[HN Gopher] Downtown San Francisco is in trouble
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Downtown San Francisco is in trouble
Author : mathgenius
Score : 23 points
Date : 2022-10-23 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| gumby wrote:
| Until dotcom, SF was just a bedroom community for the valley,
| plus a few legacy operations like the stock exchange, banking,
| and lawyering. The nightlife was fun.
|
| There's no reason not to return to that situation and the market
| should drive it. Some commercial->residential conversions (not
| easy with a skyscraper, but in some cases doable), some clubs
| opening up in super-cheap, formerly expensive space, some artists
| moving back across the bay, and SF could be back.
|
| It's not like it hasn't reinvented itself before. The dotcommers
| just squeezed too much of the weird out of the place.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I sleep easier at night knowing that I removed anything that's
| heavily into commercial real estate from my 401k.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Tweet is about SF but the core issues are probably relevant to
| most US cities that designed their downtown cores around wholly
| commercial business office instead of mixed use and which are now
| increasingly desolate as WFH continues to grab a significant
| share of workers and doesn't seem to be going away.
| david927 wrote:
| I know this is about how remote work and that we don't know how
| bad the collapse of commercial real estate will be -- how huge
| the tsunami will be, but the sea has pulled back miles from the
| shore.
|
| But in this case, for SF, it's been exacerbated by the deep
| poverty and mental illness that sleeps on its streets. It could
| be America's most beautiful city but the frog of its decline has
| been slowly boiled for decades and now it's, frankly, gross. We
| were making so much money that we covered our eyes at the
| destitution around us as it got worse and worse. So when was the
| compassion, the empathy, ever going to kick in? Now, when it
| finally hits us in the pocketbook?
| [deleted]
| proc0 wrote:
| > We were making so much money that we covered our eyes at the
| destitution around us as it got worse and worse
|
| I experienced SF leadership protecting them and giving them
| more rights to live outside and do anything without
| consequences. It seems they tried really hard to solve the
| problem for at least a decade, and it only got worse with every
| policy and decision they made. The solution to the problem has
| to factor in incentives that may lead to worse outcomes for the
| city, and I don't think that has been done properly.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| There is no "compassion or empathy"
|
| This is a lie that was sold to the public for votes (power) and
| taxes (money).
|
| The only thing that "will be done" about the homeless and crime
| in SF is eventually someone will come to power who will get rid
| of them. Not the problem - but the people.
|
| It will not be compassionate but it will happen. This is what
| inevitably comes to these places in which the incumbents in
| power are unwilling or uninterested in solving anything.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This is not what we should do and of we can avoid it we
| should, but I agree that this is pragmatically what typically
| happens, my understanding is that it was what happened as
| part of Mayor Bloomburg's "clean up" of new york. It didn't
| solve of get rid of the problems, it just pushed them out if
| certain areas like Manhatten anf Brooklyn elsewhere to the
| outer boroughs and Jersey.
| nynx wrote:
| San Fraction is such an interesting place and could be so much
| better if real estate and housing was significantly cheaper
| more_corn wrote:
| Once the city collapses again housing and real estate will be
| cheaper. It won't be very enjoyable though.
| mint2 wrote:
| I'm oddly annoying by the repeated use of the term "negative
| flywheel". It sounds like the worst of business buzz jargon
| nonsense and replaces the much more self evident and well known
| term "negative feedback loop". But being in a tweeticle it's not
| surprising.
| leplen wrote:
| A negative feedback loop is one that tends to keep things in a
| steady state. The thing being described here is actually a
| positive feedback loop with negative consequences.
| mint2 wrote:
| Point noted, yes it's more a reinforcing feedback loop aka
| positive feedback loop. Although with more consideration it's
| more of a system collapse than a feedback loop. I suppose one
| could credibility debate the terminology but "potayto"
| "potaato".
|
| I looked up "negative flywheel" and is corporate mba jargon,
| it seems to be an evolution of the business management term
| "flywheel effect" but for negative situations... except it's
| more contrived because the business world already defined
| that as a "doom loop" which at least makes more intuitive
| sense.
| larryliu wrote:
| but property prices of SF are still 10x-40x my little town's main
| street. If the situation in SF downtown is "trouble", small towns
| are in much deeper trouble since the beginning of time.
|
| Policy has consequences. Yes, nice consequences for hundreds of
| emerging towns and neighborhoods, while SF get what it deserves
| from decades of anti-housing anti-building exclusive policy.
|
| Urbanism means inclusion and cooperation. Urbanism doesn't mean
| give favor policy to well developed cities who allow vested
| interests to exploit newcomers.
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(page generated 2022-10-23 23:01 UTC)