San Francisco Renaissance: Yet Another Gold Rush?

Abstract

San Francisco, in 2016, is currently enjoying what AOL founder Steven Case calls the ‘third Internet wave’, a phenomenon that is dramatically reinventing ‘the City’, as local residents affectionately call it. This latest boom is attracting tens of thousands of ‘digital gold miners’ from around the world — entrepreneurs, start-ups, investors, corporate ventures and regional development agencies — who are tapping this lucrative mother lode to ‘strike it rich’. However, this instant wealth has not come without serious problems. The influx of tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and billions of dollars of venture funding from around the world has led to skyrocketing rents, urban gentrification, evictions, overloaded transit systems, an exodus of teachers, police and other public service workers, local grassroots opposition to development and growing income disparities. Fundamental issues are being raised by San Francisco’s current ‘Gold Rush’: whether economic growth can continue without adequate housing, schools and public services; how cities will be affected by global warming; whether these trends be reversed or if they are inevitable; what policies would be required to address poverty and climate change. How these issues could be addressed is considered here.