San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest ever recorded: data

Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @05:56AM (#38529334)

If you write, “In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities”, I wonder if you have ever been to, say, Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario), South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town), Peru (Lima), or Kenya (Nairobi). There it is one’s local contacts who encourage one to be vigilant and plan routes across the city carefully. The US has wacky urban safety issues, but it is just one member of a whole set of countries with urban safety issues.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by cqqxo4zV46cp on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @06:31AM (#38529594)

It’s likely that none of these other countries suffer from American exceptionalism.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by nearting on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:14AM (#38530943)

I assume it was intentional, but the irony of this comment is fantastic.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by simonbarker87 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @06:36AM (#38529630)

You're correct, I don't have any experience in those cities. I would expect those places to be sketchy (maybe not Lima but today I learned I guess) - I think what made my SF experience worse is that its a well known city in the richest country in the world and it's awful.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by zo1 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @06:49AM (#38529713)

I've been to and grown up in a bunch of those African cities. As long as you don't go to dodgy areas you're perfectly fine, even dirt-poor areas are fine. Sure your houses are little mini fortifications and security is everywhere in "rich" neighborhoods. .. but it's a nothing burger for the most part.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @06:54AM (#38529734)

I have cycled Africa extensively and I would agree for most cities on the continent. Africa is very safe in spite of dumb stereotypes, even when one is entering cities through the sprawling impoverished neighborhoods, and locals don't warn a visitor against anything. But Nairobi and South African cities have a mugging problem that all local people showed great concern about, and sometimes "dodgy area" is a central district of the city.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by tim333 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @01:08PM (#38534655)

I guess it depends a bit on what you compare it to but the murder rate in Cape Town is about 10x that in SF and both seem quite bad to me as a Brit.

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by acuozzo on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @02:09PM (#38535499)

How's Monrovia?

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Re:San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest eve... by OfSanguineFire on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @10:57AM (#38545563)

It has been a few years, but I don’t remember it as any different from the previous West African capitals (Dakar, Bissau, Conakry, Freetown) that I had cycled into.

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