A slow city recovery

This piece is really just a dunking on San Francisco.  From A San Francisco Journalist Wanted to Debunk Horror Stories About Her City. She Got Kinda Sidetracked by the Truth by Rick Moran.

What I found interesting was this quote, I think from the original author, Elizabeth Weil.

The doom-loopy vision laid out for downtown SF was not pretty: Workers don’t return, offices remain empty, restaurants shutter, transit agencies go bankrupt, tax bases plummet, public services disappear. According to research from the University of Toronto, cell-phone activity in downtown SF is 32 percent of pre-pandemic levels. That number is 75 percent in New York.

Using cell-phone activity as a proxy for population density and commercial activity in a central city area is a clever idea.  Not a perfect substitute for direct population density information but also reliably obtainable.  

Going to the original research by University of Toronto, you get this wonderful graphic.  

Interesting points all up and down the graph.

California has a reputation for high taxes, excess regulations and poor services.  It also bought into the Covid lockdowns more rigorously than most states and also flirted more seriously with the concept of defunding the police and decarcerating criminals.  It has also seen a hemorrhaging of residents to other states over the past few years.  Not a state you would expect to find significant recovery.  

But you do, just not where one might expect.  San Francisco aren't in the recovery flock but Bakersfield, Fresno and San Diego are in the top ten and doing well with 118%, 115%, and 93% respectively.

But in the big cities, of Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco, things aren't looking to good for the cities or residents with 62%, 47%, and 32% respectively.  

My city, Atlanta, is only 49% recovered.  Government has been ineffective, policing abysmal, we flirted with Defunding, and people have stayed away from downtown.  Possibly permanently.

The Covid panic ended early in the South, at least a year ago now.  It ended at the Federal level just this past month or two.  So why people not returned to downtowns?  A combination, presumably, of better and cheaper lifestyles by working at least partly from home, and concerns about physical security in a depoliced environment.  The stories coming out of New York City certainly do not allay those fears.  

We'll see how corporations and enterprises end up accommodating the employees whetted appetite for work from home.  Maybe more will return to the office but that is not especially obvious yet.

My suspicion is that the decline in policing in combination with a general decline in government services in combination will as many or more away from the downtowns.

We shall see but I am surprised how low the response has been so far in terms of resuming normal levels of downtown city activities.