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So I’ve lived in SF for almost 8 years now. It’s fine. The great exodus that made The Narrative explode with how very dead and over the city is? A 0.15% drop i
by Swizec 4y ago
So I’ve lived in SF for almost 8 years now. It’s fine.
The great exodus that made The Narrative explode with how very dead and over the city is? A 0.15% drop in population. We have nowhere to put more people anyway. Where people gonna go if nimbys don’t wanna approve anything?
SF isn’t undesirable, it’s just full.
But also the place I moved 3 years ago was fairly medium density. Now there are 10 high-ish density brand new residential buildings within a 4 block radius. Where I used to live before built 5+ high density residential towers in a few block radius in the 4ish years I lived there.
Perhaps rents are falling because supply is increasing. Drastically and fast.
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago> SF isn’t undesirable, it’s just full. Potato potahto
- Swizec 4y agoWell no. There’s a difference between people not wanting to be somewhere and existing people not wanting to make room for more people. I can’t vote so not much I can do about it myself, but I’m def not leaving any time soon.
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago> and existing people not wanting to make room for more people And in the process making it undesirable for other people already living there.
- acchow 4y ago> A 0.15% drop in population Are you talking about California? Because SF's population dropped by a lot. SF's population hit 834,046 in July 2022. This is down 6.5% from 881k in 2019
- Swizec 4y agoThe data I found said 0.15% population drop in SF metro area https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/popul...
- zdragnar 4y agoIf people aren't commuting anymore but working remotely instead, that's a pretty bad sign for the city of SF itself.
- gumby 4y agoThe city changes. It’s had boom/bust before (from gold rush through WWII) and when I moved here in the 80s it had an utterly dead downtown, some financial industry, a good arts scene, and was a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. I miss its grungy period and hope it returns. It’s a little too clean and fancy for me at the moment.
- graton 4y agoBut that isn't the City of San Francisco. San Francisco has a population of ~815,000 people, while the link posted has a population of 3.3 million people. This page shows the population of San Francisco declined 6.72% from 2020 to 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco
- gumby 4y agoAlmost all those who moved moved to Silicon Valley or other parts of the Bay Area. Net emigration from the Bay Area itself was, as the GP comment noted, a fraction of a percent and most of those people moved elsewhere in California (mostly nearby Sacramento area or the Sierras).
- mh- 4y agoYou can't use the population of SF to compare how "dead" the city feels. Something like >300k people commuted into the city every day. That's increasing the population by like 50%. Would be curious if anyone can find reliable data on this.
- Swizec 4y agoMind you the people who live in SF are also not commuting into downtown. That contributes to it feeling dead during the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean the city died. People are still here, you just see them less. Especially if like me you’re one of those folks continuing to work from home and seeing the same few people all the time. I mean if I judged from my personal experience I’d say there’s 500 people in the city. I even see all the same homeless folk on my runs and can tell who hangs around which block or street corner.
- mh- 4y agoTotally agree with all of that, was just saying you can't use the population numbers to track how many people are in the city on a day-to-day basis.
- photonbeam 4y agoMove to Sydney for a while and you’ll quickly see that SF is simply ‘tolerable’ due to availability of specific types of jobs
- wpietri 4y agoI used to live in Sydney. It's been a while, but I don't remember it being overall better, just better for different things.
- yawnxyz 4y agoBeen living in Sydney for a year, and everyone who spends time here thinks "wow the food is just as good, prices are kind of cheaper, and the city is much cleaner" Of course, it might be different if we were actual citizens and owned property here etc. etc. but as long-term visitors, Sydney is hands down nicer than SF.
- Gigachad 4y agoAnd Sydney is a dump compared to Melbourne :)
- an_aparallel 4y agoSydney-sider here - Sydney lacks a real art scene, and a culture with its own identity. Outside of down-town, it is awefully same samey with the proliferation of cheap rental housing. Going out further countryside - things get real nice. Though - we are pretty lucky all that being said :)
- inferiorhuman 4y agoI always thought Newtown kinda fits that bill.
- an_aparallel 4y agonewtown really used to be super cool. Like everything Sydney though - its much much more gentrified - and has just turned into restaurants and bars for yuppies. 10-15 years ago - the whole inner=west was rife with awesome gigs, international electronic acts, lots of pubs were doubling as places to host electronic - but NIMBYism really got the better of Sydney. Hard to get a coffee at night in the city even :(
- wpietri 4y agoYeah, I've been here 20 years, and I see a lot of people getting the vapors over The Shocking and Precipitous Decline of Our Once-Great City, but I'm not seeing it. As you say, it's fine. To me the chatter seems like another round of the far-right panic over "San Francisco values", which has been recurring since the 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_values
- 8note 4y agoFull is a weird description of a low density village. "We got 10 people, and that's 9 too many people!" Especially considering how much tent space is still available off sidewalks and the like
- pb7 4y agoHuh? San Francisco is the second densest city in the US after New York.