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Comment by flomo | Hacker News Reader

I think this quote really nails the mentality in the city:

> As political scientist and longtime San Francisco observer Richard DeLeon puts it:

San Francisco has emerged as a “semi-sovereign city” — a city that imposes as many limits on capital as capital imposes on it. Mislabeled by some detractors as socialist or radical in the Marxist tradition, San Francisco’s progressivism is concerned with consumption more than production, residence more than workplace, meaning more than materialism, community empowerment more than class struggle. Its first priority is not revolution but protection — protection of the city’s environment, architectural heritage, neighborhoods, diversity, and overall quality of life from the radical transformations of turbulent American capitalism.

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> protection of the city’s environment, architectural heritage, neighborhoods, diversity, and overall quality of life from the radical transformations of turbulent American capitalism

...and ironically creating some of America's highest market rents in the process.

Sure it's semi-ridiculous to frame this in terms of left "progressivism", especially as the waterfront battles are being fought by rich people who live in skyscrapers who do not want other skyscrapers blocking their views.

But I think the sentiment is broadly popular because it gets the heart of why people fall in love with San Francisco. It's not just the community (whatever community), it's the housing stock, the 'perfect' density, the hills, the views, the shops and restaurants, the smell of the air. That's what makes San Francisco San Francisco. One hundred years ago, Los Angeles looked a lot like SF. But they replaced 90% of the victorians, they flattened the hills, they built freeways everywhere. San Francisco was spared that, largely because the people fought back, and now the people want to fight to preserve what was saved.

I'm of mixed-feelings about it. The Bay Guardian always warns of "Manhattanization", but the alternative endpoint is turning into a huge version of Carmel By The Sea.

I guess my problem is I rather like Manhattan and if rents got cheaper in the process it seems like wins all around to me :-)

I understand that other people don't feel that way, but at the same time I think if people were told the choices, which is basically Manhattanization and $1500/mo rent or stay the course and pay $3k/mo, people on the whole would pick the former.

But because it's framed in terms of 'preserving our heritage', it's easy for people to wishfully think that they can keep things the same for free.

Keep in mind this didn't just start up when Twitter moved into town. It's a long war that has been fought for 50-60 years now, and the preservation forces have won nearly every battle and aren't planning on surrendering.

I upvoted kijin's comment. If you want to build another Manhattan full of gigantic buildings with computer cubicles and tiny apartments, do it in LA or somewhere, because it's probably never going to happen in SF.

Is this really what would happen? I guess if they could mass produce them all at once it might. But it seems like every new condo or apartment building that is built in SF is more expensive than everything else already available.

Yeah, but they push down the rents on the older apartments. At least thats the way it worked in my city, which has a similar housing situation.

New construction is unlikely to push down rents anywhere in the current market environment in SF. But it does limit upward pressure on rents elsewhere. The bigger supply also is likely to lead to big price cuts during the next crash.

And new construction becomes old within a few years. There are plenty of perfectly serviceable condo towers of unfashionable age in downtown Chicago with very reasonably priced apartments.

The problem is that they are rent-controlled. The article actually states that those newer properties are majority market-based. The gap between the market rate and the rent-control rate actually increases. This puts pressure on landlords to increase rents for these rent-controlled tenants using 1 of the 8 means prompting evictions. This is what is causing the unrest, despite allocating a significant percentage of new developments to affordable housing.

The standard NIMBY-ism is "Yes, please Manhattanize and lower rents! But not in my neighborhood, do it in other parts of town". (repeated by all residents of the city)

Just look at BART. Very popular in the polls, approved in a landslide, dismal ridership. Why? Because everybody thought that other people riding BART was a great idea- they had no intention of riding themselves.

Your BART example is the opposite of NIMBY-ism: wanting/allowing something in your back yard that is not used by you.

NIMBY-ism about BART was manifested by the peninsula towns, which refused to allow BART in the first place (due to misguided fears of easy access to their towns by transients, potential criminals, etc.)

It's still the NIMBY-ism mentality though. "I want this change, and I want other people to bear the brunt of it", i.e. other people will be the riders.

How are the riders, who willfully chose to do so, some how bearing the "brunt"?

As opposed to those whose homes and businesses were Eminent Domain'd to make way for the construction, their nearby neighbors who now have loud above-ground train noise beginning at 5am, etc.

By being the ones to make the lifestyle change and travel by public transit. Sure, public transit isn't torture, but the point is person A is always eager to volunteer person B for change that benefits person A. (And person B feels the same way about person A)

Also, I doubt much eminent domain was exercised/abused during the construction. Have you noticed the way the tracks weave, go underground here, run in the middle of a freeway there? Terminals in the outskirts of town? They certainly exercised that power, but it's not like BART runs right through the middle of town.

Not sure why you feel BART has dismal ridership, as the transbay tube runs at nearly full capacity during rush hour.

That's good to hear, perhaps matters have improved recently.

(Left the Bay ten years ago)

http://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/images/basic_page/AV...

SF would really only need to build up to the density of Brooklyn to house everyone reasonably, no need for Manhattanization (at least for a few decades).

"...the smell of the air".

Ok, I live in Europe, but I was under the impression that SF had a bit of a smog problem.

No, not really - the prevalent winds are from the west, and to the west is half a world of ocean. Pretty much any pollutants from SF itself are going to get blown east in short order.

Of course, they have a fog problem, but that's a different matter!

Perhaps you are thinking of Los Angeles?

I've lived here 10 years and there has been smog for 2 weeks of that time (during the mega drought this winter, when there was no wind or precipitation for months straight).

fair enough, I stand corrected.

The air in SF is very clean. The prevailing winds come from the very-wide pacific ocean and blow all the pollution across the Bay into Oakland and Berkeley.

It does however have a fog problem, because those nice clean prevailing winds are quite cold and moisture condenses rise when encountering the hills along the coast. This is in fact the major source of water for the coastal giant sequoias.

"Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are distributed along a narrow band of California's northern coast. During the summer these red giants take advantage of the fog to capture water out of the air—and summer is the critical growing season for the trees, despite being California's dry season."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fog-that-nourishes...

Giant redwoods? I thought Giant sequoias grown in the Sierra nevada.

giant redwoods = coast redwoods = sequoia sempervirens

Giant Redwoods = Giant Sequioa = sequoiadendron gigantium

I assume the case difference is just typing and not some sort of case-sensitivity in taxonomy.

Seems like there is some imprecise naming going on which is why I wasn't sure.

In my experience, urine is a bigger problem with the smell of SF's air. Surely that's localized, though.

Right state, wrong city.

Los Angeles is the California city that is known for its smog problem. The US is big, so its easy to get the various cities confused.

It doesn't help that California is huge. San Francisco to Los Angeles is a 381 Mile (613.16 km) journey... which is 20% longer than the distance between Paris, France and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

> the smell of the air

best described as "an open sewer"

I don't see anything ironic about it. It's pretty basic economics that higher [scarcity * demand] leads to higher prices.

Someone thought that all that protection was free?

Lets be honest here.

Its merely a means for the very rich to protect themselves. They simply limit who can live near them by dressing it up in fancy sound good, do good, terms. Protecting the environment, protecting history, and all, is just nice speak for keeping people we don't want away.

As to one highly rated post about the benefits of socialism, it never has or will work. Socialism and capitalism are little different in the end, the first merely concentrates wealth and power in the hands of politicians directly, the later just adds another class that benefits.

> Protecting the environment, protecting history, and all, is just nice speak for keeping people we don't want away.

I think this is a pretty groundless claim. San Francisco has been one of the most tolerant cities of alternative lifestyles and even homeless people compared to any other American city.

It's easy to claim that the rich just want their gated communities, but if you can't even address the claim that they want to preserve the existing quality of the city without claiming a hidden ulterior class motive then how are we supposed to have an honest dialogue? You can't just unilaterally declare a whole group of people to be lying about their motivations and expect anything productive come out of it.

Someone better educated than me, please comment, but this sounds something like Paris. The old section of Paris has a great deal of law protecting its preservation. Would it be progress to tear down the Eiffel tower, or the Arc de Triomphe?

When it was first built, the Eiffel Tower was decried as destroying the beauty of the city. And the Etoile of boulevards radiating from the Arc were built as part of one of the biggest demolish-all-the-history public works projects of all time.

If those laws had been on the books in 1850, or if the Paris of that time had subscribed to modern-day SF's change-nothing philosophy, the city you love would not exist in anything like its current form.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eiffel_Tower&mobil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Paris

This seems like a perfect example of the adage that "Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance, Americans think 100 years is a long time." Those particular Paris icons are extremely recent, relatively speaking. If Paris's timeline were fit into that of San Francisco, the Eiffel Tower would have been completed in 2001.

The fact remains, much of the Paris we love today was only made possible by their willingness in the 1800s to tear out so much of their history and build something better.

Yes, I'm really just reinforcing your point. These examples of historic, static landmarks are relatively new.

Yes, but the Etoile neighborhood is rather sterile if you ask me, with the big streets and lack of businesses. There is the Champs-Elysee with car dealships and over-priced cafes, and then the other boulevards with embassies and high-end apartments. It's all pretty and well done, but who's to say it wouldn't be a vibrant, diverse older neighborhood like the Marais if they'd left it.

It becomes a problem when you're protecting the entire city rather than just a few key areas.

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