City on the Edge

An absorbing (San Fransico Chronicle) and fascinating (Financial Times) account of San Franciscos meteoric transformation into a global capital of technology, and how the same creative and political forces that gave rise to its boom now threaten to destroy what made it great.

At the dawn of the 1990s, San Francisco was a beautiful if troubled mid-sized metropolis. It was still reeling from the AIDS epidemic and the Lome Prieta earthquake, its economy stuck in a post-industrial slump. Once considered to be the capital of the American West, and later the beating heart of the global counterculture, the mythic, fog-shrouded city at the edge of the continent faced an uncertain future.

But in that very moment, a band of free-thinking technologists, immersed in the creative zeitgeist of the city, were inventing the contemporary internet. San Francisco would undergo an epic political, social, and economic transformation as it claimed the title of tech capital of the world. Local politicians, including Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, advanced to the national stage. An unlikely marriage of underground culture and technological optimism gave rise to the annual reverie known as Burning Man.

This should have been a happy story for San Francisco. But as the citys tech economy roared, a host of urban ills lurked in the shadows: homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, and a crippling lack of new housing. The citys famously left-wing political establishment struggled to get its arms around the problems. When the pandemic arrived in 2020, it created new crises and laid old ones bare, shattering a City Family that had ruled politically for more than thirty years. Key leaders of the once-liberal tech industry turned sharply to the right, embracing President Trump and his war on San Francisco values just as the artificial intelligence revolution began to produce yet another massive financial boom.

Jonathan Weber saw it all up close as a reporter and newsroom leader. He offers a sweeping history of a city that rose to dizzying heights in the internet era, only to be battered by the heedlessness of a tech industry it did so much to spawn and politicians who had lost the plot. Drawing on 200 interviews with mayors, CEOs, political leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, and artists, City on the Edge is more than a simple chronicle of a city. Its the story of a war waged for the heart of San Franciscoone that anticipated the culture wars raging around the world. As the AI boom revs up, with San Francisco as its undisputed capital, the conflicts are playing out yet again, and will have an impact far beyond the citys famed Golden Gates.