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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

nationalreview.com

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Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#201

Post by manishsharan »

Finnucane wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #13

San Francisco is a bonsai kitten. It wants to grow into a major world city like NYC, LA, or Tokyo, but its older residents are steadfastly opposed and want to keep it in a jar so it stays cute. The result is a painful deformed mess. I don't really think city planning boards can control how cities grow. A city is a living thing. If it "wants" to grow, let it grow. If it doesn't, I don't think it can be forced. Detroit…

I've lived in New York. Why would anyone want San Francisco to become like that? Is NYC cheap, clean, free of homeless people? No, it is crowded, smelly, expensive, and only livable for the extremely wealthy.

NYC however has excellent connectivity to Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. I used to live in LI and my commute was pretty decent and my rent in LI was very affordable.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#203

Post by ALittleLight »

kerkeslager wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are not the problem, San Franciscans are the problem. By all accounts, Texas regulates companies less than California. But Texas is at the national average in cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, despite being a majority-minority state, while California tops the charts in poverty: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevor... . As compared to California, Texas also has much higher rates o…

There are numerous factors in play, and I don't think you can conclude that regulation is the only factor in play here. Texas is dealing with a much greater supply/demand ratio of a key resource: land. Given a wealth of resources, nearly any system would work--that doesn't mean the system is better.

Are you suggesting California is short on land or comparing the state of Texas to the city of San Francisco?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#204

Post by supernova87a »

1) Affordable housing 2) Population density 3) Reasonable work-home distances

You get to choose 2 of the 3 constraints. Much of California's political situation is about people believing they can buck the constraints and have it all. You cannot, as long as there's free movement in this country. People come here for jobs, and the old residents demanding that the constraints all be met is causing things to go down the toilet. And people are getting angry at the failure of government to take a position against fantastical thinking and actually solve the problems.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#205

Post by enobrev »

rayiner wrote: post #168
W-Stool wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few days in NYC recently and I could not believe how clean the city was compared to SF. The difference, at least where I explored, was amazing.

New York is filthy. Try visiting Chicago sometime.

I'm from Chicago and spent a third of my life in NYC. I'm honestly amazed at how clean NYC is.

The first time I ever saw a ticker-tape parade after the Yankees won the world series in 2000, I assumed NYC would be covered in paper for months. Everything was completely covered in paper! By the next morning you couldn't tell anything happened. Not a single scrap of paper anywhere on the streets or sidewalks.

Same thing after the annual West Indian Parade. After the parade, the streets of Canarsie are absolutely taken over by people partying, dancing, drinking, the floats pass back through the neighborhood, and it's just complete chaos. Next day: like nothing happened.

They have garbage cans on every corner, and most are managed regularly enough. My wife is from Queens and she constantly complains about how hard it is to find a public garbage can in Chicago. I never realized it before, but she'd absolutely right.

Also their snow is handled far more efficiently - even if you don't have an alderman or police chief on your block.

NYC is definitely dirtier than Chicago, but it's pretty damned clean, considering how many people there are in such a small space.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#206

Post by mcv »

dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

20 or 25 years ago, I heard San Francisco get described as "the Amsterdam of the western hemisphere", which put it high on the list of places I'd want to visit some day.

Sad to hear it's declined so much.

(In the mean time, Amsterdam seems to have improved a lot.)

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#207

Post by rlanday »

swarnie_ wrote: post #136
asdf21 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the only solution is a even higher population density?

Does SF have high population density? That's never been my impression from reading HN.

Yes, it does. Ignoring cities with fewer than 75,000 people, it’s the fourth most dense city in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Automobile-based suburban sprawl is the only functional development pattern in the US because we’re so bad at building and maintaining public transit systems.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#208

Post by hindsightbias »

davidw wrote: post #139
sidlls wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have visited a relatively "blue" urban area. What you describe doesn't match the reality in most of the rest of the state. And while there are pockets of segregation and racism in Northern California by and large there are very few places as diverse as the Bay Area on Earth, much less the rest of America and particularly the south.

Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the US, because they allow people - and not just wealthy people - to live there.

apples and oranges. Houston is over 600 sq miles, the metro area is 1000S.

If you’re going to compare SF and Texas, start with Highland Park, Bunker Hill, 78746 or the Montrose.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#209

Post by whateversclever »

wonderwonder wrote: post #131
asdf21 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Are Detroit and Baltimore dead? May as well be, for most intents and purposes.

I think this issue / attitude is a major problem with the US. Both Detroit and Baltimore have over 600k people living there, a lot of whom don't have the option to just pack up and go. To claim the cities are dead is a disservice to the very real adults and children living there. If the nation dropped its war on drugs and instead waged a war on poverty those cities would be able to thrive in a generation or two.

The United States began its War on Poverty in 1964, prior to the War on Drugs. It's been running for more than 50 years https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2014/03/19/the-wa...

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#210

Post by theNJR »

I particularly liked the top comment on the article (not mine):

> In the early seventies, the sport fishing Mecca of choice turned from the warm southern states where fish grew all year long, to oddly, some of the finger lakes in upstate New York. Record size fish were being taken almost daily. A sportsfisherman’s dream from lakes that unbeknownst to them had died ten yeas earlier from acid rain. With no new fish being born, the bottom of the food chain had already collapsed. With no small fish left for anglers to catch and release, eventually only the largest were left. Within a few years, the collapse was finally evident, and brutal for anyone who invested in a fishing lodge industry in the region.

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