4 ms·

Serious question: why does everyone have to live in San Francisco? There are lots and lots of cheaper places to live and work, but it seems there is something

Serious question: why does everyone have to live in San Francisco? There are lots and lots of cheaper places to live and work, but it seems there is something that only San Francisco can do that everywhere else can't. Why aren't city planners working on creating that special "whateveritis" in their city as fast as possible? I don't want any pat answers like "the people are there" or "the jobs are there" because that's basically a tautology saying "everybody is there because everybody is there".

city41 11y ago
But everyone is here because everyone is here. The cycle likely started with National Semiconductor and grew from there. For me, I'm including Silicon Valley in "here". I live in San Jose and it's unbelievably crowded down here too.
- jseliger 11y ago
  There is a field called Economic Geography that discusses these issues, and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City is a good introduction to them. The short answer is that dense cities produce disproportionately more ideas (as measured in patents, peer-reviewed articles, and the like), GDP, and artistic output than less-dense areas. Cities appear to promote knowledge spillover effects and idea recombination. That's an answer to the grandparent post's original question too.
BurningFrog 11y ago
They don't. There are over 7 billion people not trying to move to SF. About 100.000 new housing units would probably fix the current crisis.
- Tempest1981 11y ago
  And worsen the traffic/transit "crisis". Or begin a crisis of overcrowded schools. It's a balancing act.
superuser2 11y ago
It's not a tautology. As an employee, taking a job somewhere that is not a tech hub means that when it's time for the next job, you probably have to move. Moving cross country with the frequency that SV engineers hop between startups is a horrible way to live. If, as an employer, you move somewhere that is not a tech hub, people who can get what they need from San Francisco won't follow you. You could in principle have a tech hub somewhere else, but there's a major synchronization problem there, and more pressingly anywhere you put a large number of high income earners is going to see rents rise sharply, at least in the short term, and people who live there don't want that. So it's not necessarily going to be any better than SF.
- noobermin 11y ago
  >There's a major synchronization problem I think the "having to move for your next job" makes sense, but what is this major synchronization problem you are talking about? Could you expand upon this?
  - superuser2 11y ago
    The major SV/SF tech companies and employees aren't all going to decide to move to Omaha on the same day. For a new city to become a tech hub, some people have to take the risk of living in a non-tech-hub city for a few years while it becomes one (and if it doesn't, well, sucks for them).
    - noobermin 11y ago
      Sounds like you meant something closer to "equilibrating" instead of synchronizing, at least that makes more sense for me as a scientist.
noobermin 11y ago
I will never understand how the scene of techies, you know, the likes of which gave us the ability to keep in touch with friends we haven't seen in years, who keep upvoting articles that extol the benefits of remote work and working as few hours a week as possible desires all of their workers to be located in one place. I remember learning how to program on a pacific island with a pitiful internet connection. Most major cities (and some not as major) have more access than teenage me had. Again, what is this "wateveritis"?
- Decade 11y ago
  Yeah, but did you stay on the Pacific island? Remote work doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want to mingle with others. It means I can stay at home when a child is sick or visit relatives for a week, and still work and get paid. I like the meetups. From my office, so far I have walked to Google, Symantec, Salesforce, and a bunch of other companies. It’s like being in a conference, for free, all the time. Supposedly there’s job security in having all these companies nearby. Not that you’ll keep your job, but that there are so many other places to work nearby. I think people here are generally optimistic about change and progress, compared to people in other places. It’s self-affirming. Techies, after all, are still merely human.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Cities are, much as CPUs or memory, networking systems. With provision of resources and removal of waste, as well as selection of components (here largely self-selection of residents), you end up with a nexus of high productivity. For all its faults (and the SF-OAK-SJ Bay Area has many), the place is incredibly vibrant, has a density of venture support unlike any elsewhere (even NYC plays second-fiddle), and, assuming you can afford the housing costs and survive the commutes, has an immensely appealing physical environment. There are other places which offer some of that, but none quite matches on all. And Poisson / Power distributions give a very rapidly falling marginal benefit to being located elsewhere. After SF, NYC, Seattle, Washington D.C. / NoVA, and then more or less heaped: London, Tel Aviv, Austin, RTP, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and any number of third-tier silicon-wannabees. The fact that LA and Chicago, vastly larger urban areas than SF, can't show a candle to it, is sobering. And I'm not saying you have to be in SF, or that what SF VC are doing makes sense (IMO SF's overrated and VC are to a large extent rent-seeking irrelevantists). But for what it does, it does it better than any other spot on the planet, and has for decades, burying numerous other pretenders. Eventually the living costs, congetstion, possibly physical limits (lack of fresh water, rising seas), or other factors may end its reign. But it's not happened yet.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  The reign is not over. That is indisputable. But just as all bubbles must pop, so do all reigns must end.

city41 11y ago

But everyone is here because everyone is here. The cycle likely started with National Semiconductor and grew from there. For me, I'm including Silicon Valley in "here". I live in San Jose and it's unbelievably crowded down here too.

jseliger 11y ago
There is a field called Economic Geography that discusses these issues, and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City is a good introduction to them. The short answer is that dense cities produce disproportionately more ideas (as measured in patents, peer-reviewed articles, and the like), GDP, and artistic output than less-dense areas. Cities appear to promote knowledge spillover effects and idea recombination. That's an answer to the grandparent post's original question too.

BurningFrog 11y ago

They don't. There are over 7 billion people not trying to move to SF. About 100.000 new housing units would probably fix the current crisis.

Tempest1981 11y ago
And worsen the traffic/transit "crisis". Or begin a crisis of overcrowded schools. It's a balancing act.

superuser2 11y ago

It's not a tautology. As an employee, taking a job somewhere that is not a tech hub means that when it's time for the next job, you probably have to move. Moving cross country with the frequency that SV engineers hop between startups is a horrible way to live. If, as an employer, you move somewhere that is not a tech hub, people who can get what they need from San Francisco won't follow you. You could in principle have a tech hub somewhere else, but there's a major synchronization problem there, and more pressingly anywhere you put a large number of high income earners is going to see rents rise sharply, at least in the short term, and people who live there don't want that. So it's not necessarily going to be any better than SF.

noobermin 11y ago
>There's a major synchronization problem I think the "having to move for your next job" makes sense, but what is this major synchronization problem you are talking about? Could you expand upon this?
- superuser2 11y ago
  The major SV/SF tech companies and employees aren't all going to decide to move to Omaha on the same day. For a new city to become a tech hub, some people have to take the risk of living in a non-tech-hub city for a few years while it becomes one (and if it doesn't, well, sucks for them).
  - noobermin 11y ago
    Sounds like you meant something closer to "equilibrating" instead of synchronizing, at least that makes more sense for me as a scientist.

noobermin 11y ago

I will never understand how the scene of techies, you know, the likes of which gave us the ability to keep in touch with friends we haven't seen in years, who keep upvoting articles that extol the benefits of remote work and working as few hours a week as possible desires all of their workers to be located in one place. I remember learning how to program on a pacific island with a pitiful internet connection. Most major cities (and some not as major) have more access than teenage me had. Again, what is this "wateveritis"?

Decade 11y ago
Yeah, but did you stay on the Pacific island? Remote work doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want to mingle with others. It means I can stay at home when a child is sick or visit relatives for a week, and still work and get paid. I like the meetups. From my office, so far I have walked to Google, Symantec, Salesforce, and a bunch of other companies. It’s like being in a conference, for free, all the time. Supposedly there’s job security in having all these companies nearby. Not that you’ll keep your job, but that there are so many other places to work nearby. I think people here are generally optimistic about change and progress, compared to people in other places. It’s self-affirming. Techies, after all, are still merely human.

dredmorbius 11y ago

Cities are, much as CPUs or memory, networking systems. With provision of resources and removal of waste, as well as selection of components (here largely self-selection of residents), you end up with a nexus of high productivity. For all its faults (and the SF-OAK-SJ Bay Area has many), the place is incredibly vibrant, has a density of venture support unlike any elsewhere (even NYC plays second-fiddle), and, assuming you can afford the housing costs and survive the commutes, has an immensely appealing physical environment. There are other places which offer some of that, but none quite matches on all. And Poisson / Power distributions give a very rapidly falling marginal benefit to being located elsewhere. After SF, NYC, Seattle, Washington D.C. / NoVA, and then more or less heaped: London, Tel Aviv, Austin, RTP, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and any number of third-tier silicon-wannabees. The fact that LA and Chicago, vastly larger urban areas than SF, can't show a candle to it, is sobering. And I'm not saying you have to be in SF, or that what SF VC are doing makes sense (IMO SF's overrated and VC are to a large extent rent-seeking irrelevantists). But for what it does, it does it better than any other spot on the planet, and has for decades, burying numerous other pretenders. Eventually the living costs, congetstion, possibly physical limits (lack of fresh water, rising seas), or other factors may end its reign. But it's not happened yet.

Apocryphon 11y ago
The reign is not over. That is indisputable. But just as all bubbles must pop, so do all reigns must end.