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Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts

Friday, May 30, 2025

San Francisco at a Crossroads: From Capital of Tech to Capital of Urban Renaissance



San Francisco at a Crossroads: From Capital of Tech to Capital of Urban Renaissance

San Francisco has long been hailed as the world’s innovation capital. Yet, paradoxically, it is now also viewed as a cautionary tale of urban mismanagement. But it doesn’t have to remain that way. The city stands at a defining moment—either spiral further into urban decay or become a global model for a futuristic, equitable, and resilient metropolis.

THE CORE CHALLENGES:

  1. Homelessness and Addiction

  2. Public Safety and Perception

  3. Downtown Economic Collapse

  4. Fiscal Deficit and Budget Bloat

  5. Decline in Quality of Life (Cleanliness, Transit, Cost of Living)

Let’s go beyond just "balancing budgets" and look at how other cities—from Helsinki to Seoul, Medellín to Singapore—have tackled similar problems and what San Francisco must do to lead the future of urban living.

🔧 A FUTURISTIC, ROBUST SET OF SOLUTIONS

1. 🏠 Radical Housing First + Treatment Model

Best-In-Class Example: Finland's Housing First Model

  • What to Do:

    • Guarantee permanent housing first, then offer wraparound mental health, addiction, and workforce services.

    • Build modular micro-housing units using 3D-printed technology (e.g., ICON in Austin).

    • Implement a “shelter and treat” mandate: no open-air drug use tolerated, but treatment and shelter always offered.

  • Funding Mechanism: Land value tax reform + public-private co-development + unlock idle public lands.

2. 🚨 Tech-Enhanced Public Safety

Best-In-Class Example: Singapore’s Smart Policing; London’s CCTV Integration with AI Analytics

  • What to Do:

    • Roll out AI-powered incident detection in real-time (e.g., using ShotSpotter + open camera networks).

    • Implement community co-policing apps like in Taiwan, where residents can report issues + track resolution.

    • Incentivize restorative justice and neighborhood conflict mediation.

  • Futuristic Angle: Use drone patrols for under-resourced areas (already tested in Dubai and China).

3. 💊 Synthetic Drug Crisis Response

Best-In-Class Example: Portugal’s Decriminalization + Treatment Model

  • What to Do:

    • Create rapid triage centers for fentanyl overdose response, integrated with safe-use education and supervised injection sites.

    • Use real-time wastewater analysis (used in Tempe, AZ and Europe) to target hotspot neighborhoods for mobile health units.

    • Fund AI-based telepsychiatry kiosks in public spaces to offer instant mental health support.

4. 🚧 Clean Streets = Healthy Communities

Best-In-Class Example: Tokyo’s Cleanliness Culture + Zurich’s Smart Waste Systems

  • What to Do:

    • Install smart trash cans with compression and pickup alerts (e.g., Bigbelly).

    • Launch public shaming gamification apps that reward citizens for reporting or cleaning trash (modeled after South Korea’s illegal dumping tracker).

    • Partner with robotic startups (e.g., Enway in Germany) to pilot AI-powered street cleaners.

  • Incentive Model: Provide $500/month for formerly homeless or low-income residents to be part of “clean and green” city brigades.

5. 📈 Downtown Reinvention

Best-In-Class Example: Melbourne’s Nighttime Economy Planning; Seoul’s Co-Working Urban Core

  • What to Do:

    • Convert unused downtown office space into mixed-use affordable housing, live-work units, and vertical farms.

    • Implement a 24-hour permit zone to revive nighttime economies with clubs, galleries, and night markets (as seen in Amsterdam and Bangkok).

    • Offer 3-month free rent subsidies for small businesses, artists, and tech incubators to reanimate storefronts.

  • Tech Angle: Allow AR/VR urban overlays to provide immersive history, art, and commerce experiences on the street.

6. 🚌 Public Transit Reimagined

Best-In-Class Example: Paris’ 15-Minute City; Bogotá’s BRT Network; Copenhagen’s Bike-First Urbanism

  • What to Do:

    • Make Muni and BART free for all residents and tourists, funded via a congestion charge + downtown land value capture.

    • Introduce AI-optimized bus routing (as tested in Helsinki and Shenzhen) for flexible transit routes.

    • Build a unified micro-mobility subscription (bikes, scooters, buses) for $1/day.

  • Big Vision: Pilot autonomous electric shuttle loops in high-density neighborhoods.

7. 📊 Budget Reform and Performance-Linked Spending

Best-In-Class Example: New York’s Open Budget Visualization; Toronto’s Outcome-Based Budgeting

  • What to Do:

    • Mandate public dashboard tracking of every dollar spent with impact metrics (crime reduction, housing exits, clean streets).

    • Launch “Participatory Budgeting” platform (as in Barcelona and Porto Alegre) allowing citizens to vote on allocations.

    • Set KPIs for every city department, and tie bonuses to achieving them.

  • Futuristic Idea: Use blockchain-based smart contracts for city contracts that release funds only when milestones are met.

8. 🌳 Resilient, Green Urban Infrastructure

Best-In-Class Example: Singapore’s City-in-a-Garden; Medellín’s Green Corridors

  • What to Do:

    • Greenify streets with tree corridors, rooftop gardens, and vertical farms on public housing and municipal buildings.

    • Incentivize climate-resilient architecture and building retrofits with carbon credit trading.

    • Pilot rainwater capture and graywater systems for public buildings.

🛠️ TECH CAPITAL DESERVES A TECH-POWERED CITY

San Francisco must act as a living lab for urban transformation. The city can partner with startups and major VCs to:

  • Launch a “Civic Tech Accelerator” to solve homelessness, mobility, safety, and governance problems.

  • Make San Francisco the first U.S. city to trial AI-driven urban operating systems (already tested in Saudi Arabia’s NEOM and Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs).

  • Attract global entrepreneurs with streamlined permits, regulatory sandboxes, and visa fast tracks for urban tech founders.

🧠 Final Word: San Francisco as the Global Beacon

If San Francisco can invent the internet browser, the iPhone, and generative AI, surely it can reinvent itself.

This isn’t just about fixing potholes or cutting budgets. It’s about creating the world’s first fully integrated smart, safe, equitable, and joyful city. It’s about turning a crisis into a canvas.

The tech capital of the world deserves to be the gold standard of the 21st-century city.

Let’s get to work.



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Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Two Megacities On Two Coasts


Bullet trains running at 300 miles per hour between Boston and DC, and between San Francisco and LA are amazing ideas. People could live anywhere along the corridor and go to work anywhere else along the corridor. That is an amazing concept. There is not a better affordable housing idea than this in NYC. This affordable housing idea is fully scalable. This is affordable housing at market rates. Go figure.

There is an even better idea: gigabit broadband. Taking gigabit broadband to all homes and offices in NYC and the tri-state area will turn many commuters into telecommuters. That will lessen the traffic. And gigabit broadband is much, much cheaper than bullet trains.

Floating train could whisk you from D.C. to N.Y. in an hour
"You could live in Baltimore and commute to New York City faster than you could from Connecticut" ...... "It changes real estate prices, how people live, where they work. It really changes the world." ..... The magnets both lift the train and propel it forward, with the reduced friction being responsible for the train's super speed. .... While it sounds like the stuff of sci-fi, the technology itself has actually been around for over a century. ..... But it's expensive. Northeast Maglev estimates the New York to D.C. route could cost over $100 billion. Much of the money would be spent on tunnels and elevated track necessary in such a densely populated area -- possibly tunneling under cities and then running over or adjacent to Interstate 95 in more rural areas. ...... A second high speed proposal from the private sector may soon break ground in Texas....... This plan calls for a more traditional bullet train (think wheels and rail, but with speeds over 200 mph) running from Dallas to Houston. The trip could be made in 90 minutes as opposed to the three-and-a-half hours it currently takes by car or one hour by plane. The group promoting it -- Texas Central Railway -- says fares would be similar to those of a flight, but minus the hassle of getting to the airport and checking in....... What makes this project more likely is that it's using a technology that's been in commercial operation for over 50 years, is connecting two heavily populated areas over an empty, flat middle ground, and has a relatively modest price tag of $10 billion.


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Saturday, June 22, 2013

Kamala Harris


I do think Kamala Harris is the best looking Attorney General in America - and I am putting all the men Attorneys General on that list, the president need not apologize - what was the brouhaha all about? If anyone disputes that fact, please step forward. And show me a picture or two.

Kamala Harris
In 2009, Harris wrote Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer. Harris looks at criminal justice from an economic perspective, attempting to reduce temptation and access for criminals. The book goes through a series of "myths" surrounding the criminal justice system, and presents proposals to reduce and prevent crime. ...... Harris has been mentioned as a possible nominee for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, should a seat on that court become vacant during the second Obama administration. ..... On January 3, 2011, Harris became the first female African-American and Indian American attorney general in California. She won the razor thin election by less than one percentage point....... When Harris took office, California was still reeling from the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis. Harris participated in the National Mortgage Settlement against five banks, Ally, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi Bank, and Chase. She originally walked off the talks because she believed the deal was too lenient. She later rejoined the talks, securing $12 billion of debt reduction for the state's homeowners and $26 billion overall. Other parts of the funding would go to funding state housing counseling services and legal help for struggling homeowners and forgiving the debt of over 23,000 homeowners who agree to sell their homes for less than the mortgage loan. ........ The Sacramento Bee reported on one of the first cases of a homeowner using the bill to stop Bank of America from foreclosing on his home. ..... Harris has expressed the belief that life without possibility of parole is a better, and more cost-effective, punishment. ..... the death penalty conservatively costs $137 million per year. If the system were changed to life without possibility of parole, the annual costs would be approximately $12 million per year. Harris noted that the resulting surplus could put 1,000 more police officers into service in San Francisco alone ...... Harris created a special Hate Crimes Unit as San Francisco District Attorney. She focused on hate crimes against LGBT children and teens in schools. She convened a national conference to confront the "gay-transgender panic defense", which has been used to justify violent hate crimes. ...... Harris argues that it is important that immigrants be able to talk with law enforcement without fear. ..... Harris argued for treating "habitual and chronic truancy" among children in elementary school as a crime committed by the parents of truant children. She argues that there is a direct connection between habitual truancy in elementary school and crime later in life ....... has prosecuted several industries and individuals for pollution, most notably U-Haul, Alameda Publishing Corporation, and the Cosco Busan oil spill. She has also advocated for strong enforcement of environmental protection laws ..... Harris has prosecuted numerous financial crimes throughout her career, particularly those affecting elders, those involving use of high-technology, and identity theft. She has indicated that as attorney general she would crack down on predatory lending and other financial crimes
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris
On January 3, 2011, Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as the 32nd Attorney General of the State of California. She is the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian to hold the office in the history of California. .... has focused on combating transnational gangs that are trafficking guns, drugs, and human beings throughout California. She has worked to increase the adoption of technology and data-driven policing to assist law enforcement in the efficient investigation and prosecution of crime, and has traveled to every region of California to expand partnerships with local law enforcement. ...... she wrote the nation’s most comprehensive package of foreclosure reforms—the California Homeowner Bill of Rights—and fought successfully for its passage through the California Legislature and saw it signed into law
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Announces Suit Against JPMorgan Chase for Fraudulent and Unlawful Debt-Collection Practices
alleging that the bank engaged in fraudulent and unlawful debt-collection practices against tens of thousands of Californians. ..... “This enforcement action seeks to hold Chase accountable for systematically using illegal tactics to flood California’s courts with specious lawsuits against consumers. My office will demand a permanent halt to these practices and redress for borrowers who have been harmed.”
Time 100 2013: Kamala Harris
As a child, Kamala accompanied her parents to civil rights marches in Oakland. ..... She has expanded the smart-on-crime approach she pioneered as DA, taking dangerous guns off the street and targeting human trafficking..... The child who witnessed the civil rights movement from a stroller has taken a lead role in the fight for marriage equality by challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8..... As a new generation of women picks up the mantle of progress, she will always be among the first to stand up and step forward.
Kamala Harris: Gun Control Meeting With Other DAs At LAPD Aims To 'Eliminate Violence In California'
Bringing together district attorneys and law enforcement officials from throughout the state, Attorney General Kamala Harris convened a working group Friday to develop a strategy on how to better enforce gun laws, particularly for those prohibited from owning a firearm. .... The APPS program, enacted in 2007, is unique to California, Harris said, adding she hopes it becomes a model for other states and the nation as they look to reduce and prevent gun violence. ..... "This is not about ideology or politics," Harris said. "It is a false choice to suggest you are either in support of the Second Amendment or in favor of reasonable gun safety rules. We can do both." ..... "I called them in and told them we need to focus more on the mentally ill," Beck said. "This is not about making arrests, it is about making sure they don't hurt themselves, their families or others. We are trying to get them help."
Kamala Harris Accepts Obama Apology Over 'Best-Looking' Remark
"She’s brilliant and she’s dedicated, she’s tough," Obama said of the California attorney general. "She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general ... It’s true! C’mon."
Kamala Harris' Star Power Buoyed By Obama "Best-Looking Attorney General" Comment
If California Attorney General Kamala Harris is the nation's "best-looking attorney general," as President Barack Obama said last week (before apologizing, but not retracting), she's also the most up-and-coming attorney general in the country. .... when you're known to Time magazine as "the female Barack Obama," and the New York Times names you as among the women most likely to become president. ..... "only a matter of time" before the upwardly-mobile Harris -- daughter of Stanford professors who catapulted from an assistant district attorney job in Alameda County to elected district attorney to attorney general in 20 years -- moves onto a new job, "perhaps to succeed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, some have speculated, or even to the U.S. Supreme Court" ..... it is better to be Kamala Harris than it is to "be Janet Reno" in Hollywood. ..... While she angered law enforcement in San Francisco for famously not seeking the death penalty againt a cop-killer, she has made big moves against big banks, mortgage companies and other populist targets while in Sacramento. .... her friend the president, for whom she campaigned heavily in 2007 and 2008: she filed briefs in support of Obamacare and Obama's repudiation of same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 is in line with her stance to not defend the law.
She could be Governor, no sweat.

 

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Sunday, October 02, 2011

Tahrir Square In America

New York State Governor David Paterson opening...Image via Wikipedia
Nick Kristof: New York Times: The Bankers And The Revolutionaries: The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. ...... “Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support. ....... I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows....... The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square. ...... In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.” ....... Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic — like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. ....... the banks socialized risk and privatized profits
London Has Become Cairo

My advice would be to stay disciplined and grow into large crowds in public places like parks. Don't hit the road, don't disrupt traffic, don't prevent people from getting to work. A massive protest in a country like America can not be like one in Egypt where right to free speech and right to peaceful assembly were not protected.

But this Occupy America movement has the option to become big, really big, and to bring about fundamental change to the American democracy. This movement has to conclude with a passage in Congress of total campaign finance reform, like Anna Hazare forced a major anti corruption bill down the Indian parliament's throat.

At some level democracy in America is a joke. It is not a one person, one vote democracy. Money plays too big a role. And the moneyed interests have hijacked the lawmaking process in Washington beyond the pale of any democratic logic.

This movement has to be about reclaiming the House. And giving Barack Obama a strong progressive agenda for the subsequent four years.

Total campaign finance reform, universal health, universal education.

This can be a movement as fundamental as the one in Egypt or Tunisia. Only here you are not seeking to bring about democracy. Here you are seeking to take an existing democracy to a whole new level.

This has to be nonviolent, non disruptive, and big, like really, really big. Gather in public parks in all towns, small and big, in all cities across America. 24-7. Until the honchos on Capitol Hill pass total campaign finance reform.
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