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I think the fundamental misunderstanding expressed in this article is this: San Francisco isn't the tech capital of the world, San Francisco is an hour up 101 f
by mwfunk 10y ago
I think the fundamental misunderstanding expressed in this article is this: San Francisco isn't the tech capital of the world, San Francisco is an hour up 101 from the tech capital of the world. It has a tremendous startup scene because of its proximity to SV, but some SF residents (rightly or wrongly) would prefer it didn't become SV2, which it has been slowly turning into (WRT startups at least). SF's standing in the tech industry is 100% based on geography, there is nothing inherently tech-friendly about SF itself.
Now, one could argue about whether it would be good or bad for SF to turn into SV2, but unless someone starts bulldozing entire city blocks to start building campuses for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees, it is not yet SV2. To date the conflicts have been more about how much runoff from SV are SF residents willing to tolerate, in terms of being a bedroom community for SV, and the local startup scene that arises from that arrangement.
I personally think that much of the anti-tech sentiment in SF comes from entitlement, tribalism, and a culture that values protest and political strife for its own sake over actually trying to understand what the problems are and actually trying to solve them, but that's just my take. More charitably, I see it as SF trying to figure itself out in changing times, as opposed to the "tech capital of the world" being strangely oblivious to its own place in the industry.
- idlewords 10y agoA lot of the tension between SF and SV comes from that region's refusal to accept its status as an employment hub. Communities like Palo Alto want to preserve the fiction that they are spacious suburbs, and use zoning laws to enforce the fiction. Silicon Valley is really exporting its housing dysfunction to San Francisco, which adds its own.
- mwfunk 10y agoEveryone I know who lives in SF and works in SV (and I've known a lot of them) lives in SF because they want to, not because it was the best choice economically. They want to live in SF because of the culture or the nightlife, and are willing to endure sitting on a bus for 3 hours a day and paying way more to get way less in order to live there. For all of those people, if all they cared about was finding housing, it would have been way more practical to just get a place in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or San Jose (or Morgan Hill, for that matter, although that's getting back into painful commute territory). Now, one might say, "but it's so much more boring to live in Sunnyvale than SF!", but that's still a choice being made for lifestyle reasons and not a housing decision that they were forced into. I would also say that if anyone is bored almost anywhere in this day and age, that that's far more a personal failing than a property of where they live, but that's totally besides the point. :)
- idlewords 10y agoIf Silicon Valley urbanized, it would have culture and nightlife, and be a much more attractive place to live. Consider also that you and I are techies, and move in techie circles. There is a large population of people working non-tech jobs for whom cost is the overriding concern.
- twblalock 10y agoMost of the startup jobs are in SF and the peninsula, not SV. Even employees of SV companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple choose to live in SF and commute to the valley every day, which is why the tech shuttle buses exist. They certainly aren't saving money by living in SF -- they live there because they want to. It's just the trendiest place for young people to live in the Bay Area right now. Palo Alto is a bit unrepresentative of SV. It has very high barriers to new housing. On the other hand, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, which are much larger than Palo Alto, are building stuff everywhere. So is Redwood City, just to the north of Palo Alto, which has seen its downtown area completely transformed over the past few years. The cities I mentioned are building a lot more housing than SF is building, even though they have fewer startup jobs, so it's hard to justify any accusations that they aren't doing their part.