The Blue City of San Francisco

Joel Kotkin reports on San Francisco:

San Francisco has for years taxed and regulated its business community with unremitting fervor while counting on its arts and culture assets to drive its economy.

What these policies have produced instead is a city that has lost about 4 per cent of its population and 10 per cent of its jobs since 2000. Although many wealthy people still enjoy living there, the city has seen many of its largest corporations and promising young firms leave for either the surrounding suburbs or other regions.

As a result, notes native son and California historian Kevin Starr, San Francisco increasingly resembles "a theme park for restaurants". Its once diverse population is increasingly bifurcated between the nomadic rich and a sizeable population of servants as well as a large homeless population. Today the city -- which Starr described as "a cross between Carmel and Calcutta" -- has the highest concentration of inherited wealth and among the highest per capita incomes of any American city. It also has experienced one of the greatest increases in homicides and is No.1 in terms of cases of syphilis per capita in the US, eight times the rate of New York and 10 times that of Los Angeles.

When a city has more dogs than kids it becomes a rather special place.