My foreign coworker’s minds were blown that even every starbucks location needs security.
Fear, weapons and violence as soon as it gets dense. Every large/chain business comes with lots of armed protection.
I haven't travelled to all the cities in the entire US, but whenever you enter/exit such areas is seems very distinct.
SF can be both having an increase in homelessness and petty crime at the same time as it maintains a top economy of the US, a big arts scene, many diverse cultures, and more. It's not as simple as "is this a country I would label a bad place".
With that said, SF's latter categories have also slowly eroded, but these symptoms needs to be examined individually. The tech industry did much itself to destabilize SF's arts and culture long before any crime issues. More of a tangent there, but the point is you can't forgo nuance here.
I don't know how you can blame a high paying employer for causing "destabilization". People getting pushed out by gentrification are getting pushed out because there is no new supply of housing but massive new demand for housing.
Growth is not inherently good, and the tech industry absolutely did not help alleviate the issues NIMBY's helped to cause. There was no reason SF couldn't have gone on being the same size city it was decades before in a healthy way. It takes two to tango here, and I see no reason why we wouldn't blame both. The tech industry chose profits for its own companies over the good of the city.
They had no legal obligation to make any other choice, but maybe if they cared about the city for itself or even the longterm health of the area, if not only in self interest, they would have regulated their own growth. That's just not in line with the philosophy that took root there though, which was growth at all costs. These ideas expand out beyond the tech world it turns out.
I'd also add that I am a San Francisco native and it was not some midsize paradise in the 80s. It was broker, the schools were worse, the public transportation was worse, there were already plenty of homeless, and, like every other major US city, it was far more violent. The only thing that was better was housing affordability and the niners.
1. As you said yourself, no city was a paradise in the 80's in the US for many reasons, and SF, regardless of a massive tech influx, would have risen with the same tide many other cities experienced from the 80's to now.
2. There's an implicit implication here that if it were not for NIMBY's, all of SF's problems would be solved. While I think they would be better, there's a lot of challenges with building housing that fast even outside of zoning. SF has a severe lack of density to start with that would cause issues even with aggressive construction. It's also not a large land area. Compare to NYC who had a huge land area that had way more density. NYC is not an exception here, you can find at least more density or land mass for most other major cities that helped alleviate the problem even with a NIMBY population present.
3. I think again, you're separating the tech industry from NIMBY's when there is much overlap. Many early tech workers wanted the picturesque victorian style house and helped to enact the problematic zoning themselves.
4. The larger thesis here is that the companies coming is a gift to the city, which I think completely ignores the social factors. People come to cities for the people as much as the jobs, sometimes more so in the modern era. It's why NYC has had no problem bouncing back in even the past 6 months despite many offices remaining empty. The decline of SF is very much highlighted by the past few months not seeing the same effect there yet.
5. With point 2 and 4 in mind in particular, it's hard to make a case that first it was a reasonable expectation for people, the flawed beings they are, to simply rebrand/build the entire city to accommodate the incoming industry, and second that even if they did it would have done anything more than slow the decline. Heck, the drastic cultural shift could have even killed it faster.
There are again complex reasons for this, but one of the patterns that is somewhat unique to SF due to the bay area is that you have people commuting out of the city rather than into the city often given Mountain View, San Jose, etc. That adds even more housing pressure on the area compared to the jobs in SF proper. Add in building constraints around earthquakes and the large set of towers in the SOMA / Financial District, and that recipe for disaster is going to be hard to avoid.
Hindsight is 20/20 and no single tech company caused this, but at the end of the day I just don't think it's a stretch to say that a big influx in tech companies was a big part of killing SF and we may have a much better version of the city today if that influx was moderated or even was not there at all. A monoculture of any industry is not good for a city. Cities exist for humans, not economic purposes. They are powered and somewhat caused by them, but a city does not have much value to me if it doesn't serve the people who live there primarily. There's lots of urban theory to back this up looking at company towns and the like.
I've posted about this general thread before here, and I fear the tech industry has not learned its lesson and is simply moving on to another city to slowly squeeze the life out of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26563775
Tech is the proximate, not ultimate, explanation foe the problem. The bed was laid by San Francisco’s housing policy. At the end of the day, most other cities and polities would have turned a massive influx of wealth into an asset, not a symbol of institutional failure.
San Francisco is denser than Tokyo by about 2,000 people/mi.² (now, whether it is fair to compare tiny—both in geography and population, for a “major city”—SF to massive Tokyo—where the “city proper” by UN terms is roughly twice the population of the 9-county bay area—is another question.)
San Francisco isn't a major city except in the sense of GDP. Which makes it more impressive that it is a major city considering economic footprint, but makes attempts to compare it to cities that are among the world’s largest urban centers kind of ridiculous.
The comments basically pointed out that if people aren't being punished for a crime, then police reports don't get written because why bother, and then some politician can point out "Hey, fewer police reports. Crime is down!"
There's a huge element of "Believe what you're told, not what you see" in politics lately. (Probably always, but the past year has really brought it into focus)
The effect is palpable in New York. The current lead candidate is campaigning on a promise of increasing police powers. There was direct campaigning on not letting New York become San Francisco, and keeping the Chesas out of the DA seats.
But the way to sell it? Call those social services police.
"Neighborhood police", "Homeless/mean drug addict police", "road police", "proximity police". They should be able to coordinate (share a police precinct) or even have multiple roles in smaller cities.
35 years ago, my grandmother pushed for highly coordinated social services in our 15k hab town, and coordinate those with the two distinct police force we had in the area (think state level police and local police). The local police accepted, and from what i'm told, there was a decrease in small crimes, more people going to the formation center and more people involved in association, and even more people going to church (disclaimer: i'm not a believer, but i think church as a social mean of emancipation is good), all around the city, and the state-level police commander decided to help after ~5 years to increase the range (ex-farmers, alcoholics were a true danger on the roads). Even drove them to the formation center (my father is really anti-olice and even he told me they were the best cops he ever encountered, i think it is just social determination). Lasted into the 2000s, but the population decline and job going elsewhere were too much.
Yes, he is a former cop and law and order candidate [1]. (It’s not cut and dry. He opposed stop and frisk in our Senate but wants to reinstate solitary confinement, for example.)
The unfortunate effect of this is it’s setting back reasonable police reform movements in other major cities by a decade or more.