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Comment by vonnik | Hacker News Reader

If anyone ever wondered what the symptoms of urban blight were before NYC became the mess it was in the 1970s, SF is exhibit A. The city's leadership has driven out its anchor businesses, tax base, corporate travelers, and much more. Federal bailouts are SF's only hope.

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> Federal bailouts are SF's only hope.

Wouldn't that just enable more of the policies that led to this?

And why would it need to be federal? This sounds more like a California problem from across the country.

Only the Feds have the money/ability to borrow. Newsom spent CA’s surplus.

Yes, it would enable more policies like this. For those involved in promulgating such policies, that is the whole point.

But even assuming they changed policy, I doubt SF can maintain basic govt operations without a bailout.

Yeah, but NYC came back and so will SF. Detroit likely didn’t make a return because of its undesirable climate, but I’m hard-pressed to see a future where SF isn’t relevant in 50 years.

Detroit and NYC have similar climates. Detroit is a little drier and a little colder. But they both have freezing winters, hot summers... The climate has nothing to do with their lack of a comeback.

The difference lies largely in public transit. NYC had strong transit bones despite a few decades of wayward highway prioritization. Transit enables higher urban densities which (can) carry more revenue per square foot.

The difference is the time period and the industries they were built around. NYC was the center of the banking universe, but banking didn’t become big the way we know it today until the 80s, which did a lot to pull NYC out of its rut. Detroit was built around manufacturing and automobiles, and American businesses have done everything they can to make eviscerate domestic manufacturing in their pursuit of profits.

I always thought it was lack of universities in Detroit. Henry Ford hated cities, “elites”, etc which is you don’t see a major Ford University in Detroit. There was no Leland Stanford or James Duke in Detroit. So no CMU, Case Western, etc. [1]

NYC has a few great universities which means it has a pipeline of students for high information/innovation business employees. Same with the Bay Area. Chicago, LA too. Detroit doesn’t really have any world class universities.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/could-a...

Detroit has UMich, where Larry Page of Google fame is an alum of (Ann Arbor is commuting distance from Detroit).

Also, all the conversations about Detroit vs NYC seem to forget the Riots of 1967.

> The riot resulted in 43 deaths, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 400 buildings destroyed

Entire neighborhoods were razed in the aftermath of that and White-Black relations deteriorated severely leading to an extreme amount of white flight.

If you visit Michigan, suburbs located outside of Wayne County like Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Troy, Hamtrack, and Windsor ON continue to have a vibrant economy, but Detroit (Wayne County) is economically dead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

What economy would you propose for a downtown core of tall office buildings in an American city post-pandemic and post-remote-work?

https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-yor...

> The contribution of such deterrence measures (the "stick") offers more explanation for the decline in New York City crime than the improvement in the economy, the authors conclude. Between 1990 and 1999, homicide dropped 73 percent, burglary 66 percent, assault 40 percent, robbery 67 percent, and vehicle hoists 73 percent. The authors' model manages to explain between 33 and 86 percent of those declines

NYC was founded as and continues to be a financial capital, its where deals are done, so that strong anchor among its overall diversified economy helped. SF is somewhat similar to Detroit in that their economies are less diversified but weather and geography is a major advantage.

NYC came back because the mayor imposed some draconian laws - laws that would not be palatable in San Francisco.

Or perhaps because of the finance industry boom of the 80s onwards?

Research supports the draconian narrative.

> The contribution of such deterrence measures (the "stick") offers more explanation for the decline in New York City crime than the improvement in the economy, the authors conclude.

https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-yor...

Detroit never came back to what it was, but it became something different and in many ways it's better than it was at any other time in the last 50 years.

Peep shows and pawn shops for downtown SF?

I haven’t willingly gone to a mall in 20 years. Who goes there? Mall walkers? Are there still arcades?

Faster, please.

Malls in suburbs are extremely busy.

I'm about as pro urban as you get. I live two miles from downtown Portland. But I have noticed that a lot of urbanites pretend that malls are doomed. This is a lie. Suburban malls are clearly doing great while urban malls, including those in dense walkable areas are faltering. In fact, all downtown areas are faltering at least on the west coast .

Portland would have a great downtown if they got the unhoused population under control. The complete inaction of Portland's government to do anything substantial to actually fix this problem is what made Portland go from a very happening and up & coming city to a nightmare.

As an Oregonian living now just outside of Portland (near Nike FWIW) I'm hoping for the day Multnomah and Portland get their act together. Such a great area to live otherwise.

Kinda not surprised why Bend blew up in population though, once I realized what was going on

what do you mean "once I realized what was going on"?

> The decline of the American mall has left just 700 still standing. Soon there may be just 150 left.

https://www.businessinsider.com/american-mall-decline-150-le...

In the winter the Mall of America is a big deal for me and my kids. Big nice space to walk in.

Suburbinites still drive. Have to drive, to go anywhere. The WFH movement is a cancer to urban areas. Always crawling over brown boxes I am.

There's a lot in between. I live in a suburb but am also a block from a grocery store, coffee shop, pastry shop, pizzeria, brewery.....

Situation seems to be a lot different in Australia. All malls, especially those in the CBDs, are completely packed all the time. Though iirc, Australia has far fewer malls per capita. So perhaps the US simply built too many malls and is now correcting to something sane.

Westfield SF is not like the failing / dated suburban malls most people think of. It's extremely nice. High end stores. Beautiful architecture. And it's right on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. There's a food emporium on the lower floor, with high quality restaurants, not your typical food court faire. Nationwide there's a trend for dated 80s malls to close, but high end malls like Westfield? They're thriving elsewhere.

> They're thriving elsewhere.

I'm not so sure, based on my anecdata:

In my Midwest city, out of 8 traditional malls I can think of...

- 3 have totally closed and are being torn down

- 4 are drastically lower quality, lost their anchors, and have much lower traffic

- 1 is still doing about as well as it did 30 years ago.

Where in the Midwest?

In the entire IL-WI-IN region the only high end mall I can think of that is even remotely comparable to Valley Fair or Santana Row in San Jose is Oakbrook Center by McD's HQ, but that still feels a bit trashy compared to some of the ones in California (no offense meant at Chicagoland btw)

The upscale malls here in California have pivoted to cater to Asian and Latino tastes and sentiments - both are communities which are fine with Malls as a social construct. The kinds of upscale malls here like the Westfield in La Jolla and San Jose or Santana Row are definetly catering to someone who has experienced malls in Asia and Latin America, where it is a much more upscale experience.

The types that cater to Western sentiments seem to be dying though in the Bay Area (eg. Westfield SF didn't pivot unlike Stonestown Galleria and is now dying).

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