
San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide - sunils34
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/san-francisco-decline-failed-government-policies/
======
dawhizkid
Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just
dystopian as hell.

Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over
downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very
few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely
functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure
earners to live with 2 roommates and still pay $2500/month, 400 sq ft studios
going for $700k, every other non-tech worker is an Uber driver/Instacart
Shopper/DoorDash delivery person

~~~
atom-morgan
How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the
tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans
there in the first place?

I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and
I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination.

Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

~~~
sbzodnsbd
A black friend of mine lived in Savanah, ATL, NYC and in the Midwest.

She said that you find just as many racists everywhere, but she “appreciates”
the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they don’t try to hide, so she
knows where she stands.

~~~
rchaud
> but she “appreciates” the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they
> don’t try to hide, so she knows where she stands.

I've heard this exact statement in a Dave Chappelle standup bit. I've always
taken it to mean that bigots in some areas are simply familiar enough with the
area's politics, history and justice system to feel comfortable saying openly
bigoted things without fear of repercussion.

------
kerkeslager
The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop:

1\. Companies don't take personal responsibility when they do antisocial
things, claiming they can't be blamed, since they are just following
incentives in order to compete.

2\. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the
behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are
antisocial).

3\. Government, influenced by the belief that the only way to do things is
incentives (since regulation risks losing companies to other jurisdictions)
gives companies the incentives they ask for (even when those incentives
incentivize antisocial behavior).

4\. GOTO 1.

We cannot trust markets to regulate the behaviors of companies. There is
little to no benefit to any company, i.e. investing in ending homelessness
when they can simply wall off their campus and prevent the homeless from
entering. Companies might choose one or two social issues to do good on for
marketing purposes, while creating equal or greater harm in other areas. Until
SF (and indeed, the rest of the world) becomes more willing to regulate
companies, things are only going to continue on their current trajectory.

~~~
rayiner
Companies are not the problem, San Franciscans are the problem. By all
accounts, Texas regulates companies less than California. But Texas is at the
national average in cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, despite being a
majority-minority state, while California tops the charts in poverty:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevor...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/08/27/of-
the-5-big-states-texas-1-for-growth-california-1-for-poverty/amp). As compared
to California, Texas also has much higher rates of home ownership and lower
unemployment for Hispanic people, with a lower Hispanic-White gap on both
metrics. (The home ownership rate for Hispanics in Texas, 55%, is closer to
that of Whites in California, 62%, than to Hispanics in California, 42%.)

I spent almost two weeks recently in east Texas. I was shocked. It was a more
diverse and egalitarian place by a good margin than San Francisco or Palo
Alto. Everyone shopping at the same stores and eating at the same restaurants.
Versus my memory of Palo Alto, where you’d only see whites and Asians in one
place, and Hispanic people over in East Palo Alto (or in service jobs). It’s
the difference between a functional, integrated society and a broken one.

~~~
save_ferris
Where in Texas were you? I live in Austin, which is rapidly becoming a landing
spot for Californians looking to get away, and my experience in Texas has been
quite different than yours.

Segregation was physically built into the planning of the city of Austin[0],
and it's pretty apparent if you spend a significant amount of time here. Not
only that, but rising cost of living in Austin keeps pushing minority
communities further and further from the city.

The social scene is pretty similar to what you're describing in Palo Alto as
well. Tech is overwhelmingly white and male, and the social scene around the
industry reflects this.

I'm not going to argue that companies are the only problem, but job creation
that only benefits highly skilled labor and leaves the rest of the community
out to dry causes, or at the very least exacerbates, several of the problems
outlined in this piece.

It's a system that has benefited me tremendously, but as I get out of the tech
community "bubble" and explore more of Austin, I see a lot of parallels
between SF and ATX. My fear is that SF is just ahead of the curve.

[0]: [https://projects.statesman.com/news/economic-
mobility/](https://projects.statesman.com/news/economic-mobility/)

~~~
pcwalton
Having grown up near-ish Austin and now living in SF, I agree that SF is just
ahead of the curve. There's nothing special about Texas that makes it immune
to _de facto_ segregation caused by history and NIMBYism. In fact, Texas
government is significantly more dysfunctional than that of California. If
Houston (or Chicago for that matter) had followed the same economic path as
SF, it would have ended up with the same problems. The idea that rich people
in Texas are somehow more virtuous is laughable; talk to people from Plano
sometime.

------
zzzeek
I've lived in New York City for about 25 years in three different boroughs,
and as as a member of the "arty bohemian gentrifier" class I was in
transitional low-income areas and things like occasional street crime,
gunshots and stuff like that were not unusual.

But only once did I actually see two street people start a knife fight on a
subway train and it was during one of my probably less than five short visits
to SF. It's equally rare that I'd agree with a National Review writer but SF
was really ugly and quite unsafe feeling. Manhattan in the late 80s was
probably a little more comparable to that. But I can't imagine why anyone
would want to live in SF nowadays, if you're in tech you should aspire to work
remotely and live anywhere you want.

~~~
bassman9000
_Manhattan in the late 80s was probably a little more comparable to that_

What changed?

~~~
airstrike
Giuliani

~~~
zzzeek
this is complete bullshit and every new yorker knows it. Why hasn't crime
returned to pre-1990 levels in the last 18 years? Not enough time ?

------
szbalint
It's weird that technology oriented people see code/IT in terms of
infrastructure, but too little from a city as such.

I'm living in Vienna, Austria which is a city consistently rated to be in the
top 5 most livable cities by multiple independent evaluations.

How did that happen? A strong sense of ownership and infrastructure thinking
over a _century_.

Just to mention the obvious, property prices do not exist in a vacuum and
cities where property prices go through such a steep and continuous rise as in
London, Moscow, San Francisco etc. are not a reflection of desirability or
market forces but rather the total abdication of planning and responsibility
from the local authorities.

There are dozens of things local leadership can do to fix infrastructure and
living standards issues, never let anyone tell you otherwise.

~~~
Creationer
It also helps that Vienna's population has been basically flat for many years.

By contrast the prior #1 most liveable city - Melbourne - has grown from 2
million 30 years ago to 5 million currently, forecast to get to 8 million by
2050, all due to mass immigration. Livability has fallen directly in line with
population growth.

I've lived in a lot of cities around the world and think there is a 'sweet
spot' population number: big enough to allow the provision of niche services
and the agglomeration of talent, yet not too big as to introduce costly dis-
economies of scale (usually through very expensive housing and
transportation.) That level seems to be about 1-3 million.

~~~
likpok
It depends what you build for. San Francisco, the dystopia as described in the
article, has under a million residents. Its wounds, and that of the bay area
in general, are entirely self-inflicted.

~~~
Creationer
The problem is that city limits are not consistently defined internationally.
According to Wikipedia the broader urban area of SF is 8 million people.

------
jlewis_st
The article omits SB 50 [1], the effort by Scott Wiener (state senator from
SF) to increase housing density and remove regulatory hurdles for housing
development near transit.

From what I’ve seen it’s the most promising method to increase housing supply
CA-wide given that many municipalities resist development.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california-
home-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california-home-prices-
climate.html)

~~~
the_watcher
And nearly unanimously opposed by the SF Board of Supervisors, which is
typical of anything that would improve the housing situation here.

------
danso
For those who are wondering, given the publisher, no, the essay is not simply
a rant against rent-control:

> _True revolution would involve curbing the authority of the San Francisco
> Planning Commission. If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually
> cared about the poor or the environment (density is green), they would enact
> a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy to align the
> interests of the city, current residents, and future citizens. Strong
> government housing policy could spur growth and redistribute the city’s
> wealth fairly. But most of all, the freedom to build and experiment is the
> engine of Silicon Valley dynamism. Allow the experiments of the few to
> become the prosperity and fulfillment of the many, and the city could thrive
> once again._

~~~
_jal
> they would enact a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy

They can't bring themselves to mention Proposition 13, somehow.

~~~
perpetualpatzer
Sorry, not familiar with CA politics ... is the subtext here that a land-value
tax would be impossible without a constitutional amendment? Or that California
already enacted a 1% ad valorem tax in the 70s?

From what I can tell, Prop 13 seems generally popular[0], but could see an
argument that it exacerbates the housing shortage in the Bay Area, so not sure
which way you're pointing.

[0] [https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/ppic-statewide-
surve...](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/ppic-statewide-survey-
californians-and-their-government-january-2019.pdf)

~~~
_jal
That is my point, yes. And doing so is essentially impossible. It is popular
among property owners, who have a huge interest in defeating any attack on it.
(It was also slightly amusing to see a history-free call for more taxation in
that particular rag, given tribal affiliations.)

It does drive up housing costs. It also distorts commercial transactions
weakens, local control, and generally casts a large shadow over, well, any
conversation about taxation and anything taxation touches (like real estate)
in California.

~~~
perpetualpatzer
gotcha. Thanks for the reply.

------
rsync
"“Where I grew up, no one would walk past a person collapsed on the side of
the street on their way to work and not do something about it. I hope I never
get used to the fact that that happens in San Francisco.”"

Oh, just stop.

I have lived, full-time, in many, many cities in the United States and nobody
- not the good Lutherans in Minneapolis nor the heirs-of-cowboys in Denver nor
the tanned youth in San Diego nor anyone in NYC or DC - is stopping to attend
to a filthy, passed-out drunk slumped over in the middle of a sidewalk.

The people (that I live and work with) in San Francisco are a lot of things
but they're not monsters and I imagine they compare, roughly equivalently, to
whatever golden locale Sam Altman grew up in.

------
redm
Although a bit overdramatic at times, there is so much truth on this article.
I wish i could do more than upvote it.

“Crowded thoroughfares such as Market Street, even in the light of midday,
stage a carnival of indecipherable outbursts and drug-induced thrashings about
which the police seem to do nothing.”

This really touched me because the police in SF, if you ever see one, look
disinterested at best.

~~~
et2o
Homelessness and mental health issues leading to homelessness aren't really an
issue the police can address alone. Housing is indeed a big part of the
problem; other cities (New Orleans for example) have had excellent results
relocating formerly homeless people into inexpensive apartments.

~~~
redm
Maybe you haven't been harassed or panhandled while walking in SOMA and had
the police just watch and ignore, but that is an issue the police can help
with.

I've also seen the police help, but it's few and far between because there are
so few police on the streets in SOMA.

It's not that the police are bad, that they are the cause, or they are the
only solution. I think the police are probably underfunded, understaffed, and
under supported; the issue is more systemic then specific as the author
states.

Edit: typo

~~~
et2o
That's fair. I haven't.

------
coryfklein
I live in Utah but work remote for an SF company. Utah is getting a huge
influx of outsiders moving to the state (as are other urban centers like
Austin, TX).

Sure, SF has better weather than we do. But this year we had 6-7 ft of powder
in mountains a 30-45 minute drive away. Homes with 5 bedrooms and a quarter
acre are $350k. We have plentiful public parks, tons of museums, and great
utility prices. Oh and my SF salary means I can fly/live elsewhere for the 2-3
hottest and coldest weeks of the year, whether or not I take that as PTO.

This SF company pays me more than local Utah companies would, but probably
less than many of their SF-based employees. Win-win all around. They gave me a
standing desk, 4k monitor, all the supplies. I get an office with a door and
plenty of space for my plants. I don't even use headphones - I just have a
receiver and some Onkyo speakers.

This is my second remote job and everywhere I look more and more companies are
moving to a distributed working model. It just so much more financial sense
than giving 1/3 of your own revenue to landlords, as well as the huge portion
of employee salaries that go to landlords as well. Out here in Utah a
company's budget can go to actually _building the product_. Pretty soon all
the "San Francisco companies" will have to compete with others that can
strongly undercut them on price due to not having "San Francisco overhead" but
still have amazing talent.

My favorite thing about it: heads-down time. Folks interrupt me far less and I
just get to hide away in my office and code for hours at a time. The only
downside here is that I need to schedule time for explicitly socializing: I
have 3 separate "lunch" groups that I attend at least once a week and I fly
into SF quarterly and spend that week almost entirely socializing.

------
davidw
People working to fix the problems:
[https://yimbyaction.org](https://yimbyaction.org) \- get involved!

~~~
asdf21
So the only solution is a even higher population density?

~~~
swarnie_
Does SF have high population density? That's never been my impression from
reading HN.

~~~
rlanday
Yes, it does. Ignoring cities with fewer than 75,000 people, it’s the fourth
most dense city in the US:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#List_of_incorporated_cities_in_the_United_States_with_over_75,000_residents)

Automobile-based suburban sprawl is the only functional development pattern in
the US because we’re so bad at building and maintaining public transit
systems.

------
nkingsy
The author draws a very unsubtle if not direct line between housing costs and
homelessness. Is there any? I was under the impression that most of the
homeless are mentally ill and/or transplants from other areas. What percent of
them just can't afford the rent?

~~~
bluejekyll
This is a popular myth.

[https://www.sftu.org/2018/06/five-myths-about-the-
homeless-p...](https://www.sftu.org/2018/06/five-myths-about-the-homeless-
problem-in-san-francisco/)

According to that, 71% of people on the streets of SF used to be homed, and
aren’t on the streets due to drugs.

~~~
rsync
This, and other statistics like it, are really disingenuous and framed for a
very specific interpretation. Here is the actual quote from the article
(strikethrough is in the original - not sure why - maybe a bad stat ?):

"The vast majority of the people who are homeless today used to be housed – in
San Francisco. According to the city’s 2015 homeless count, 71 percent of the
people on the streets were living in San Francisco when they lost their
housing. That means seven out of ten homeless people used to be your neighbors
– before the tech boom and the eviction epidemic. "

So the presentation here is that average-joe-normal-churchgoer was minding his
own business as a lifelong SF resident and was then evicted by an evil
landlord, so his apartment could go to a techie, which sent him into a
downward spiral to homelessness.

I have not done independent research into this myself, but I have a suspicion
that the _actual narrative_ is something like:

"borderline mentally healthy individual moves to San Francisco because it's
interesting and fun and romantic (and warm) and, while still on their meds,
manages to rent a room or an SRO or something, lives there for a month or two
or six, runs out of either money or meds or familial support (or all three)
and suffers their financial/emotional/mental breakdown here, on our streets,
far from any support or family they have, if they had any at all."

If this suspicion is correct, it doesn't imply we shouldn't be compassionate
or helpful or progressive in our responses, but it does suggest that we are
importing problems and should consider how we might limit that tendency.

It also does not place some kind of moralistic "maybe they shouldn't be doing
drugs in the first place" judgement on people - at the end of the day it is
indeed a mental health issue. Just maybe it doesn't need to be _our_ mental
health problem.

~~~
bluejekyll
yeah, not sure what happened with that link on their site. SF Gov seems to
have moved the report. Here's a breakdown by St. Anthony's:
[https://www.stanthonysf.org/san-franciscos-2015-homeless-
cou...](https://www.stanthonysf.org/san-franciscos-2015-homeless-count-
survey/)

(to be clear this is from 2015, so nearing 4 years out of date)

~~~
rsync
Thank you for posting the actual link - that is helpful. From that link:

"Survey results show that 71% of respondents were living in San Francisco when
they became homeless, and of those, 49% had been living in San Francisco for
10 years or more."

This sheds very little additional information. This statistic is often
presented as if 71% of the homeless had their own apartment before they became
homeless, but for all I know (and what I suspect) is that many of these people
were "housed" in very tenuous, precarious situations that _I might,
personally, find indistinguishable from homelessness_. We really need to know
the specific definition of "housed" used in this survey.

That 49% of those 71% were physically present in SF for 10 years or more also
tells us very little. I am led to believe that homelessness and the mental
illness(es) that lead to it are cycles and that people fall in and out of ...
the statistic, however, is presented as if individuals were happily housed in
a plain old apartment for 10+ years before lightning struck and they were
suddenly strung out on the street...

~~~
shalmanese
Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an hour.
You'll get to meet some representative sample of the homeless in San Francisco
and gain a much more high resolution picture on what all the various causes of
homelessness are. The picture is complicated but it's not at all what you're
positing.

I guarantee if you spend a week working with the homeless in San Francisco,
you'll meet at least some people more intelligent than you, people who at one
point earned more money than you, people who are more mentally composed and
happy than you. You won't meet all of them in the same person but you'll meet
at least one example of someone who can disprove every single simplistic pet
theory about homelessness ever proposed.

~~~
rsync
You're talking past me to a prototypical "person who (you) disagree with". To
wit:

\- I made no comments about homeless people being uninteresting or
unintelligent or how much money they do, or did earn, etc.

\- I have presented no pet theories about the causes of homelessness or the
demerits of the homeless.

I have simply pointed out that a very, very commonly published and cited
statistic is, in my opinion, very ill defined and probably misused. I also
suggested a possible alternative narrative that I suspect is more correct.

Please don't put all of the things you hate into a box and then shove me in
there with it.

"Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an
hour."

I have done that all over the world.

Cheers!

~~~
shalmanese
If you suspect it's more correct, go out and verify it (hint: It's not).

------
theNJR
I particularly liked the top comment on the article (not mine):

> In the early seventies, the sport fishing Mecca of choice turned from the
> warm southern states where fish grew all year long, to oddly, some of the
> finger lakes in upstate New York. Record size fish were being taken almost
> daily. A sportsfisherman’s dream from lakes that unbeknownst to them had
> died ten yeas earlier from acid rain. With no new fish being born, the
> bottom of the food chain had already collapsed. With no small fish left for
> anglers to catch and release, eventually only the largest were left. Within
> a few years, the collapse was finally evident, and brutal for anyone who
> invested in a fishing lodge industry in the region.

------
dev_dull
Here’s what I don’t get. The real struggle seems to always be against local
governments and the residents. The residents all know how jacked up it is and
have good ideas for fixes, but constantly butt heads against their city.

Somehow everybody knows this, but votes in people who _increase_ the power,
scope, and responsibility of the local government which works against their
interest?

~~~
bluejekyll
Not sure what you mean exactly. A lot of the issues are people “protecting
their neighborhoods” from development and preserving the “feel”. People
generally are voting against policies that would raise inventory of housing,
which is really the only way to reduce its cost.

~~~
bluGill
There is the issue: people know how to solve the problem, but to many voters
it is directly against their personal interest.

They do need to watch out though: there is nothing about San Francisco (or any
other area) that means the rich need to live there, or you need to move there
to get rich. (unless you are into mining for wealth where you obviously need
to be where your mineral is). If some other area becomes hot the people in San
Francisco have the most to lose: your house that you paid so much for and work
so hard to protect the value of has the farther to fall. When/if the bubble
collapses those in more reasonable areas who voted for policies that keep
property values reasonable (ie allowing more development and/or not driving
people out) won't fall as far.

~~~
rtkwe
> people know how to solve the problem, but to many voters it is directly
> against their personal interest.

The thing is voting to preserve the feel of their neighborhood is in their
personal interest too. They like the area they live in and simultaneously want
to see some of the problems solved. The issue is these are in conflict because
pretty much everyone else is also making the same decisions so everyone fights
to protect 'their' piece of SF hoping they're not the ones who will have to
change and move (because they can't afford to in a lot of cases) to densify
SF.

------
mensetmanusman
The silver lining here is that fewer people will be present when the next big
one comes and wipes out the city (predicted to occur in the next 500 years).

It makes sense societally to spread out innovation centers in a number of
areas to reduce catastrophic risk.

------
cobbzilla
“Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women
— junkies, winos, the dispossessed...“

Did the author ever actually walk in SF? The homeless mostly stay in the
flats, the hills are fine (and higher rent of course).

~~~
jostmey
I don’t even want to visit San Francisco anymore. Why would the writers want
to? I’m making a point about how bad it’s become in San Francisco relative to
the rest of the US

~~~
leesalminen
My partner and I visited SF last summer and were fairly shocked with all the
homelessness, drug use on the streets and human feces scattered about. We
won’t be back.

~~~
dekhn
I'd just like to say, as somebody who used to live in SF, I feel sorry for
tourists. What the city is permitting is unthinkable, but up to about a year
ago, even saying that it wasn't acceptable was social suicide. Now it's
changed a bunch- people are much more clearly stating that allowing people to
put up tents and litter the sstreets with poop and needles isn't OK. However,
the city really can't do anything about it because it's tolerated this for so
long and anything they did would be massively controversial.

~~~
asdf21
Sounds like private property is better managed than public property in SF...

------
supernova87a
1) Affordable housing 2) Population density 3) Reasonable work-home distances

You get to choose 2 of the 3 constraints. Much of California's political
situation is about people believing they can buck the constraints and have it
all. You cannot, as long as there's free movement in this country. People come
here for jobs, and the old residents demanding that the constraints all be met
is causing things to go down the toilet. And people are getting angry at the
failure of government to take a position against fantastical thinking and
actually solve the problems.

------
api
San Francisco is a bonsai kitten. It wants to grow into a major world city
like NYC, LA, or Tokyo, but its older residents are steadfastly opposed and
want to keep it in a jar so it stays cute. The result is a painful deformed
mess.

I don't really think city planning boards can control how cities grow. A city
is a living thing. If it "wants" to grow, let it grow. If it doesn't, I don't
think it can be forced.

Detroit learned the opposite lesson and is recovering in part by realizing
that the Detroit of today is destined to be a much smaller city population
wise than it once was and they are adjusting and "right-sizing" the city
accordingly. They are concentrating on the living areas and demolishing and
transforming the dead ones into parks, public gardens, urban farming, or
natural land. The result will be a smaller city with a ton of really cool
history and a cool "post-industrial" vernacular.

~~~
Finnucane
I've lived in New York. Why would anyone want San Francisco to become like
that? Is NYC cheap, clean, free of homeless people? No, it is crowded, smelly,
expensive, and only livable for the extremely wealthy.

~~~
gwern
Here's a quick test for you. Next time you go to SF, count how many dogs you
see vs children. Then compare the ratio to NYC. Then tell me again about which
city is not 'livable'.

~~~
rlanday
To a very close approximation, the only place I’ve ever seen a nuclear family
with kids in New York is Trump Tower.

~~~
Finnucane
In Park Slope in Brooklyn you are in constant danger of being run over by a
baby buggy.

------
pelemele
'SnapCrap' app invites San Francisco residents to report poop on city streets

[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SnapCrap-app-San-
Fran...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SnapCrap-app-San-Francisco-
poop-feces-dirty-street-13281837.php)

------
nerder92
I'm planning to move to SF form Barcelona next year and this kind of article
always makes me doubt a lot about my decision. Especially because of the fact
that seems like that there's nothing less then tech to talk about in SF, and
i'm seriously worried about how this can affect not only my creativity but
also my relationship (my girlfriend is not tech). Can you advise me any other
place (in the US) to move for a while where i can improve my network, discuss
interesting ideas that have a similar wheather condition to Spain??? I'm
starting to consider new options.

Thank you!

~~~
doctorcroc
Don't get sucked into all the drama - it's very fashionable to hate on SF
right now. For all its flaws, SF is still a top tier city with amazing things
to do within an hours reach.

------
dmitryminkovsky
The author lost me at

> Cities are nearly immortal; though they decline, they rarely die.

Cities great and small die all the time. Ur died, Babylon died. SF will die.
Cities die when their purpose no longer justifies their expense. And the
purpose of most cities is concentrating people to facilitate trade. But
increasingly there’s nothing to do in SF, especially for the masses. If people
don’t figure out something for these people to do, SF will definitely die.

~~~
tntn
> die all the time

> ur died, Babylon died.

Your two examples are from 2-3 millennia ago. I would think if cities "die all
the time," you would have more recent examples.

Maybe it proves the author correct that the first cities that came to mind are
from 2500 years ago?

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
Good criticism of my post. Here's a more extensive list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city).
So when the author writes "they rarely die" it seems to me like the author has
a serious historical blind spot. But why do we need to only talk about "great
cities?" Why aren't all the "ghost towns" of the wild west a good enough
example?

~~~
tntn
Because people tend to distinguish between "cities" and "towns." There are a
lot of ghost towns, but few ghost cities. Once a settlement becomes large
enough to be called a city, it is rare for it to die.

------
xivzgrev
It’s interesting how this guy cherry picks examples. He mentions Sam Altman
but declined to mention how Y Combinator is relocating to SF. And there are
incubators and small companies etc. not saying there’s no negative trend but
this articles comes off as a biased rant vs a more balanced perspective, which
given the title i suppose is fair just not compelling.

~~~
zaroth
YC moving to SF for more signals the beginning of the end for them more than
anything else. There’s such a thing as being high on your own emissions.

SF is antithetical to the kind of startup that YC used to be all about, for
many reasons stated eloquently by TFA.

------
RickJWagner
I've visited San Franscisco a few times. First in the 80s, it was a lot nicer
then. Most recently last year, where I found the awful zombie apocalypse
around Moscone Center. What a change!

I hope SF can find a way to revitalize, sort of like NYC has done. It seemed
to go through some dark times in the 70s, but now is much nicer. Wishing the
same luck for SF.

------
freyir
A good video on the topic:

[https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw](https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw)

It’s not a homelessness crisis. Homelessness is a symptom. Our cities are in
the grips of a heroin & meth epidemic. Until we acknowledge that, it won’t get
better.

------
rndmize
> But somewhere in the bureaucratic hierarchy faceless city functionaries
> administer labyrinthine regulations that benefit the rich over the poor, the
> old over the young, the here over those to come, the past over the future.

One would think that, given this article comes to us from the National Review,
this would be presented as a positive.

Jokes aside, the city and really the Bay as a whole are unlikely to change
much. Prop 13 goes unmentioned in the article, somehow, though it remains a
core part of the problem; so does the tendency for tech companies to build
their headquarters on the peninsula or the west side of SJ. One would think
that with the extraordinary amount of wealth floating around the bay that
there would be some effort put into making the place better for everyone, ie.
the old "changing the world for the better" idea that presumably drives a lot
of startups, but I don't see it.

The standard for tech seems to be avoiding the hard problems of politics and
long-term local issues that require campaigns and consensus rather than code
and servers. I remember finding it striking a couple years ago to see that on
the list of corporate sponsors for
[https://www.spur.org/](https://www.spur.org/), Microsoft was donating more
money than Google. Perhaps there's another non-profit dedicated to urban
planning in the bay that Google prefers to support, but I haven't heard of it.
Apple could have considered building their HQ closer to public transport, but
last I checked decided to go with tacking on a set of ugly massive parking
structures to set the backdrop for their nice shiny new building.

I'm not really sure what should be done. The transient nature of many people
that live in SF/the bay means they're unlikely to have an interest in
city/area politics, much less take action on it (if they even can - several of
my co-workers are on various kinds of visa). I'd guess that in the coming
years tech will wax and wane but never really fade and the wealthy will
gradually retreat from the public sphere and areas, surrounded by an ever-
increasing array of private software functions that replace public services
for those that can pay.

------
purplezooey
Hmm an article on SF from the National Review. I'll pass on that one.

~~~
apoph3nia
The article could have been written ~5 years ago with maybe a few
interchangeable variables and would have expressed the same feeling of being
frozen in an unchanging dystopian time loop.

------
padseeker
I've seen articles that are less political get reported a lot faster than
this.

------
beeskneecaps
[deleted]

~~~
prolikewhoa
"This homelessness seems just dandy!"

~~~
beeskneecaps
Didn’t say this..

------
KirinDave
This is a National Review opinion article offered as a news piece (as they are
wont to do). It features a seamless conflation of SF's problems with Silicon
Valley's somewhat corrosive lobbying effects on the urban expansion problems
of SF, as if they're the same thing.

It suggests that San Francisco's housing problem is NOT directly at the feet
of the folks who own the majority of the property, and instead implicates...
uh, let me just check the article again... "Baby Boomer civil servants
[acting] as urban taxidermists stuffing and mounting a dead city so it always
resembles the past."

The implication of that paragraph is that it's democratic "regulation" that is
halting SF's expansion, but if you live in the city you're looking at the
recent unsuccessful public/private partnership building projects wondering why
building codes aren't stricter (I'm looking at you, ridiculous Salesforce(tm)
transbay terminal). The implication that it's bureaucracy and not a bitter
generational argument between young and old residents about "preserving the
city" vs. "meeting the housing demand" is likewise absurd; it's SF citizens as
a whole that are debating how to proceed. A republican governance wouldn't be
better off here, except it might find more alignment with property owners (who
benefit enormously from this state of affairs) instead of less.

It suggests that SF doesn't have culture, but that's wrong. It has tons of
culture, but it's _not accessible to rich white people hoping to stroll
through like tourists._ You can still access it if you code yourself
correctly, but if you roll up with merino wool shoes and $800 vest over a tech
t-shirt and iWatch, you're not gonna make a lot of progress because people
will avoid you.

But if you are that person, it's not like there aren't a dozen hopeful artists
lurking around the edges of popular rich mission spots hoping to get your
spare $20s. It's not like public spaces don't exist for you.

Most humorously, it features at least one nationally reviled industrialist who
has increasingly had a hard time finding anyone willing to work with him
anywhere where Software Engineers make good money. Thiel avoids popping up in
SF because _people don 't like his politics here and would rather he retreat
back to his bubble in orange county_. We don't, strictly speaking, need his
money. We have enough money, we need to build up the will to use it to solve
the problems we have more acutely, but that are shared in kind with every city
that's finding a way to prosper in an era where many other cities are
struggling to recover from even more acute decline.

This article is everything I'd expect from a National Review piece about SF.
It is confused about the geography, tone deaf to the politics, quick to blame
local government for problems brought about by citizens, and steeped in the
popular meme that "art is dead because I don't see marble busts anymore" memes
that sound like they're fresh out of a PragerU video.

~~~
refurb
_This is a National Review opinion article offered as a news piece_

What? National Review doesn't do news, it does opinions. And it's pretty
upfront about being conservative.

~~~
KirinDave
People cite them as news precisely because they don't clearly label themselves
as an opinion provider. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that
the word "opinion" never occurs on their site or printed media by accident.

~~~
refurb
First sentence in the NR website FAQ.

 _National Review was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley Jr. as a magazine
of conservative opinion._

