Might be for the better.
It's interesting how quickly the conventional wisdom shifted from "You have to be in the Bay Area if you want to do X!" to it not mattering.
Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
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Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#592This is what happens when a city neglects basic quality of life issues, and allows petty crime to thrive. It happened to New York in the 1970's and took roughly three decades to recover from. Good luck, San Francisco.
Pretty sure NY had a pretty heinous violent crime streak in the 70s. If memory serves SF was pretty gritty in the 70s/80s as well. The thing with SF is that the media and a large portion of the US loves to hate it - theres a narrative that keeps getting the replay button. They always will, and it will always die just like Silicon Valley is over and the next Silicon Valley will be in (insert any city, or china). These…
I felt the same way about the source. Business Insider is pretty far from a serious news source.
I know a couple of medium sized VC people who are going to start living outside of SF proper (not the Valley), but the people I know who live in the city love being in the city of San Francisco. The people who are leaving the bay area were probably always going to leave some day if they weren't happy there.
And you're dead on about schools and research centers that require in person. Hardware or R&D need a physical space for work and security. And some people do like a cool office experience.
Anyway, tl;dr I agree with you, ha ha.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#593Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
Well, if you consider South Bay, that's not true. Spent one summer interning at IBM, living in South San Jose (capital expressway). Had an absolutely horrible time. Even getting a bottle of milk was 2 mile walk. Buses were once every hour.
Agreed, South Bay is a wasteland if you don't have a car. I tried really hard to bike around, but even that only goes so far, especially in the summer. I'm assuming OP meant SF proper, since even Oakland is hardly walkable if you live anywhere but the downtown area.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#594It's depressing to see yet another intellectual 'bubble' sweep through the Internet and the educated parts of society, especially one that falls apart so easily under a little scrutiny (as they all do).
The cost of living in the Bay Area reflects extremely high demand for living there. Other than some people becoming more comfortable with remote work, what will have changed when the pandemic ends?
You can't visit SF and not see that it's a special place. An amazingly dynamic, exciting city filled with creativity, culture, beauty, resources (including two elite universities and many others), natural resources, etc. People LOVE San Francisco (and many other cities).
Cities in general are well-documented and researched as the great economic and cultural engines of our societies. It's not hard to see why or how that would be. We all knew it well; then suddenly it became trendy to forget it.
We know well the subtext of the new anti-urbanism: Reactionary politics. The reactionaries in the US (primarily the Republican Party and sympathizers) have been trying to denigrate cities for many years because, despite the facts on their success, cities are strongly liberal, ethnically diverse, and pro-Democratic. As an example, Trump tried to make it the focus of his campaign over the summer and a/the major focus of the Republican convention, though that fizzled.
Taxes are bad (by definition!), liberalism is bad, protestors are bad, college education is bad, homeless people are bad ... it's a highly conservative perspective - conservative as in, 'protect existing interests' - rather one that reflects a belief in progress, knowledge, change, and in the potential in every person (not just the wealthy ones) to do great things. Cities are inherently optimistic and reactionaryism is inherently pessimistic - why choose the latter, other than that is where the social herd is running? How will that turn out?
The IT industry didn't discover remote work in the last year; it might have been forced on reluctant managers in some industries, but we knew it very well. Companies tried it years ago, and then walked it back (I remember them telling employees they had to come back to the office). Nothing replaces the dynamism of meeting people in the hallway, seeing people face-to-face, etc. Remember everything SV companies invested to keep their employees at work and having fun? Now they think it's the same if they are home and isolated from each other?
Bubbles in finance are about ideas, not money. People feel compelled by the normalization of a social tide. If you think you're too smart for it, you are a prime target.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#595Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
> Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/out-in-the-united-states-where-can... and see if anything's changed since I last checked.
I'm not sure how often that article gets updated, but this Wikipedia article[1] has maps that are regularly updated and is a good reference for anyone who is LGBT, or has LGBT family members, and is looking to relocate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#596Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
I agree on almost all of your points with a few caveats. - Cars : The Bay Area is very walkable but that’s mainly SF. The tech burbs of Palo Alto , Menlo Park are not super walkable and you are relying on the BART and other public transport . But Covid has destroyed public transport and cuts in funding threaten them further. LGBT : This is not really the 80s and 90s . Most big cities from DC, Atlanta, Austin ,Chicago…
Agree on all counts, just putting Seattle out there as another city with a strong LGBT presence.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#597Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
The vast majority of the bay area is typical sprawling American suburbs that absolutely requires a car.
The cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley are about the only walkable places where it's feasible at all to not have a car, and even then significant parts of those cities are not walkable.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#598Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
Chicago and NYC do car-free better than the Bay Area, where not owning a car is really only viable in SF and a few small surrounding communities.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#599Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
I agree on almost all of your points with a few caveats. - Cars : The Bay Area is very walkable but that’s mainly SF. The tech burbs of Palo Alto , Menlo Park are not super walkable and you are relying on the BART and other public transport . But Covid has destroyed public transport and cuts in funding threaten them further. LGBT : This is not really the 80s and 90s . Most big cities from DC, Atlanta, Austin ,Chicago…
Can't speak for other cities, and maybe not even Chicago today, but when I lived there, there was a lot of diversity in the loop (the downtown business district) during the workday, but beyond that it was a very segregated city.
Also, though I did own a car, I really only used it on weekend trips out of town. If I had stayed long-term, I would have sold it, because it's expensive to own one there (parking is expensive unless you want to gamble on finding a spot on the street, and there are extra city taxes on gas and registration). Chicago is pretty walkable and has usable mass transit.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#600Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…
> Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Is this true? I've only visited the bay for a total of 15 days but only SF and parts of Oakland seemed walkable.
That statement is true. The Bay Area is a place you can live without a car (namely by living in SF or parts of Oakland or Berkeley, or in many downtowns near a BART or Caltrain station).