[chubot]

Yeah it's way nicer to live up the hill a little, basically anywhere up a hill. The low-lying areas have "gravity" that attract bad things.

I made the same mistake moving to SF in 2002, until 2004. It was bad then -- and surprise, surprise, the places with the most availability are the least desirable.

The meme is that tech people are taking over SF. But it's also true that the city is crowded with old money, and new housing / new people starting in 2010 took some of the least desirable spots, including that part of 7th-8th and Mission.

I also biked, and a related thing I learned is you just have to get used to biking up and down hills. It helped my fitness a lot. If you bike in the low-lying areas, it's kind of a shitty experience too.

[sebmellen]

The only city where I haven’t found the “hill effect” to be true is Pittsburgh. It seems every hilltop area there is quite bad.

[nradov]

In many US cities, low lying areas near water (rivers, large lakes, oceans) were often used as cargo ports. Factories and other industrial facilities were then built nearby which made it easier to obtain raw materials and ship out finished products. And naturally low wage, blue collar workers tended to live near those jobs. Such areas were also at greater risk of flooding, and suffered more from air, water, and noise pollution. So, affluent people tended to build homes on higher ground away from the dirty waterfronts.

Now that trend has somewhat flipped. The US has deindustrialized and offshored most heavy industries. Stricter environmental laws have reduced pollution. And civil engineering measures have somewhat reduced flood risk. So, now waterfront residential areas have become expensive and fashionable.

This is just a general trend. We will still see exceptions in SF and other cities.

[chubot]

Two good examples of the flip are the Ferry Building in SF and Chelsea Market in Manhattan. Those used to be big industrial / shipping / cargo buildings but now sell upscale food :)

It's kind of funny how you see the same economic patterns play out in different cities over hundreds of years

Another pattern is that train stations and big US post offices are often in the oldest parts of town, and I think they have started to move over the years. That real estate is often extremely valuable, so the govt or business finds something else to do with it

[dima55]

In Brazil, the favelas are up on the hills. Unclear why it's this way in some places, but the opposite in others