Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco

[Robert Mahnke]

I have lived in the Bay Area (Berkeley and San Jose) for most of the
last fifteen years, and used to commute to a job in downtown SF.  Now
I work at a big Silicon Valley company that runs buses for employees
who want to live in SF.  I think Solnit is generally fantastic, but I
had somewhat more fixed feelings about this piece.

It has cost way too much to live in SF for a long time now, before
Google.  Fifteen years ago, I wanted to live in SF but moved to
Berkeley instead.  A big part of the problem is that SF won't allow
denser housing.  I wish Solnit had talked about that.  A sentimental
preservationist attitude and basic NIMBYism makes things worse for
everyone.

Also, to defend the Googles of the world for running private buses
instead of using mass transit, the fundamental problem is with the
urban planning years ago that produced SIlicon Valley.  The density in
the Valley is way too low, which cripples mass transit down here.  The
train system was designed for commuters from the Peninsula to go to
work in SF.  Silicon Valley is zoned like a massive suburb, full of
single-family houses but if you're looking for an apartment, keep
looking.  That's not Google's fault.


On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 6:32 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary
>
> good piece on the effects of Google and its ilk on the culture of San
> Francisco. interesting contrast with Gold Rush in the 19th century and
> the mining rush in Wyoming, North Dakota and other places today. lots
> of Pynchonian echoes
>
> Rich
>
> 'All this is changing the character of what was once a great city of
> refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists. Like so
> many cities that flourished in the post-industrial era, it has become
> increasingly unaffordable over the past quarter-century, but still has
> a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics
> and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations– though we
> may be a relic population. Boomtowns also drive out people who perform
> essential services for relatively modest salaries, the teachers,
> firefighters, mechanics and carpenters, along with people who might
> have time for civic engagement. I look in wonder at the store clerks
> and dishwashers, wondering how they hang on or how long their commute
> is. Sometimes the tech workers on their buses seem like bees who
> belong to a great hive, but the hive isn’t civil society or a city;
> it’s a corporation.'
>
> Last summer, I went to look at a house for sale whose listing hadn’t
> mentioned that the house was inhabited. I looked in dismay at the
> pretty old house where a family’s possessions had settled like silt
> over the decades: drum set, Bibles, faded framed portraits, furniture
> grimed with the years, cookware, toys. It was a display of what was
> about to be lost. The estate agent was on the front steps telling
> potential clients that they wouldn’t even have to evict: just raise
> the rent far beyond what the residents can afford. Ye who seek homes,
> come destroy the homes of others more frail.