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> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public sp

> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public space, scooters for example, to get prior permission from the city That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars. Perhaps if you're going to litter the streets with scooters you should be required to post up cash in escrow for unlittering said scooters if/when you disappear.

voz_ 7y ago
You have it backwards. The scooters are not, and have never been, a problem. The real problem is feces and needles. The real truth here is the SF gov is greedy, and rabidly anti-tech. I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up. Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.
- gumby 7y ago
  Perspective from 25 years in the mission: the scooters were the problem.
- appybois 7y ago
  I heard they could present a challenge for the blind
- mrslave 7y ago
  > until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up Because the rents are still too affordable.
  - voz_ 7y ago
    Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification. SF has backwards zoning laws, with insane NIMBY culture.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  > I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up. This is a colonial mindset and regards the eviction, impoverishment, and exile of other human beings as nothing compared to one's own desires. Yes they'll be replaced. That's what colonization is.
  - voz_ 7y ago
    This is also the mindset that no one is owed a neighborhood - if you want to live in it, buy. If you are renting, too bad. You cannot both have the short term flexibility of rent and the desired staying power of buying.
    - zdkl 7y ago
      Could you develop your train of thought to illustrate how this comment is coherent with another you've made elsewhere: > Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification.
      - voz_ 7y ago
        Yes. I appreciate you asking. Today's gentrification is caused by wealthier people moving into neighborhoods, and making them less affordable. BUT this affordability reduction is relative to the price we were at before. The price we were at before is already extremely unaffordable due to insane building restrictions and a NIMBY attitude baked into regulation. If the city allowed the building of high-rises everywhere, would gentrification stop? No. Certain neighborhoods would get gentrified, and become relatively higher priced. Overall, however, city affordability would skyrocket.
        zdkl 7y ago
        I believe I understand your opinion. In my very personal opinion you're ignoring a couple of variables: It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters, Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama, Also unless you literally double capacity everywhere what incentive do landlords (even new ones) have to moderate aggregate and individual rent growth? Since the state of the area is f'd today and demand is high, if there are any improvements demand can only go (dramatically) up.
- kristopolous 7y ago
  > I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about. It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks" through the financial consequences. These issues are the consequence of it - that's why it happens everywhere things are gentrifying. These stratifications produce slums, favelas, cantegrils, gecekondus, barrios, karton siti, paraggoupoli, zopadpatti, baraccopoli, putri, perkampungan kumuh... there's words in almost every language for this phenomena. Policies are machines. They produce things. This is the outcome of the process, globally, for centuries. You can not possibly get to your goal through that method. It does not work. I know how alluring the logic is, but like counterintuitive math and science, the obvious solution does not work and we need to stop pretending otherwise. Reality doesn't give a damn about personal belief and stubbornness in systems that don't work. You can't will a wrong answer into being right. It's the material reality.
  - voz_ 7y ago
    No. It is the consequences of almost every major city in the US buying one way bus tickets for its vagrants to SF, compounded with a city wide refusal to police low level street crime.
    - kristopolous 7y ago
      That's what caused say, the rookery at st. giles in the 1850s? fascinating ... please go on...
  - josephg 7y ago
    I’m confused by this stance because, here in Australia gentrification seems to result in less crime and fewer homeless people out on the streets. There are no slums here in Melbourne. Or in New Zealand. Or really, any developed nation outside the US. If gentrification means the rich get richer while the poor stay poor, of course gentrification won’t help poor people. But just because that’s how it happens in the US doesn’t mean gentrification itself is to blame. The problem, as you say, is the cracks that people can fall through. Nobody should be sleeping rough and hungry in the richest country on earth. Solve that with a social safety net, not by banning new construction.
softwarejosh 7y ago
no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?
- DominikD 7y ago
  Scooters dropped at random places are a massive problem for blind people and people with mobility disabilities.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    The bike hire stations you see in some big cities (e.g. London) are a better solution; you get charged for it until you put it back in the rack. Dumping the bike somewhere just means your credit card will keep charging. It should be the same for the scooters. Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company, which implies that the city will be pulling one company forwards which may be considered unfair competition in the US. The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them, which would be a big incentive for the company to deal with it themselves.
    - DominikD 7y ago
      Scooters need to be charged every night so juicers collect randomly abandoned scooters before the complete battery failure that would prevent company running the service to track its fleet. So charging for time up to infinity may solve the cost problem on the operator side, doesn't solve the societal problem of scooters left in random places. Where I live scooter users are charged extra if they don't deliver the scooter to a predefined location but that's not enough of a deterrent.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company And some cities would be happy to. Problem is, scooter companies don't want to work together with cities! They just show up and open shop, Uber style... > The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them ...and then cry foul when that happens, because why, this is destroying innovation and assaulting honest businessmen.

voz_ 7y ago

You have it backwards. The scooters are not, and have never been, a problem. The real problem is feces and needles. The real truth here is the SF gov is greedy, and rabidly anti-tech. I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up. Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.

gumby 7y ago
Perspective from 25 years in the mission: the scooters were the problem.
appybois 7y ago
I heard they could present a challenge for the blind
mrslave 7y ago
> until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up Because the rents are still too affordable.
- voz_ 7y ago
  Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification. SF has backwards zoning laws, with insane NIMBY culture.
tehjoker 7y ago
> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up. This is a colonial mindset and regards the eviction, impoverishment, and exile of other human beings as nothing compared to one's own desires. Yes they'll be replaced. That's what colonization is.
- voz_ 7y ago
  This is also the mindset that no one is owed a neighborhood - if you want to live in it, buy. If you are renting, too bad. You cannot both have the short term flexibility of rent and the desired staying power of buying.
  - zdkl 7y ago
    Could you develop your train of thought to illustrate how this comment is coherent with another you've made elsewhere: > Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification.
    - voz_ 7y ago
      Yes. I appreciate you asking. Today's gentrification is caused by wealthier people moving into neighborhoods, and making them less affordable. BUT this affordability reduction is relative to the price we were at before. The price we were at before is already extremely unaffordable due to insane building restrictions and a NIMBY attitude baked into regulation. If the city allowed the building of high-rises everywhere, would gentrification stop? No. Certain neighborhoods would get gentrified, and become relatively higher priced. Overall, however, city affordability would skyrocket.
      - zdkl 7y ago
        I believe I understand your opinion. In my very personal opinion you're ignoring a couple of variables: It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters, Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama, Also unless you literally double capacity everywhere what incentive do landlords (even new ones) have to moderate aggregate and individual rent growth? Since the state of the area is f'd today and demand is high, if there are any improvements demand can only go (dramatically) up.
kristopolous 7y ago
> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about. It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks" through the financial consequences. These issues are the consequence of it - that's why it happens everywhere things are gentrifying. These stratifications produce slums, favelas, cantegrils, gecekondus, barrios, karton siti, paraggoupoli, zopadpatti, baraccopoli, putri, perkampungan kumuh... there's words in almost every language for this phenomena. Policies are machines. They produce things. This is the outcome of the process, globally, for centuries. You can not possibly get to your goal through that method. It does not work. I know how alluring the logic is, but like counterintuitive math and science, the obvious solution does not work and we need to stop pretending otherwise. Reality doesn't give a damn about personal belief and stubbornness in systems that don't work. You can't will a wrong answer into being right. It's the material reality.
- voz_ 7y ago
  No. It is the consequences of almost every major city in the US buying one way bus tickets for its vagrants to SF, compounded with a city wide refusal to police low level street crime.
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    That's what caused say, the rookery at st. giles in the 1850s? fascinating ... please go on...
- josephg 7y ago
  I’m confused by this stance because, here in Australia gentrification seems to result in less crime and fewer homeless people out on the streets. There are no slums here in Melbourne. Or in New Zealand. Or really, any developed nation outside the US. If gentrification means the rich get richer while the poor stay poor, of course gentrification won’t help poor people. But just because that’s how it happens in the US doesn’t mean gentrification itself is to blame. The problem, as you say, is the cracks that people can fall through. Nobody should be sleeping rough and hungry in the richest country on earth. Solve that with a social safety net, not by banning new construction.

softwarejosh 7y ago

no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?

DominikD 7y ago
Scooters dropped at random places are a massive problem for blind people and people with mobility disabilities.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  The bike hire stations you see in some big cities (e.g. London) are a better solution; you get charged for it until you put it back in the rack. Dumping the bike somewhere just means your credit card will keep charging. It should be the same for the scooters. Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company, which implies that the city will be pulling one company forwards which may be considered unfair competition in the US. The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them, which would be a big incentive for the company to deal with it themselves.
  - DominikD 7y ago
    Scooters need to be charged every night so juicers collect randomly abandoned scooters before the complete battery failure that would prevent company running the service to track its fleet. So charging for time up to infinity may solve the cost problem on the operator side, doesn't solve the societal problem of scooters left in random places. Where I live scooter users are charged extra if they don't deliver the scooter to a predefined location but that's not enough of a deterrent.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company And some cities would be happy to. Problem is, scooter companies don't want to work together with cities! They just show up and open shop, Uber style... > The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them ...and then cry foul when that happens, because why, this is destroying innovation and assaulting honest businessmen.