"The city’s Renaissance blossomed only a few decades after the Black Death decimated the city, and in part because of it. Horrible as it was, the plague shook u

"The city’s Renaissance blossomed only a few decades after the Black Death decimated the city, and in part because of it. Horrible as it was, the plague shook up the rigid social order, and that new fluidity led directly to artistic and intellectual revolution." This may be only a small part of the reason. One of the Renaissance's most important cause was the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. The extraordinary people flee to established centers, and at the time of its decline Byzantium enjoyed a great cultural blossom. Constantinople was a oasis of art and culture throughout the dark age, and only after Constantinople's fall under Ottoman Empire the European art and culture had no more that established place to coalesce to and thus was forced to blossom somewhere else. In the same way today's copycat entrepreneurial centers can not truly blossom until SF looses its name and appeal.