Doesn't seem like a great solution. If the tech guys leave SF, it would be like Detroit. SF and tech are now linked in the way Detroit and cars were. If you try pull the tech out, you'll be left with a husk fighting over crumbs.
I don't even live in SF and this is clear to me. Or maybe it's clear to me because I don't live in SF?
I think even sans the tech industry, SF would still be a desirable enough place for people to live that it wouldn't have much of a problem. Even clearer if tech just remained in Silicon Valley; plenty of people would live in SF and commute.
Even just finance is probably strong enough to support SF. Or, like Vancouver, lots of people from Asia. The tolerant/hippie/gay/etc. angle might be enough as well.
SF in '89, before tech started hitting, was not a pretty place. The Dirty Harry movies of the 70s, I think, were inspired to some extent by the decaying city. Technology breathed life into the Bay Area (San Jose was not much better back then either).
You have to understand that nearly all cities were shitholes in 1989 until the Urban Revitalization of the late 90s. This wasn't an SF specific thing. NYC, for example, had over 1200 murders in 1992 (!!!) compared to last year's 414.
SF's revitalization has more to do with that than with "tech" jobs. I know in the Hacker News echo-chamber its hard to think there's anything but Internet Tech in SF but it's got ALOT more business than that -- It's the largest banking center on the west coast, got a massive bio-tech footprint, has some major apparel companies (Levi and Gap and a bunch of smaller ones), etc, etc. It's pretty diversified.
What caused the "urban revitalization"? Was it just that people who hadn't been around during the 1968-~1980 urban hell were finally in a position to be buying their first homes?
Honestly, I don't know so I'm going to speculate based on experiences. I think it's a generational thing. The younger generations seem to want density, to be around things, to not own a car. I think growing up in large suburban homes, there's been a genuine desire by younger people to move to cities and away from that lifestyle.
You can see this happen in many ways aside from city's becoming safer: Real estate cost increases in cities, The whole bike-movement is an element of it, NYU getting 44k applications, the growth of the Brooklyn "brand".
I think, generally, there's a real desire for an urban community with culture and shared experiences. I know I don't have anything more 'concrete' to back this up, but this is the general sentiment of my friends (in their late 20s to early 30s.)
Not really the same situation in that massive amounts of people fled Detroit because all the jobs disappeared (company failures combined with widescale automation in the ones that didn't fail).
There are tons of tech jobs available in SF. Arguably, there are too many jobs available there which is causing at least some of the cost of living pressure. These jobs are unlikely to vanish en masse like they did in Detroit (at least not any time soon), so even if a bunch of tech people leave SF, many will stay and it'll just move the city towards a natural equilibrium.
Automation didn't hurt Detroit jobs. There were fewer wrench-turners, but there was an explosion of specialization. As it turns out, when everyone can stamp out a bog-standard ICE, you diversify and compete by creating ever-more-finely-tuned engines with custom parts and electronics that no-one had the time, skill or budget for previously. So what was lost in manual line jobs, was more than made up for in skilled line jobs, CAD/CAM jobs, engineering jobs, supplier jobs, etc.
It wasn't until the Big 3 were on the brink following the banking/liquidity crisis that the greater auto industry started shedding jobs. And by that point, the jobs weren't even in the city in the first place. The losses were suffered by the suburbs.
The job problem in Detroit was that cheap greenfield development deals drew all the new jobs into the suburbs. (with an assist from the highway system, race relations, city politics, etc) And with the jobs, went any economic reason to live in the city center and quite a huge chunk of the tax base.
Despite the difference in reasons, the challenge of San Francisco does share a somewhat-familiar shape with that of Detroit: the rich can justify living there, the young can romanticize it, the poor have little choice but to stay, but the lower and middle classes, and anyone with a family who can afford the choice makes for the exit.
One way to say it would be that Detroit left their workers not their workers left Detroit. If some Asian or European capital suddenly became the home of innovation and the jobs left SF then you would have people leaving for other locales. However the reasoning and blog posts would be very different to this one at that point.
I don't see San Francisco turning into Detroit. It's more likely to follow Pittsburgh's path, and Pittsburgh isn't a bad place to live these days (but it's far from a star city).
What you missed was the twenty years where Pittsburgh turned into Detroit. Losing all of your industry followed by 60% of your population does that do a city. As a Pittsburgher, it's a good city with ambitions to be great, but it took a generation to get there.
As a former Pittsburgher (now Detroiter) The cities are culturally very different, even if economically their paths were similar.
Pittsburghers really believed in their city, even through the tough economic times. If anything I miss about Pittsburgh it would be that. An older generation of suburban Detroiters would simply have no second thoughts if the City of Detroit burned to the ground. That was one of the most jaw dropping things about moving here, the lackadaisical attitude towards the state of the city among the older generation.
Although IME it actually seems like the tech industry in Detroit is humming along quite nicely. The auto industry is back again and there's a resurgence of startup and entrepreneurial spirit around these parts. My company is hiring like mad.
However I feel like the local economy is struggling to find people who will actually move here. Even if there are perfectly livable areas in the region, very few people have a good mental image when you say "I'm moving to Detroit!"
I don't even live in SF and this is clear to me. Or maybe it's clear to me because I don't live in SF?