign of Paris led by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, these elegant and functional buildings are usually 40 to 65 feet tall, with pale limestone facades, generous windows and........

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