Political compromise is what lead to the mess as it is today. Constantly compromising with residents has lead to a ridiculous situation where there has become a false notion that "they don't have to change".
SF changed already, it changed in ways to find coping mechanisms to deal with the damage being done to its future. The entire city of SF cannot continue to be the tech hub of the world and composed of (excuse my hyperbole I don't have accurate statistics on hand) 90% comprised of historical property that cannot be torn down or changed ever in any way.
I agree there's been way too much pandering to NIMBYism. But this is politics, and as much as we'd all like to we can't just ignore them: they vote too, so we have to convince them to vote for what we want.
Lucky for us, I believe you can have your cake and eat it too: SF housing demand is actually not high enough to require huge swaths of high-rises. It'd help a ton, but so would a mixed option. In fact I think the mixed option is better: see my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11278295
SF changed already, it changed in ways to find coping mechanisms to deal with the damage being done to its future. The entire city of SF cannot continue to be the tech hub of the world and composed of (excuse my hyperbole I don't have accurate statistics on hand) 90% comprised of historical property that cannot be torn down or changed ever in any way.