Local Money: The changing face of Mid-Market, San Francisco
Local Money: The changing face of Mid-Market, San Francisco
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Can you guess the year this was written?
“San Francisco has become perhaps the most gentrified large city in the nation. Districts that a decade ago were blue collar are now ghettos for young urban professionals, who have spawned a consumptive economy in which one highly successful new chain mass markets croissants, sort of a Yuppie version of Winchell’s doughnut shops. …its result is spiraling housing costs, clogged traffic, an exodus of middle-class and poor families and declining black and Latino populations. And the trend seems certain to continue despite a new effort by the city to limit growth, restrain housing costs and preserve neighborhoods.”
Does that sound like present-day San Francisco to you? That was actually written in the year 1985.
John King, the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, shared it and joined the show to discuss the future of the Mid-Market area in San Francisco, a formerly rundown area in the city. Like much of San Francisco, tech money has moved in and changed the face of the area, but unlike some of the hipper neighborhoods in the city, it took tax breaks and a concentrated effort to attract business to revamp the region.
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