It’s become trendy to compare San Francisco’s recent woes to those of Detroit circa a decade ago, when a grim spiral of fleeing residents and social problems like drugs and crime led to the city’s near-collapse.
Plenty of podcasts, columns and social media posts have made the case, while others have dismissed the notion.
Here’s the comparison, in broad strokes: A city dominated by one industry undergoing major shifts and subsequently challenged by high vacancy and crime concerns leads residents to flee along with tax revenues, which in Detroit’s case led to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2013. Whole blocks of the once-thriving Midwestern city were abandoned as Detroit went from 1.85 million people in 1950 to 630,000 today.
These days, though, Detroit is steadily climbing its way back.
The former home of the U.S. auto industry—more synonymous with urban rot in recent years—has defied the most dire predictions for its failure. Its finances have stabilized, and basic services like garbage and streetlights have been restored. Pockets of development are sprouting.
Any honest analysis of the two cities notes their many key differences, but that doesn’t mean San Francisco can’t learn some lessons from Detroit and its recovery in recent years.
Downtown Recovery
Urban policy group San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) led a trip to the Motor City in May to do just that. Sujata Srivastava, SPUR’s San Francisco director, said the group decided to visit Detroit to study how it managed to stage a revival through a combination of public, private and philanthropic dollars.
“It’s just a really interesting example of how you come back from a major structural shift economically,” Srivastava said.
Some of the problems that factored into Detroit’s financial woes included irresponsible borrowing by city leaders and a lack of fiscal discipline during its downturn.
“They didn’t shrink their budget. They didn’t make some of those tough decisions early enough to be able to reverse the situation which caused their bankruptcy,” Srivastava said, noting the failed effort by Detroit leaders to tax their way out of a deficit.
“There’s probably something to learn from that in San Francisco,” she added.
Amid a growing budget deficit from lower-than-projected tax revenues, San Francisco recently passed a budget with record spending.
Downtown Detroit, on the other hand, has seen a renaissance that turned the formerly neglected area into a regional destination for arts, sports and entertainment. The city particularly excelled in organizing programming and events downtown geared toward both locals and tourists, like the Movement Electronic Music Festival.
“It’s hard to imagine where you would have that kind of experience in Downtown San Francisco,” Srivastava said.
One idea she posed for San Francisco was a designated area that was closed to cars, had a high density of bars and restaurants and could function as an experiment in redefining the neighborhood as an entertainment destination.
“There’s generally been a receptiveness to the idea of entertainment, arts and culture, but we need to get the state there and locals on board,” Srivastava said.
A number of philanthropic and private stakeholders stepped in to help kick-start Detroit’s turnaround and create a sense of place in its downtown. These actors were aided by public-sector incentives
