When it comes to the economy and housing, I've heard it phrased as "Growth, affordability, preservation: pick two".

So, in contrast to your post, I believe what has really destroyed the character of many cities is not that they've grown or had lots of outsiders move in (that's been going on forever when it comes to cities), but that restrictive zoning has made housing so expensive that a diverse range of incomes can no longer afford to live there.

If anything, making it extremely difficult to tear down a dilapidated laundromat to build more housing because that laundromat has been deemed "historic" is what is changing the character of cities for the worst.

That influx of people into the Bay Area has been fairly steady at ~1 million per decade since 1940.

Now this is just an opinion and no doubt others will disagree but I think a very similar thing is happening or has already happened in Seattle.

The dynamics have been driven by "tech", namely you-know-who, named after rainforest in South America nd their newly-minted cloud computing competitors.

Influx of people from other areas, both within US and international. "More density" and "do away with rules".

Another comment in this thread actually proposes the high rents are being driven by zoning. I find that hard to swallow. People in both commercial and residential real estate tell us about demand that is by and large coming from one general source: "tech". This is what has driven the rates higher.

I do not want to sound like another person looking to take jabs at the tech industry however I think some of the folks coming into these places for these jobs lack a certain appreciation for what makes these places special. To put it bluntly their standards are lower. The market has reponded and is giving them want they want; the number of city residences being built for rainforest workers is staggering. Yet I think we are losing something in the process and I am not sure the people moving in really have an appreciation for what is being lost. We cannot expect them to as they are new to the area.

Yeah, same thing happened in New York. All these people moved in without any respect for what NYC is really about -- Dutch farming.

I have Dutch ancestry, my ancestors were some of the first generations to settle in NY and I grew up there. Truth is that those generations of immigrants that came before the "tech workers" do have respect for what NYC is really about. They made NYC what it is. Just another opinion.

A part of what it is, yes. But that's the beauty of it: cities are constantly changing and building upon what came before. It's what makes them cities and not forgotten backwaters.

I have no opinion against change, per se. I think that is an unfair and incorrect reframing of someone's opinion. It is only the nature of certain changes I have an opinion about. It is like if someone has opinion about X, a single example of how to implement Y, and then someone else accuses them of being "against Y". Ridiculous.

Agreed. "Change is good, actually" is vacuous.

"Change is good" is not what I'm trying to say. The point is that change is a fundamental attribute of cities. Trying to claim that a city should retain the characteristics it had when you moved there flies in the face of all the change that took place to make it that way that way. The only thing you can do is lean into the change and try to steer it in positive directions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a fair chance GP was somebody else's version of a "techie" when they moved to Seattle. Most likely that someone else was equally salty about the changing demographics.

I was the third generation to live in our house growing up. When my grandparents moved there they tell the story like there were gravel roads and no traffic lights. Today there’s a Washington, DC Metro station (Well it supposedly opens in a few months time). There are bike lanes. And tech companies. And apartments. And to be honest I think the area is better off for it. It’s certainly better than destroying even more forest and farm land for ever expanding suburbia.

I think the point I am trying to make is being missed. I am not against improving the city's facilities. This is the good part. I am saying that the improvments are, by and large, being made to satisfy a certain type of (new) resident.

SF, north Oak, Berkeley, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Boulder, Austin...

It’s a broken record. If only those people there would get out of the way and make way for the brave new world as god intended for capitalism.