Which is why Detroit is a thriving city, and hilly San Francisco is run down and derelict...? Maybe 100 years ago that was some kind of advantage, but not these days in the industries that SV relies on.
Maybe 100 years ago that was some kind of advantage
Interesting choice of date. 100 years ago SF was rebuilding from the giant earthquake that had leveled most of the city three years before.
So, yeah, Detroit's got certain topographical advantages. People just can't remember that, because essentially none of the current residents of the Bay Area were living there in 1906, and human memory is short. But there may come a day when you remember. It'll be one day after one third of the buildings fall down and the water taps stop working.
And now for the public service announcement: If you live in the Bay Area, stockpile some drinking water and bolt your shelves to the wall!
There are two things wrong with that. First, Loma Prieta was not the big one. It was a moderately big one, certainly destructive to some parts of the Bay Area, but nowhere near the size of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. [...] The new report also says that the next one will most likely strike farther north than Loma Prieta, somewhere between San Jose and Santa Rosa on either side of the Bay. The epicenter of the October 1989 quake was in a sparsely populated area. The next one, according to the study, will likely be centered in a more populated area.
Hilliness is not an economic factor at all. Well, perhaps with the exception of some hill towns in central Italy that are still fairly inaccessible, I don't think it really matters in this day and age, in our industry, except for the fact that it makes a place more pleasant to live for many people, like me.
This is where I live now, and the economy isn't that bad:
My question was: "How is SV's topography better than Detroit's?". Your answer to that question was essentially that SV's advantage is hilliness:
SV has some things going for it [...] topography, that Detroit will never have. [...] The highest point in the entire state of Michigan is lower than the hills west of SV.