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I'm hoping tech plateaus and the bubbles burst. Maybe Silicon Valley would become livable again with normal cities and regular housing, not this gilded dystopia

I'm hoping tech plateaus and the bubbles burst. Maybe Silicon Valley would become livable again with normal cities and regular housing, not this gilded dystopia we have with the ultra rich tech class dabbling in society, popping into cities to make a quick buck before moving on and leaving behind a wasteland of empty giant towers. Meanwhile everyone else, like the families who've been there for decades, suffers from the hyperinflation we cause. I remember when San Francisco was so awesome as a kid. Now every time I visit it feels more and more like Blade Runner :/ Seattle is suffering the same fate. Meanwhile someplace like Chicago is vibrant with life and culture, with affordable housing everywhere. I can't help but think it's the tech that's the problem, not the other way around.

iamcasen 3y ago
I remember the same. I visited Alcatraz as a kid in the early '90's, and then later returned in 2010 for my tech career. 2010 was pretty great honestly, but by 2014 I realized I was just one of the hollowed out tech workers too busy and drained from work to contribute anything of value to the city. That's one of the big issues with tech: it isn't really tied to place. It has global reach via cyberspace, with entire decades of work existing purely as bits and bytes in the cloud. Only a software engineer would even have the slightest clue of the vastness of various compute systems composed of millions upon millions of lines of code. People work day and night on this stuff, and the general public only sees the tip of the iceberg. I think this makes for a challenging recipe to balance in a local economy
xw3098 3y ago
If you think San Francisco is bad now. You should’ve seen it in the 70s, when I was a kid. The crime was so bad it made the second sentence in the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_in_the_1970s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_in_the_1970s Honestly these things come and go, as they do in all big cities. Adapting to change, especially for large groups of people, is alway rough and tumble. I’m sure they’ll get it figured out eventually. Just in time for it to change again… Also, most residents as Chicago disagree with your assessment of their housing affordability. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-affordable-housing/chicagoans-say-more-affordable-housing-needed https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-affordable-hous...
- uoaei 3y ago
  Worth pointing out that a "tech boom" came about in the previous decade in the area, both then and now.
- solardev 3y ago
  Sure, these things come and go, but isn't that partially because of the types of industries and workers that settle there in a given period? I'm sure it was quite the scene during the gold rush or tenements eras too. In the 90s it seemed really nice though. Rose tinted glasses and all that. I don't think Chicago is magically more affordable or anything, just significantly more so than West Coast tech hubs, while still being very livable (transportation, food, culture, art, diversity, etc.) It does lack nature compared to the West Coast, but there are some really well maintained parks and awesome museums. Point is, cities are in part defined by who lives and works there. Tech workers as a class don't really seem to contribute as much "liveliness" to a city, IMO. We make our money, hoard it or spend it on luxury cars and housing, then mostly keep to ourselves. Not very community or civic minded. Not EVERY worker, obviously, but it's a stereotype I've seen true more often than not in my limited personal experiences.
- vkou 3y ago
  Crime in first-tier coastal cities isn't the problem. Serious crime in them is at much lower rates than in peer cities in the South and the Midwest. The mixture of hyperwealth and soul-crushing shit-on-the-street-people-huddled-around-burning-garbage-cans poverty right out there on display for everyone, and the lower-working and middle class getting uncomfortably squeezed in the middle is what makes SF look like a sad parody of Blade Runner.
mrDmrTmrJ 3y ago
Your goals are easy to achieve (independent of the state of tech) - they simply require us to make it fast, easy, and legal to build housing if you want to :)
prewett 3y ago
San Francisco and Seattle might have more affordable housing everywhere like Chicago if there were land adjacent to the city everywhere, like in Chicago. Instead, the cities are on penisulas. The only way those cities are going to be affordable is to look like Hong Kong (and even that might not do it, as in the case of Hong Kong). Needless to say, no one has accepted this. You can't blame tech. There was tech for years, and housing filled up all the orchards and farm land south of San Francisco. Then, at some point, there stopped being farms to build on. The same thing will happen to Chicago if growth continues; people are only willing to commute so far.
- solardev 3y ago
  Yeah, that's a fair point! Chicago is mostly filled in flat swampland. Maybe floating settlements in the Bay? If Japan can build a floating airport (Narita), can't we build a floating apartment or two?
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    Environmentalists would go nuts. And I don't blame them, considering the drawn up plan to turn the bay into a river from long ago. Once you fuck an environment, it's very time consuming and expensive to unfuck it. IIRC there's also a strict 1-for-1 policy: for every foot of land you take from the bay, you have to reclaim a foot of land for the bay elsewhere. Despite this, people will still fight it.
    - solardev 3y ago
      I was thinking something literally floating, as opposed to an infilled island. Like a carrier or cargo ship sized apartment complex. Multi family houseboat :)
  - callalex 3y ago
    Huge portions of San Francisco are already man-made infill.
  - tivert 3y ago

iamcasen 3y ago

I remember the same. I visited Alcatraz as a kid in the early '90's, and then later returned in 2010 for my tech career. 2010 was pretty great honestly, but by 2014 I realized I was just one of the hollowed out tech workers too busy and drained from work to contribute anything of value to the city. That's one of the big issues with tech: it isn't really tied to place. It has global reach via cyberspace, with entire decades of work existing purely as bits and bytes in the cloud. Only a software engineer would even have the slightest clue of the vastness of various compute systems composed of millions upon millions of lines of code. People work day and night on this stuff, and the general public only sees the tip of the iceberg. I think this makes for a challenging recipe to balance in a local economy

xw3098 3y ago

If you think San Francisco is bad now. You should’ve seen it in the 70s, when I was a kid. The crime was so bad it made the second sentence in the Wikipedia page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_in_the_1970s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_in_the_1970s Honestly these things come and go, as they do in all big cities. Adapting to change, especially for large groups of people, is alway rough and tumble. I’m sure they’ll get it figured out eventually. Just in time for it to change again… Also, most residents as Chicago disagree with your assessment of their housing affordability. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-affordable-housing/chicagoans-say-more-affordable-housing-needed https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-affordable-hous...

uoaei 3y ago
Worth pointing out that a "tech boom" came about in the previous decade in the area, both then and now.
solardev 3y ago
Sure, these things come and go, but isn't that partially because of the types of industries and workers that settle there in a given period? I'm sure it was quite the scene during the gold rush or tenements eras too. In the 90s it seemed really nice though. Rose tinted glasses and all that. I don't think Chicago is magically more affordable or anything, just significantly more so than West Coast tech hubs, while still being very livable (transportation, food, culture, art, diversity, etc.) It does lack nature compared to the West Coast, but there are some really well maintained parks and awesome museums. Point is, cities are in part defined by who lives and works there. Tech workers as a class don't really seem to contribute as much "liveliness" to a city, IMO. We make our money, hoard it or spend it on luxury cars and housing, then mostly keep to ourselves. Not very community or civic minded. Not EVERY worker, obviously, but it's a stereotype I've seen true more often than not in my limited personal experiences.
vkou 3y ago
Crime in first-tier coastal cities isn't the problem. Serious crime in them is at much lower rates than in peer cities in the South and the Midwest. The mixture of hyperwealth and soul-crushing shit-on-the-street-people-huddled-around-burning-garbage-cans poverty right out there on display for everyone, and the lower-working and middle class getting uncomfortably squeezed in the middle is what makes SF look like a sad parody of Blade Runner.

mrDmrTmrJ 3y ago

Your goals are easy to achieve (independent of the state of tech) - they simply require us to make it fast, easy, and legal to build housing if you want to :)

prewett 3y ago

San Francisco and Seattle might have more affordable housing everywhere like Chicago if there were land adjacent to the city everywhere, like in Chicago. Instead, the cities are on penisulas. The only way those cities are going to be affordable is to look like Hong Kong (and even that might not do it, as in the case of Hong Kong). Needless to say, no one has accepted this. You can't blame tech. There was tech for years, and housing filled up all the orchards and farm land south of San Francisco. Then, at some point, there stopped being farms to build on. The same thing will happen to Chicago if growth continues; people are only willing to commute so far.

solardev 3y ago
Yeah, that's a fair point! Chicago is mostly filled in flat swampland. Maybe floating settlements in the Bay? If Japan can build a floating airport (Narita), can't we build a floating apartment or two?
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  Environmentalists would go nuts. And I don't blame them, considering the drawn up plan to turn the bay into a river from long ago. Once you fuck an environment, it's very time consuming and expensive to unfuck it. IIRC there's also a strict 1-for-1 policy: for every foot of land you take from the bay, you have to reclaim a foot of land for the bay elsewhere. Despite this, people will still fight it.
  - solardev 3y ago
    I was thinking something literally floating, as opposed to an infilled island. Like a carrier or cargo ship sized apartment complex. Multi family houseboat :)
- callalex 3y ago
  Huge portions of San Francisco are already man-made infill.
- tivert 3y ago