The Ephemeral City?

One of the Chronicle's op-ed columnists wrote a piece - riddled with generalizations - earlier this week which characterizes San Francisco as a 'theme park for restaurants' and is the playground of the nomadic rich and restless leeches living off them. Perhaps San Francisco *is* an ephemeral city, but as John King's response points out, the tradional urban area has definitely taken on a new role, one that is constantly changing. For that reason alone, it's almost unfair to compare SF to other big US cities. Admittedly, SF is not a big city in the traditional sense. It's population is in the neighborhood of 700,000 and slowly shrinking. That said, it still does a bang-up job of combining a myriad of urban lifestyle choices with a small town vibe to create a unique, breathtakingly beautiful city that does not purport to be something that it is not. Joel Kotkin says that, "No longer populated mainly by middle class families and a diverse set of industries, it is dominated by a wealthy elite, part-time sojourners, hordes of tourists and those that serve them". Somebody please explain to me how that is any different from life in Manhattan. Uh-huh, that's what I thought. The fact that cities *evolve* is what makes them attractive. What causes them to evolve? Socio-economic trends. We've all heard - ad-nauseam, in fact - how the dot com boom changed this city. Sure, it left many long lasting effects - both positive and negative - but that's why people enjoy city life. It changes with the times and is constantly offering up new cutting-edge experiences. This Kotkin guy just sounds like a grump, if you ask me.