[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.