Why Really Smart People Should Plan Cities
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The legendary San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, once said, “San Francisco isn’t what it used to be, but it never was.” He captured, in a few words, the city’s relentless innovation and openness to new kinds of thought, lifestyles, and creativity. Things that started here, especially in the arts, have inspired the world; the tech industry, expanding here from its Silicon Valley origins, took over the world.
There’s an economic downturn in San Francisco that shows no sign of relenting. Every few months, another city institution, like a century old department store, shuts its doors for the last time. There are 61,000 empty and expensive rental units, only available to tenants who can prove they make, reliably, three times the rent. Consider how many well-paid people have lost their jobs recently and are having trouble finding new ones. AI is replacing a lot of workers— badly—and for an example of how badly, try calling the DMV with a question requiring special advice.
Since San Francisco has always been open to new ideas, we welcomed the tech industry and delighted in its innovations. But then it grew more expensive, when you couldn’t just buy Microsoft Word any more and got saddled with Office. And before long, it became a weapon of surveillance, data mining, grifters, misinformation, privacy violations, propaganda, and advertising. Most recently, it’s riddled with theft, as AI companies steal writers’ online work to train their LLMs, without crediting authors or offering remuneration. But because it was so fascinating in the beginning, we let them own us, which brought about the final coup de grace of capitalism: the top seven companies on the stock exchange are all tech, valued in billions. Very few people have almost all the money, and that hardly keeps the economy running smoothly, does it?
San Francisco needs some innovative thinking to find a way out of this mess. The old business models aren’t working, and the city’s decision makers are just waiting for everything to get back to normal. Developers can’t wait to put up buildings for which there are no tenants. These powerful figures just don’t have the imagination to conceive of alternatives to what used to work for them.
This is the time for visionaries, writers, intellectuals, scientists, artists, and academics to lead the discussion, instead of critiquing it.
Visionaries see possibilities of what hasn’t been done before, as do many writers. Intellectuals spend their entire lives thinking things through and contemplating consequences. Academics have immense knowledge of how things changed in the world and which changes improve matters. Scientists know what we need to do to save the planet and human life. There are some smart people in politics , who do have good ideas, but not enough. They need the wealth of insight from people who have dedicated their lives to knowing things and creating new ideas. We’re in terrific need of new ideas, because the old ones are facing retirement.
San Francisco lost its openness to new ideas when the cost of living made it untenable for people devoted to thinking outside the box. But of course, outside the box is where new ideas come from. And since the decision makers we have left are neither aesthetes nor intellectuals, we get things like this:
Proposed construction on the city’s northern shore.
The image above illustrates what happens when people who only care about money get to do whatever they want. An artist would look at the rendering and say it’s hideous, ruins an iconic lovely skyline, and destroys the view for people who have enjoyed it all their lives. Academics and scientists would know perfectly well that the ground on which the developer wants to build is landfill. Anyone who can remember back to the earthquake of 1989 would remember that when the earthquake hit, single family houses on that northern strip of landfill collapsed. So what is a gigantic mound of real estate going to do when the next earthquake happens? It’s could take down the entire north coast of the city. Also, good luck to the developers getting insurance for anything on landfill. It’s getting harder and harder to get insurance here. Environmentally, much of the city is in trouble, thanks to the leadership of people who just weren’t smart enough and a department of building inspection openly for sale.
Here’s another prime example of developer idiocy: the Millennium Tower. Built on landfill on the city’s eastern shore, the 58-story building started to tilt soon after construction. By 2016, a golf ball could roll at epic speed from one side of a unit to another. The owners were obliged to undertake massive changes in the structure to make up for the fact that they were too cheap to sink piles all the way to bedrock. It has continued to tilt further since. And now critics are saying that the building needs to be taken down before it collapses and kills thousands of people and destroys countless buildings around it. This is what happens when you have greedy people calling the shots and not smart ones.
This is what happens when you leave decision making in the hands of greedy nitwits.
What San Francisco used to be was charming, built with love, care, the finest materials, and embellished with things of beauty. What the city is now is a playground for billionaires and salivating developers. A neighbor in North Beach overheard a conversation between a couple of this ilk, quite accidentally, talking about property purchased on the eastern stretch of Broadway, which resulted in tearing down the only firehouse in the area. One of them said to the other, “This would be a great time to have some big fires in North Beach.” Then they could tear down all those dopey Victorians and turn the neighborhood into a mass of dull high rises, which the mayor thinks is a great idea. He is opposing giving the neighborhood historic status, because that would keep his developer friends from tearing it all down. We voted for him because he was a fifth generation local, who we assumed would support conservation. Never assume. They’ve already decided which blocks to tear down and replace with their boring taste. They have a map of which ones they want to take from people who have lived there for a lifetime and have no desire to leave.
Herb Caen was right: this city isn’t what it used to be, and never was. What it has been in this iteration is a boom town for developers, who buy approval for their lack of aesthetic or educated judgment. Our city government continues to allow corruption, and so we get things like Millennium Tower. But soon this current phase of the city’s history will give way to the next. The citizens are rising up, organizing, and fighting developers, destruction, and corruption, while fighting for preservation, beauty, and, like me, for the return of the artists who made this city glorious.
Herb Caen said it best: “The beauty is slowly vanishing, but enough remains, more than enough, as the lights come on and the bridges turn golden and a pinkish glow softens the hard lines of the marching buildings that could almost stamp out the spirit of a great city. Almost, but not quite.: