San Francisco Chronicle -  May 8, 2005 

The ephemeral city

San Francisco has lost its middle class, become a 'theme park for restaurants,' and is the playground of the nomadic rich and restless leeches living off them

an Francisco today represents the ultimate expression of a new kind of urban area -- the ephemeral city. This urban form, dominated by the nomadic rich, the restless young and those living off them, has emerged across the advanced industrial world, but perhaps nowhere more clearly and arguably nowhere more successfully than in the city by the bay.

The ephemeral city differs dramatically from traditional urban centers. No longer populated mainly by middle class families and a diverse set of industries, it is dominated by a wealthy elite, part-time sojourners, hordes of tourists and those that serve them. "This is a kind of city that makes its living selling luxury services," suggests Fred Siegel, an urban historian at New York's Cooper Union.

The wealth increasingly comes not from being an economic powerhouse -- San Francisco has barely 1 in 10 of the Bay Area's 500 largest companies -- but by being the preferred residence of those who can choose where they live. The city's political spectrum may run from left-liberal to left-lunatic, but its population includes the highest percentage of people living on dividends and rent income of any large urban area in the nation.

What does an ephemeral city do? Not much by traditional standards. It exists not primarily to conduct business, dispense power or worship divinity. Stylish living is its major expert. Once a city with small factories, dockworkers and dives specializing in carved turkey and roast beef, it's now as "a theme park for restaurants," according to San Francisco native Kevin Starr.

Some high-end businesses, such as law, accounting and financial services still thrive downtown and employ many top-notch professionals. You must make serious bucks just to make do in California's most expensive city to do business and one of the nation's most expensive places. Most mid-level tasks - - the grunt and grind of management -- have shifted into the suburban rings, to other parts of the country or abroad.

In some ways, the ephemeral city seems remarkably insulated from the economic shocks that create crises in places like Baltimore, Detroit or even Los Angeles. San Francisco has lost lots of jobs -- roughly 13 percent since 2000 -- yet seems relaxed about its decline. It can see whole sectors, such as manufacturing, decline by more than 15 percent since 2001, yet can't seem to decide if the remnants should be allowed to exist.

Even the job losses in elite sectors such as advertising and financial and business services seem to be no big deal to many San Franciscans. Amid high office vacancies, a net population loss of more than 4 percent since 2000 and job losses, the city's political class finds time to obsess instead about such critical issues as imposing fees on plastic bags, promoting gay marriage and cracking down on marijuana dispensaries.

This indifference to old-fashioned reality might explain how Gavin Newsom, the mayor presiding over this spectacular economic and demographic drubbing, can be mentioned among the nation's best mayors by the geniuses at Time magazine. In the old days, mayors got kudos for creating jobs and building a middle class. Today, they evidently get them for good looks, personal charm and wanton acts of political correctness.

Sadly , San Francisco's shift to being an ephemeral city also means the loss of many things that made great urban places through the centuries. It certainly threatens the existence of the middle class urban family -- San Francisco has the lowest proportion of children, 15 percent, of any city in the nation.

It even violates the holy grail of diversity: San Francisco is one of the few cities in America where the African American population is dropping.

Is the ephemeral city the wave of the future? For San Francisco, it's likely to be so. The telecommunications revolution, combined with crushing housing shortages, pushes middle class jobs outward -- first to the suburbs, then the exurbs and now to the far hinterland, places such as Reno and Boise, or overseas. So by some logic, San Francisco should try to compete largely by being an urban entertainment center, even if much is lost by doing so.

Looking to history

There is historical precedent in the ephemeral city phenomenon. Cities are natural theaters. In the past, cities provided the overwhelmingly rural populations around them with a host of novel experiences unavailable amid the hay fields.

Rome, the first mega-city, developed these functions to an unprecedented level. It boasted both the first giant shopping mall -- the multi-story Mercatus Traini -- and the Colosseum, where urban entertainments grew monstrous both in its size and nature.

Maybe it makes sense for some cities to hitch their futures to their role as cultural and entertainment centers -- one hopes without resorting to gladiatorial contests. This is a transformation that H.G. Wells predicted over a century ago. He saw the transition of urban centers from commanding centers toward a "bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous."

San Francisco is not alone in building an ephemeral economy. Montreal, Berlin, Boston and Portland, Ore., all display signs of constructing an urbanity based on hipness, art and culture. Like San Francisco, these cities attract large numbers of young, educated people with their notable street life, entertainments and nice architecture.

Less reasonable are the attempts of other, less favored cities -- places like Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Manchester, Vt., and Oklahoma City , even Aarhus in Denmark -- to peg their futures on becoming hip cultural centers. Some, adopting popular development guru Richard Florida's notions that having lots of gays is key to making your city successful, have decided that they, too, need to get more gay.

Will this strategy succeed in the boondocks? When a reporter from Oklahoma City tells me of the city father's dream of attracting hip, cool people, including a large contingent of gay people, to create a Sooner State Castro district, I can answer with one New York word -- fuggedaboutit.

San Franciscans need not worry much about such competition. No urban area is better favored with affluent, educated residents. Most of them are literate, and even more are good talkers, so the reputation of the city, a critical factor in being a successful ephemeral city, will no doubt stay positive in the national media.

Great location, climate

San Francisco remains blessed in many other ways. God, though largely ignored in this secular haven, provided it with one of the world's most stunning locations and a mild, highly livable climate. The people who built it -- a very politically incorrect crew by contemporary standards -- bequeathed the current denizens a city of outstanding grace and grandeur.

The biggest question is what lies ahead. Can San Francisco or any other city thrive as primarily a marketer of urban experiences, art and culture? I have my doubts. When I first lived in the Bay Area 30 years ago, San Francisco still had a working class and a thriving corporate economy as well as places for artists to live affordably. The country looked to it as a center for music, new ideas, and fashion.

Today -- albeit from my vantage point in detested Los Angeles -- San Francisco seems little more than a distant, overpriced urban amusement park. Its last great economic surge rode on the coattails of Silicon Valley's last big boom. Since then, the city has fallen off the national map as a center for the arts, culture or business.

This may be because great artistic centers usually arise not from conscious promotion of bohemianism but as the result of a vibrant commercial culture and an invigorated middle class. This was true in ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence, 17th century Amsterdam, 19th century London and 20th century New York. Resort towns, no matter how well-endowed, don't do well as creative centers.

Does this mean San Francisco is headed to damnation and ruination? Not in the slightest. In an increasingly suburbanized country with 300 million people, headed for 400 million by 2050, there's going to be ample demand for a unique adult Disneyland, from tourists, sojourning youths and those who, although they may not do much, can buy the best urban lifestyle money can buy. San Francisco is the city that knows how to be that.

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