It is the only true city in the area, where younger people can have a urban lifestyle... the rest is depressing suburbia.... San Jose, and the rest feels like a cultural grave. The only other town that is walkable is Berkley, but that is too small for hosting large companies. Also, parts of Oakland, but the city itself has major governance issues, and crime in general.

I think NYC and Austin are booming right now. While nyc is a world class city, the 'progressives' have taken over the NY State legislation, and personally it is worrying.

While some of the legislation might be long overdue, and good, there are many parts of the 'progressive' movement that is just nihilistic, and destructive in the long run and it might end up goin the route of SF. So, this year will be the wait and see year on how NY will move forward. If it goes the way of SF (with destructive policies) it might not look good.

But, NYC-ers are more rational, and both of the leading candidates for Mayor seem to be more in the centrist, or center left camp, and the far left / super progressive ones are not doing well.

NYC is just about as bad at housing as the Bay Area is, but the problem hasn't gone on for as many decades so you haven't noticed yet. NYC population is actually shrinking for this reason, and there are several silly rules (not by modern progressives) like high IZ for "affordability" that prevent all construction, and I think they're about to essentially ban new hotels.

Btw, the reason progressives didn't take over before is that Cuomo was actually conspiring to make his own party the minority in the legislature, because he thought if he was forced to ever actually do anything it'd hurt a future presidential run.

When you have young kids 'depressing suburbia' can be a feature not a bug.

Until they need to go places during the day and your whole life becomes dedicated to driving them around.

Seems worth the additional safety and access to nature. Especially considering the alternative in my case (SF.)

The leading cause of death in children is driving.

Especially in the suburbs, I'd imagine, which would imply they're largely avoiding other causes. Great! What you should care about is P(D|city) vs P(D|suburb)

> and crime in general

That's no different in SF

I thought Oakland was worse

Oakland is a big place. It varies by neighborhood same as San Francisco. Most is fine, certainly no worse than the Tenderloin.

I'm living in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Oakland, and I would definitely not consider it "fine". The area is beautiful, but we're plagued by gunpoint robberies, burglaries, dumping, etc — people coming in and treating us as a place to loot and leave.

I love Oakland, but I'm gone as soon as our rent is up. There's a general lawlessness here that's incredibly frustrating.

I'm sorry you've had that experience, where I lived in Oakland nothing like that happened with any regularity. And I did not live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Oakland.

But I mean, it is a city. These things happen in cities, I just don't see how it could credibly be claimed to be worse than San Francisco when the geographical variability is so high.

Anything I saw in Oakland was no worse than any other city I have ever lived in. I don't really know a better way to put it, I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm saying it's as fine as anywhere else of comparable density.

I appreciate your viewpoint, but I want to push back on "this just happens in cities". The only other place I experienced this level of criminality was when I was living in South America. (And I'm certainly not saying SF is much better.)

I'm originally from Europe, and have lived in and visited a huge variety of cities around the world. This level of anti-social behaviour / criminality is not normal, or acceptable in most developed countries.

My friend lives in the Oakland hills which is one of the nicest areas in oakland. His car has been stolen three times in the past five years. They’ve had an attempted break in and a contractor they hired had his truck stolen. Oakland is a hell hole.

That's not exactly a high bar

And the vast majority of Oakland is fine. I used an extreme example to demonstrate that the idea that Oakland has worse crime issues than SF is highly dependent on where you happen to be. Oakland is just physically huge, suggesting it has an issue with "crime in general" is myopic and ignores that almost all of it is fine, same as SF.

Ah OK, gotcha - I misinterpreted your comment as meaning things are fine in the Tenderloin.

How does SF have so many neighborhoods when it's so small, anyway? You can walk across the city and back in a day.

How big does a neighborhood need to be / how many should it have?

The neighborhoods in SF as most people think of them are larger than the areas that many suburb residents tend to think of as defining their neighborhoods.

It’s more than suburban areas bleed into each other less because you can’t walk between them - instead there’s some dense areas you drive between.

All of the cities you mention have progressive leadership and that's not likely to change. Most non-progressives have decamped to the suburbs (or "depressing suburbia" as you call it) decades ago.