Post-Dotcom San Francisco Resurges

San Francisco is experiencing a resurgence of high-tech businesses and wealth similar to what was seen during the dotcom boom. But this time around, the city's recovery from the bust of the dotcom era has a much different character.

1 minute read

July 13, 2007, 6:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


"This boom is unlike the one that began ten years ago. For one thing, it has produced many fewer jobs. Although slowly rising, the number of workers in San Francisco is still 12% lower than during the dotcom era. Since 2000, indeed, the city has shed more jobs than Detroit. And the losses have not just been in the frothy high-tech world. The city's finance and insurance industry has moved or made redundant 15% of its workers, and now employs fewer people than during the recession of the early 1990s. Outside a few niches, manufacturing seems to be in terminal decline."

"The face of San Francisco is changing, too. Like other big cities, it is being abandoned by blacks; more unusually, Hispanics are also leaving. Long a childless place, it is becoming ever older. During the boom years of the late 1990s, the city sucked in young people. Since the bust, some of them have aged and others have left, not to be replaced. The Association of Bay Area Governments reckons the population of twenty-somethings in San Francisco fell by 38% between 2000 and 2005."

Thursday, July 12, 2007 in The Economist

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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