I really like speaking to of us with experience in areas the place I’m extra primary. Years in the past when Philz Espresso began increasing from a single store right into a multi-storefront, multi-city enterprise I discovered myself in a chat with their CEO Jacob Jaber. Fortuitously he was recreation to reply a bunch of my questions in regards to the espresso biz (I’m a little bit of a fan) with depth and endurance. Certainly one of them actually caught with me as a framework to grasp city growth.
Philz was opening a handful of latest shops in fast succession round SF and I requested Jacob a model of the next: I do know web site choice is a science unto itself however clarify it to me in a easy method. His reply was tremendous attention-grabbing, and I’ll paraphrase it right here. Neighborhoods have three use circumstances – Reside, Play, Work – and as long as two of them exist, it might probably assist a Philz. So for instance, if it’s only a Reside neighborhood (perhaps a suburban city with no large industrial district and residents commute out of the city to work), isn’t an A+ choice. Similar factor if it’s *simply* work – no Reside or Play – most likely nice throughout early morning commute however can that location assist afternoons/evenings/weekends? We then ran via a bunch of Philz areas and he shared his POV on their Reside, Play, Work traits. Made good sense!
Quick-forward to San Francisco 2023, which is mainly 25 years within the Bay for me and nearly 30 for my spouse. Quite a bit has modified in our little metropolis, particularly over the previous couple of years. And I’m very supportive of teams like GrowSF working laborious to evolve us in a constructive path. However the simplest way for me to explain us proper now could be harkening again to Jacob’s framework. And it goes one thing like this:
“Throughout the pandemic rather a lot modified close to how folks use areas, and for quite a lot of causes, it’s not snapping again in SF to the way in which it was earlier than, nor ought to we anticipate it accomplish that totally. Neighborhoods that anchored round Work and Reside or Work and Play (FiDi, SoMa particularly) are actually feeling deserted due to adjustments in workplace house utilization. So we have to suppose actually aggressively about learn how to get these again to not less than two of the three attributes in some degree of density. Alternatively, neighborhoods that have been primarily Reside or Reside and Play even have gotten much more attention-grabbing because of WFH/distant/hybrid. Fillmore/Divis/PacHeights, Hayes Valley, Noe Valley, West Portal, Union Avenue, Presidio are all as energetic as they’ve been since I moved right here.”
Clearly there are longer discussions available about high quality of life points, rise of YIMBY and so forth (like I mentioned, GrowSF), however Reside Work Play is the lens via which I perceive my metropolis.
