[macspoofing]

This is a quintessential embarrassment of riches. San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? What's the solution here? Not have tech companies that employ thousands of people (for upper-middle class wages) in the area?! Not have thousands of young educated people from all over the country and the world, want to move to, work and live in the city? Not have those employees wanting to live in the city, but instead go down the route of the 1950-1980s generations and settle suburbia, and leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden?

Even in this specific case, what's wrong with a corporation providing a mass transit option to their workers so they don't have to drive in and needlessly congest the roads and pollute the environment.

[rtpg]

>leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden

The companies aren't in downtown, they're out 40 miles away instead, so not paying local taxes or helping the local economy. Instead you just have the workers who basically just sleep in SF, paying property taxes but not even opting to using the public transportation to make it better.

> San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about?

Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness, really shitty public transportation, and dysfunctional regulations that end up causing rent to be even higher.

If you told anybody of a city where most of the world's innovation happen, you'd at least imagine a city with a functional system of mass transportation, but we can't seem to even get that right. San Fran should be the best city in the world.

The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. People spend a lot of money where they end up working.

[macspoofing]

>The companies aren't in downtown

The employees live in the city.

>Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness

None of that is caused by having Google in the area. This is a cultural and a government regulatory problem (municipal, and state and federal to lesser extent).

>The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there.

If you're an employee you spend money where you live, not where you work. It would be nice for San Fran if all engineers worked in San Fran as well, but you can't have everything. Plus it wouldn't be so nice for Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc. In fact, those municipalities have more to complain about since they can argue they are nothing more than commuter cities.

San Fran should count their blessings.

[mickt]

>If you're an employee you spend money where you live, not where you work

During the work day most of these people are 40 miles outside SF on self-sufficient campuses, often with free food. That means that during the week they're not in downtown SF supporting local cafes, coffee shops etc. But the same argument can be used for any commuter community, in this case it's reverse of many cities where people commute into a city.

[dredmorbius]

leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden?

In the case of San Francisco, this is most definitely not the case. Downtown office space (especially in fashionable areas) is in high demand, rents are high, vacancies low.

Of course, the city is small enough that once you get outside the relatively small historic downtown (the Financial District) and the new downtown (SOMA), there is older and less-featured office space. Even this is under high demand.

And of course there's the push of office space into traditionally industrial areas such as Mission Bay (UCSF, Salesforce.com). These are almost suburban in their single-use planning presently, though that might change.

Though reachable via CalTrain, BART service favors downtown SF and the near SOMA neighborhoods.

And as I've said, the bus protests themselves are really asinine.

[macspoofing]

>n the case of San Francisco, this is most definitely not the case. Downtown office space (especially in fashionable areas) is in high demand, rents are high, vacancies low.

That's not what I meant. In the last twenty years, "the downtown" has been rediscovered in most North American cities as a place that people want to work AND live in. Contrast this to the 1950-1990 period in which the thing to do was to live in suburban neighborhoods and commute to work.

[dredmorbius]

Sure, I'll agree with you there.

The 1950-1990 period also corresponded with cheap oil (actually, that persisted through the late 1990s), abundant suburban real estate (prices started climbing earlier), freeway and highway construction (which congestion clawed back at beginning in the 1960s and progressively over the years).

The back-to-the-city movement actually had its roots in the yuppie trend of the 1980s, though it's been gathering steam with time. Downtowns in many major US cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, as well as San Francisco) have have seen significant revivals over this period.