Quote:
Originally Posted by mahanakorn
From 9 time zones away, SF seems to cast a pretty long shadow for a small city of 800K. It appears in the news, in advertising, in song, and in conversation often (especially in the contexts of tech and culture). 'Stagnant' is not a word that comes up. SF is generally mentioned in a more favorable light than our SoCal cousins (I'm not a hater; I like LA).
SF is a good-looking rich girl who turns out to be smart and fun, too. Cities aren't measured by their skyscrapers. I love living in Bangkok, but if I had to choose between dynamic, sky-scraping Dubai and stuffy old low-rise Copenhagen, I take Copenhagen in a heartbeat.
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You're right that SF is not stagnant, but you also have a somewhat skewed view of SF. The 46 square miles of SF city proper has 800,000 people (which is not at all small for an American city-proper), but the metro area has over 7 million people, making it the 6th largest metro area in the US. You mentioned tech, and while there is a lot of tech industry based in SF city-proper, most of it is actually based elsewhere in the metro area. As for SF being "a good-looking rich girl"...yeah on one hand that's what it is (and i know that is how it's often presented to the rest of the world), but on the other hand it's not at all. SF has lots of rich people, but it has a lot more poor people, working class, and middle class people, and it has grit, and crime, and an ugly side. Cities aren't one-dimensional caricatures.
That said...skyscrapers!!!! Yeah!!! They aren't necessary for city to be a city, but they sure are nice.