Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

The thing I'm thinking of is the city-wide market, rather than in a particular locale. One way or the other, though, the wealthy will get to live where they want. The best thing you can do is to try and save the furniture by putting them into golden ghettos, rather than having them fan out and drive off people in multiple districts.

> Good statistics either way would be interesting, though: are there cases where opening new high-end housing actually lowered the other prices in an expensive urban area?

Good on you for calling me out on numbers. I'd be interested to see that too.

NYC is a poor case study; you have the confounding factor of widespread rent control. It both creates an artificial limit on housing supply and distorts your official statistics because people have a strong incentive to behave deceptively.

Allowing building upwards would be seen as 'pandering' to 'special interests' by lots of locals --specially people who like to call themselves Xth-generation Franciscan.

SF is always about the short-term but made to look long-term so as to seem forward looking and progressive. The only thing SF is progressive about two things, sex, and some minority causes (both of which are good things but hardly encompassing of the term 'progressive'.)

It does not help that back in the planning phases of BaRT, San Mateo co. in the late 1950s, opted out of the system. Now they are plagued by a mediocre public transit system and they're in a catch-22. They don't have the density to sustain a working public transit system, so one does not get built and they don't allow higher densities due to the adverse effects on traffic. Eventually BaRT will reach San Jose, via the East Bay.... the idiocy.

I think if SJ plays its cards right, it could take away the clout back from SF. Back in the 80-90s (the hardware days) SJ (the 237 triangle) was more or less the 'capital' of SV (as the peninsula was more amorphous and one could not annoint P.A. or Sunnyvale the capital of SV, for example)

My favorite quote so far:

"If San Francisco is swallowed whole by the digital elite, many city lovers fear, the once-lush urban landscape will become as flat as a computer screen."

Lush urban landscape eh? Is that from all the feces on the sidewalks? Who are these city lovers? Are they the same NIMBY types who are trying to prevent any kind of night club or live music scene from being established in the city (google the "War on Fun" for fun). Well, that nameless person made up by the author is boring and terrible and they should probably move out to the suburbs to make room for someone who actually enjoys what this city has to offer now instead of what it was back when you couldn't take your kids to the park, a story which you told us yourself!

"When I moved to this neighborhood in 1993, just before the first dot-com boom, I avoided taking my two toddlers to the playground across the street from the café, because local gangs sometimes stashed their guns in the sand."

Yeah... soo.... that's bad, right? I didn't live here back then but I visited frequently and it was awful! Your fake nostalgia for the grittiness of urban life can go burn in a fire made from hobo shit.

Another stupid quote:

"The unique urban features that have made San Francisco so appealing to a new generation of digital workers—its artistic ferment, its social diversity, its trailblazing progressive consciousness—are deteriorating, driven out of the city by the tech boom itself, and the rising real estate prices that go with it."

Wait, aren't techie types usually considered to be sort of trailblazing and progressive and friendly to the arts? What the hell are you talking about dude?

Okay, rents have gone up in my building by 50% in the last 2 years. It's bad. The building, that is. It's basically been a slum apartment for a hundred years and 3 families do live upstairs from me in one unit. I WISH they'd move out, because I can hear everything that goes on up there. Ugh. We have new employees who are trying to move to the city and there aren't any good options, most of them have ended up in Emeryville or Oakland. I certainly wouldn't recommend my own building. I only stay here because the rent is cheap because I moved here before this current boom. So here I am taking advantage of the very upside-down rental market that's contributing to the whole problem! I don't know what the long term fix is besides building a LOT more new buildings, which seems to be happening... But it's only happening because rents are high enough to justify new construction, which is good for non-tech jobs and city property tax revenue in the long term, right? Would you rather have a bunch of fenced off city blocks with nothing but empty holes in the ground on market street? There's a new Draft House Cinema moving into a theater that's been empty for like 20 years two blocks away from McSweeny's. You don't think that's awesome?

Eventually this mini-boom will end and that's going to suck WORSE than what's going on now. Oh man, it's going to suck. Maybe rents will go down then, but only if a lot of people lose jobs and move away. That's not good is it? In fact, that's a worst case scenario for the city. The cafe you were sitting in when you wrote that article will probably go out of business too. Is that what you'd prefer? Maybe one of those techies who moves to SF this year will invent an alternate fuel generator that runs off baby boomer hand wringing and then we'll all be amazed when you single handedly save the city.

Still, until recently there were dozens of empty city blocks that had no development at all on them. Many stalled projects are in progress now, and it is all going to be high priced brand new luxury stuff. 3 new buildings have been built within a block of my current location in the Mission just in the last year. Sure, they're small and overpriced, and maybe only rich techie types can afford them but I'm FINE with that. When the people who can afford it move in to those places, they'll free up space in the dumps they moved out of and things will probably equalize in a couple of years, and that's probably the best case scenario.