Book Review: “City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco” by Jonathan Weber

 Jonathan Weber has written an interesting book on aspects of the political history of San Francisco from 1990 to 2024 with a focus on the technology industry. He has been involved as a technology reporter and editor for various publications during this period. 

While the rise of the technology industry has been centered to the south of San Francisco in what is now called “Silicon Valley,” the city has played a significant role. At first, it was essentially a bedroom community for tech workers who commuted to their companies down the peninsula. This gave rise to much reported unhappiness of some San Francisco residents with the luxury buses the tech companies hired to ease the commute of their workers. Subsequently, some tech companies came to the city or increased their presence there. Weber singles out Twitter, which was given a tax break to locate in an area near the San Francisco Civic Center (it has since vacated that property after it became “X”). 

San Francisco’s downtown suffered from Covid-19 and its aftermath, as tech workers enjoyed the convenience of working from anywhere. Notably, San Francisco’s downtown has been slower to recover from the pandemic than the business districts of other major U.S. cities. Now the AI boom has been giving an economic boost to the city, and I am told that downtown is in the process of recovering.

There is much more to the book than I have summarized here, and for those interested in the San Francisco tech story and its reverberations on the politics of the city, which are much more complicated than simply liberal politics, this book provides a lot of information, some of which is based on the author’s direct experiences.  However, if one is looking for an informed discussion of  the “soul of San Francisco,” this book may be a start but it is limited.

The limitation is made obvious by the map at the beginning of the book, which is only of a slice of the city in the northeast, including the downtown area. San Francisco is small in land area, but there is much more to the city than this.

Amazingly, the book, which at times digresses from the tech story, does not even cover some significant history of the downtown area. For example, there is no mention of Chevron, once a large employer in San Francisco, moving its headquarters from the city to San Ramon, which is about 40 miles away and inland from the southeast portion of the Bay. (Since then, Chevron moved its headquarters out of California entirely, to Houston in 2024.) Also, missing from the book is the move of Bechtel’s headquarters out of San Francisco to Reston, Virginia, in 2024. (Bechtel, a large, privately-held engineering firm once headed by George Shultz, also moved its operations in Houston to Reston.)

These companies’ departure from the city and their effective replacement by the tech industry is an important part of the story that is missing. In addition, while the largest employer in San Francisco, the city and county itself, is discussed, the next largest current employer, the University of California, San Francisco, is not. UCSF is a medical school and owner of several hospitals and affiliated medical services. It is only mentioned in passing for its expansion into the new Mission Bay development. Also, Dr. Bob Wachter, the head of UCSF’s Department of Medicine, who was a prominent user of Twitter and webcasts during the pandemic, is quoted about Covid. 

In discussing the business environment of San Francisco, the author also does not mention the significant financial industry. While NationsBank bought BankAmerica in 1998 and the headquarters of the combined company now called Bank of America went to Charlotte, North Carolina, there remains a significant financial industry presence in San Francisco along with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (where I briefly worked a long time ago).

The problem is that the author has lived and breathed tech, and ignored much of what else has been happening in San Francisco. The large Asian population (primarily Chinese), with concentrations in Chinatown, the large Sunset area which borders Golden Gate Park to the north and ends at the Pacific Ocean on the west, and also to an extent in the Richmond, which parallels the Sunset on the north of Golden Gate Park, is not much discussed. This group is important and has become an important political force. The diversity of the population, including Hispanics, and those with Russian, Italian, Irish, and other backgrounds, as well as the declining population of African-Americans, is absent from the book. Also not much discussed is the significant influence of the gay community on San Francisco politics and culture. The southern sections of the city, much of which are not the pretty version which figure in postcards, are also not mentioned. In other words, San Francisco, a relatively small city (the fourth largest in population in California) though effectively the center of the much larger Bay Area, is a complicated place with a diverse population and a colorful history. While the tech industry is important, you need to look beyond the tech industry and the book’s much discussed Burning Man festivals, to understand San Francisco, not to mention its soul.

Trouble at the Sierra Club

 A recent New York Times article detailed Sierra Club troubles at the national level. It focused on a controversy concerning whether the Club’s mission included social justice as well as environmental issues. The article quotes Michale Brune, a former Sierra Executive Director,  stating that “we can’t defend the environment by shutting ourselves up in a big, green box labeled ‘environmental issues.’”

The current controversy at the Sierra Club brings to mind that, in 2004, there was a fight on whether the Sierra Club should advocate limits on immigration to the U.S. The argument was that people living in the U.S. pollute more than people living elsewhere. The main advocate of this was Richard Lamm, a former Democratic governor of Colorado. He led a dissident slate in an election to the Sierra Club's board of directors. The slate lost. If it had won, I believe the Sierra Club would have splintered.

One difference between then and now is that the earlier effort to broaden the Sierra Club policy issues came from people who were not in charge of the Club. The leadership of the Club was then strongly against taking a position on immigration. The current broadening of the Sierra Club mission to issues falling under the rubric of Environmental Justice and Democracy is an initiative of the current leadership.

In response to the New York Times article, the current Executive Director, Loren Blackford, who replaced her controversial predecessor, Ben Jealous, who was fired “for cause,” posted a rebuttal on the Sierra Club’s website. It was not entirely persuasive.

Ms. Blackford rightly indicates, though, that much of the Sierra Club’s political impact is at the local level. Given the number of local chapters and groups that comprise the Sierra Club nationwide, it is hard to judge its overall effectiveness. However, recent developments in the San Francisco Bay Area indicate some portending trouble.

According to the Alameda Post, mountain bikers have gained seats on the San Francisco Bay Chapter’s Executive Committee and have remove long-time environmentalists from various Chapter committees. The immediate issue is whether trails on land administered by the East Bay Municipal Utility District should allow off-road biking. As indicated in the article, organized groups can take over a Sierra Club Chapter in usually low-turnout elections.

Also, the listings on the outings meetup site and activities calendar for the San Francisco Bay Chapter suggest that there is another controversy. Most of the hikes listed on the meetup site since sometime in February include the following notice: “**PLEASE NOTE: *This is not a Sierra Club-sponsored hike. *** This hike is listed as a convenience to members who might be interested. To join, you must sign the waiver at our meeting point.” Clicking on outings on the online calendar often leads to the following notice: “The activity you have chosen is not sponsored nor administered by the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has no information about the planning of these activities and makes no representations or warranties about the quality, safety, supervision or management of such activities. Click here to continue to activity details.”

Many of these hikes are listed by a long-time hike leader who is listed as the chair of the hiking section for the Chapter. The hikes he leads with the disclaimer are similar or identical to the ones he has led for years which were listed as Sierra club hikes. It is not clear what is going on here. There may be issues concerning liability raised by Sierra Club lawyers or an insurance company or there may be disagreements concerning what type of outings the Chapter should sponsor. Currently, I would note, there is no such disclaimer for hikes listed by the Sierra Club hiking group in the Washington, DC area.

As a long-time member of the Sierra Club, I have generally supported the club’s environmental goals and have participated on both coasts in many hiking outings (and a long time ago, served as a hike leader for the Sierra Club hiking group for the Washington, DC area). I have not, though, agreed with every policy position the Sierra Club has advocated but thought it important to support the Club as a counterweight to powerful interests on the other side of environmental issues.

Moreover, with respect to local hikes, I have noticed that the Sierra Club hiking groups for the Washington, DC area and the San Francisco Bay Area have not fully recovered from the pause in activity due to the pandemic. There continues to be a reluctance to organize carpools to hiking locations, which is somewhat peculiar for an environmental group, and there is a reduced list of activities, particularly noticeable in the San Francisco Bay Area because of the number of hikes it used to list for each weekend.

The reduction in hiking activities also impacts Sierra Club membership. For example, when James Watt was Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan Administration, he unwittingly was a great recruiter for the Sierra Club. One hike leader at the time for the DC area, Water Wells, decided to lead monthly Sunday afternoon hikes in Rock Creek Park. These hikes did not entail long drives nor getting up early and were not physically very challenging. Part of Walter’s goal, as I recall, was to get new members involved in the Sierra Club so that they would not let their membership lapse in the coming years.

I want the Sierra Club to be successful now, especially with the current Administration’s assault on the environment. There does not appear to be the surge in membership that happened during the Reagan Administration. Fortunately, there are other organizations that are fighting for the environment, but the Sierra Club most likely is losing effectiveness because of its internal problems. I hope that the current leadership of the Sierra Club can admit that there are internal problems that need to be addressed.