Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
And if you want my honest but only really semi-informed opinion, I think its largely due to the fact that SF and California, even America in general have been systematically destroying and devastating the middle-class.
So now you've got a population of fairly wealthy people who can afford to look the other way and do nothing and they're rubbing shoulders with people who have nothing left to lose.
They've squeezed out the normal people and the opportunities for the average citizen.
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This is more a characteristic of major cities - and in particular the cores of major cities - rather than the country as a whole. The only people who can afford to own homes or even rent in these cities are professional, knowledge-economy workers. They need working-class people (who typically bus in from the suburbs) to serve them in restaurants, clean their offices, etc.
The problem is professionals don’t like stepping over human feces on their walk to the office and having their Amazon deliveries routinely stolen. And with remote work increasingly viable, they’re leaving en masse. Businesses that don’t want the expense of heavy security and losses from organized shoplifting rings are following in their wake.
As was pointed out up-thread, it’s a repeat of the white flight of the 50s and 60s, when middle-class and working-class residents moved out of city centres to the suburbs. During the 70s and 80s nobody wanted to live downtown in urban centres. Or hang out and spend money there on the weekends. They were usually desolate ####-holes.
It wasn’t until the late 90s that cities began to attract residents again. Knowledge industries employed young, educated workers. So hip coffee shops, trendy restaurants, gyms, etc. proliferated to serve them. Urban centres became cultural and economic engines again.
Looks like that era is now drawing to a close in many cities. The homelessness and addiction crisis are a big part of it. As is Covid. But it’s also just demographics - Millennials are hitting their prime home-buying, child-rearing, SUVs-driving years. The burbs have always been more attractive for that stage of life than urban centers.