It's an understandable stance, but IMO a disastrous one.
I lived in SF for a year, and to be honest I found it to be somewhere between "cool" and "intolerable". The city is filled with transplants who, the moment they set foot in the fair city, turn around and try to slam the door shut behind themselves as hard as possible, and this has so many negative effects.
San Francisco is a city devoid of pragmatism - it is a fairy tale theme park run amok. Instead of getting more people to and from work faster, it is hostile to most forms of mass transit. It is hostile to the population growth necessary to un-fuck the city's transportation disaster (aka MUNI and BART).
A city is a naturally-arising conglomeration of people that will happen anywhere you combine places people want to live, with places where they can work. The key word here is people. The city has entirely forgotten that - zoning for new office spaces is onerous and slow. Zoning for housing developments nearly non-existent outside of Mission Bay. It has gone out of its way to act directly against the very basic interests of its constituency in favor of maintaining this picturesque, fairy tale backdrop of the 1930s frozen in time.
After experiencing the SF housing market first-hand I honestly have a changed view of the city. When you're just visiting, the old houses, the low density, the unique architectural style, it all feels so picturesque and lovely. Nowadays to me the city feels like a an embalmed corpse - superficially resembling some idealistic long-ago era while lacking any real semblance of function. It is utterly broken, mismanaged to absurdity, all so a small number of people can live in a slowly-crumbling fairy tale.
Nowadays I live in NYC, and frankly have no desire to go back to SF. It's cheaper (!!!), the city has done a remarkable job of preserving old architecture, mixing old with new (see: Hearst Building), and new development. There is a constant stream of development that keep both commercial and residential prices in relative check. And despite the loud cries of San Franciscans, the density and Manhanttanization has created no shortage of culture, interest, and unique neighborhoods.
Hardly surprising. After all, a city is primarily defined by its people, not colorful paints and period-architecture. Keeping people around, at the end of the day, is your best shot at preserving the spirit and character of a place than any sort of architecture.
I lived in SF for a year, and to be honest I found it to be somewhere between "cool" and "intolerable". The city is filled with transplants who, the moment they set foot in the fair city, turn around and try to slam the door shut behind themselves as hard as possible, and this has so many negative effects.
San Francisco is a city devoid of pragmatism - it is a fairy tale theme park run amok. Instead of getting more people to and from work faster, it is hostile to most forms of mass transit. It is hostile to the population growth necessary to un-fuck the city's transportation disaster (aka MUNI and BART).
A city is a naturally-arising conglomeration of people that will happen anywhere you combine places people want to live, with places where they can work. The key word here is people. The city has entirely forgotten that - zoning for new office spaces is onerous and slow. Zoning for housing developments nearly non-existent outside of Mission Bay. It has gone out of its way to act directly against the very basic interests of its constituency in favor of maintaining this picturesque, fairy tale backdrop of the 1930s frozen in time.
After experiencing the SF housing market first-hand I honestly have a changed view of the city. When you're just visiting, the old houses, the low density, the unique architectural style, it all feels so picturesque and lovely. Nowadays to me the city feels like a an embalmed corpse - superficially resembling some idealistic long-ago era while lacking any real semblance of function. It is utterly broken, mismanaged to absurdity, all so a small number of people can live in a slowly-crumbling fairy tale.
Nowadays I live in NYC, and frankly have no desire to go back to SF. It's cheaper (!!!), the city has done a remarkable job of preserving old architecture, mixing old with new (see: Hearst Building), and new development. There is a constant stream of development that keep both commercial and residential prices in relative check. And despite the loud cries of San Franciscans, the density and Manhanttanization has created no shortage of culture, interest, and unique neighborhoods.
Hardly surprising. After all, a city is primarily defined by its people, not colorful paints and period-architecture. Keeping people around, at the end of the day, is your best shot at preserving the spirit and character of a place than any sort of architecture.