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I’ve lived in San Francisco for about ten years and I’ve never been more excited about the future of this city. We have an incredible opportunity to build a cit

I’ve lived in San Francisco for about ten years and I’ve never been more excited about the future of this city. We have an incredible opportunity to build a city that works for everyone and not just a glorified dorm room complex for young tech workers. The next few years are looking very good!

refurb 6y ago
Hats off to your optimism, but having lived in SF it looks the govt has only gotten more dysfunctional. It was never about “building a city that works for everyone” and good luck on changing that.
- mbgerring 6y ago
  Civic participation is a long, hard slog that rewards the people who stay with it. Best of luck to you wherever you landed.
  - refurb 6y ago
    There is no lack of civic participation in SF. That’s why it’s the way it is today. It’s community organizations like Calle 24 who don’t want tech folks and don’t want new housing. They run the city.
_-david-_ 6y ago
What makes you think that things are going to change? I don't live in SF, but things look like they are getting worse.
- mbgerring 6y ago
  What happens when the only people left in a city are the ones who truly love it and want it to be as good as it can be?
  - azinman2 6y ago
    Exactly. The worst thing for SF is for all the new transplants to not be there for the city, but rather for the money while thumbing their nose at the city. They will invest zero into it, but displace those who contribute to culture in their wake.
  - refurb 6y ago
    No offense but this comes across as a little naive. If you go visit the parts of SF that people don’t talk about, you pretty quickly realize the wealthy (tech folks included) are a very small slice of the city and live in their own bubble of trendy restaurants and jaunts out to Tahoe. Most people are lower or middle class families struggling to get by and even if they didn’t “love” SF they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to leaving.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Are you betting on "boomers" dying? The worst people are those who own their house and insist that things shouldn't change, ever. They will not leave until they die. They can have their house. All they have to accept is that their neighborhood will change slowly, because all neighborhoods change.
ralusek 6y ago
There is no way to make the city work for everyone. The city has so many constraints on it, there is no way for everyone to be happy. For one, it's incredibly geographically constrained. Because it's constrained, housing supply is restricted, which drives prices up enormously and displaces the majority of the population. If you open up housing development, and high-rises start shooting up everywhere, the identity of the city diminishes, and it will lose a good deal of the character that most find appealing about it. Maintain development restrictions, however, and you get people complaining about the NIMBYism and extremely high prices. In regards to the homeless, how do you resolve that? I mean, if your solution is to provide them with housing in one of the most geographically constrained and most expensive places on the planet, well then you're going to contribute to the first problem. If you're going to move them somewhere else, you'll ease up on the housing constraint issues, but upset the homeless population, and a good deal of people who thought that the homeless were perfectly entitled to live in the middle of most expensive city in the country. What about the culture? The artistic community that had a larger presence in the city a few decades ago absolutely hates the influx of tech workers. Tech has taken root as a primary identity of the city. Does the city work for everybody when the tech workers continue to displace artists, or the artists prevent the tech workers for moving in? In what way are you going to come up with solutions that "work for everybody?"
- mbgerring 6y ago
  I don’t know, but as I am both an artist and a tech worker, I have a large stake in whatever comes next, and I know that the future belongs to the people who show up for it.
imtringued 6y ago
I hope you can spread your optimism. You guys are sitting on a gold mine and you just need to dig the gold out.

refurb 6y ago

Hats off to your optimism, but having lived in SF it looks the govt has only gotten more dysfunctional. It was never about “building a city that works for everyone” and good luck on changing that.

mbgerring 6y ago
Civic participation is a long, hard slog that rewards the people who stay with it. Best of luck to you wherever you landed.
- refurb 6y ago
  There is no lack of civic participation in SF. That’s why it’s the way it is today. It’s community organizations like Calle 24 who don’t want tech folks and don’t want new housing. They run the city.

_-david-_ 6y ago

What makes you think that things are going to change? I don't live in SF, but things look like they are getting worse.

mbgerring 6y ago
What happens when the only people left in a city are the ones who truly love it and want it to be as good as it can be?
- azinman2 6y ago
  Exactly. The worst thing for SF is for all the new transplants to not be there for the city, but rather for the money while thumbing their nose at the city. They will invest zero into it, but displace those who contribute to culture in their wake.
- refurb 6y ago
  No offense but this comes across as a little naive. If you go visit the parts of SF that people don’t talk about, you pretty quickly realize the wealthy (tech folks included) are a very small slice of the city and live in their own bubble of trendy restaurants and jaunts out to Tahoe. Most people are lower or middle class families struggling to get by and even if they didn’t “love” SF they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to leaving.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Are you betting on "boomers" dying? The worst people are those who own their house and insist that things shouldn't change, ever. They will not leave until they die. They can have their house. All they have to accept is that their neighborhood will change slowly, because all neighborhoods change.

ralusek 6y ago

There is no way to make the city work for everyone. The city has so many constraints on it, there is no way for everyone to be happy. For one, it's incredibly geographically constrained. Because it's constrained, housing supply is restricted, which drives prices up enormously and displaces the majority of the population. If you open up housing development, and high-rises start shooting up everywhere, the identity of the city diminishes, and it will lose a good deal of the character that most find appealing about it. Maintain development restrictions, however, and you get people complaining about the NIMBYism and extremely high prices. In regards to the homeless, how do you resolve that? I mean, if your solution is to provide them with housing in one of the most geographically constrained and most expensive places on the planet, well then you're going to contribute to the first problem. If you're going to move them somewhere else, you'll ease up on the housing constraint issues, but upset the homeless population, and a good deal of people who thought that the homeless were perfectly entitled to live in the middle of most expensive city in the country. What about the culture? The artistic community that had a larger presence in the city a few decades ago absolutely hates the influx of tech workers. Tech has taken root as a primary identity of the city. Does the city work for everybody when the tech workers continue to displace artists, or the artists prevent the tech workers for moving in? In what way are you going to come up with solutions that "work for everybody?"

mbgerring 6y ago
I don’t know, but as I am both an artist and a tech worker, I have a large stake in whatever comes next, and I know that the future belongs to the people who show up for it.

imtringued 6y ago

I hope you can spread your optimism. You guys are sitting on a gold mine and you just need to dig the gold out.