There are two things I find unique about San Francisco: the relatively progressive tone of local politics and the closely associated tolerance for nonconformity and bohemianism; and the relatively integrated residential and public space. Rebecca Solnit’s recent essay at least touches on how the two may be connected. The conflict between San Francisco’s prevailing political and social values, and the values prevailing among techies, has been commented upon quite a bit here already.
In short, I think we’re afraid of San Francisco being conquered by the world of Little Boxes, a song inspired, coincidentally, by housing developments around Daly City, just south of San Francisco and north of Silicon Valley on the peninsula.
As a child, hearing that song, I was excited by the idea of the university, which sounded like an interesting place that was neither suburban tract housing nor a regimented workplace. That meant I quite missed the criticism of the role of universities in training for conformity, but my romanticized ideal of universities was not without merit; the civic life around many university campuses is quite different from that elsewhere, and that is related to the important role college students generally play in social movements.
What I’ve long found striking about San Francisco, distinct from other places I’ve lived, is how in many neighborhoods in the city, I always see people walking around, in the parks and public spaces, and in the cafes and restaurants and shops, from morning to night. The typical pattern in much of the city is for buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above – a common pattern and an ancient one in many cities, but not one I see in many California communities. Instead, in most of California, I see residential neighborhoods sharply divided from anything else, and seeing other people or doing much of anything requires driving for miles.
I sometimes find it alarming when I talk to my co-workers in IT, or other people who commute to work, that they feel little or no connection to the community they live in, and find people with different lifestyles or different backgrounds, from outside their loop of household, extended family, and workplace, to be threatening. Worse, I’ve met middle class families in San Francisco, with posh homes, but who regard much of the city they live in and many of the people who live there, as threatening, in need of being cleaned up and brought under control.
Which, come to think of it, makes attacking the Google buses seem ironic, and quite the wrong approach to the problem – at least once past the initial stage of calling attention to a problem.
