San Francisco Quality Of Life Among Best In World, New Survey Reveals (middle-class, real estate)

[alexxiz]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Everyone who bashes SF in this thread is just jealous they don't live here. I'd be pretty bitter too if I had to be stuck in a Dallas cookie-cutter suburb.

Simply not true. But entertain your illusion

[ubringliten]

Originally Posted by urbanist34

The ranking is legit, but often misused, for example posted in threads such as this under the implication that the cities at the top are considered simply the "best" cities in the world.

That is not the real purpose of the Mercer rankings. The intended audience are corporate and governmental human resources departments. They use the rankings to calculate things like "hardship allowances" when sending employees to work in other countries, and the key criteria to get a high rating is for the city to be "clean, safe and dull." The list is dominated year after year by Germanic and Scandinavian cities along with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

For many people, "clean safe and dull" is not the be-all end-all when deciding the best place to be for their career, social/family life, and mental/spiritual/cultural enrichment. For example I consider New York City the most invigorating city on the planet but it falls in at #47 in the Mercer ranking. Oh well.

Here is an interesting and thoughtful article about the shortcomings of city rankings:
City Livability Rankings, and the struggle for the Complete City | Planetizen

Sorry, NYC is most invigorating and that's it. Amsterdam, Singapore and Paris are not "dull" but way in front of NYC. Why is that? Let me know when you have a family to raise, retirement, education to consider, personal safety, infrastructure, etc.

Besides, I thought this thread is about "livability" not the best city in the world.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by pixie_features

People of San Francisco! Do you think this city inspires creativity amongst professionals who work here? How much room is there for entrepreneurship within the city? Im a student from the UK writing a thesis on creatvity in San Fran and would appreciate any feedback! thanks!! =)

There's tons of stuff that's been written about how Silicon Valley fosters tech entrepreneurship. There's a lot of competition there and expenses are high but there's so many tech people concentrated in one location that it just fosters innovation in ways that you don't see anywhere else in the US. Just look at all the stuff written about Steve Jobs.

SF is not particularly innovative by comparison, a lot of its economy is based on big law firms, big banks, and big accounting firms, and those industries are very conservative. There are more and more tech firms moving into SF lately though, like Twitter and Zynga. There was a LOT of tech stuff in SF around 2000 during the tech bubble years but it pretty much all died out, while Silicon Valley kept plugging along.

[yeahthatguy]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

There's tons of stuff that's been written about how Silicon Valley fosters tech entrepreneurship. There's a lot of competition there and expenses are high but there's so many tech people concentrated in one location that it just fosters innovation in ways that you don't see anywhere else in the US. Just look at all the stuff written about Steve Jobs.

SF is not particularly innovative by comparison, a lot of its economy is based on big law firms, big banks, and big accounting firms, and those industries are very conservative. There are more and more tech firms moving into SF lately though, like Twitter and Zynga. There was a LOT of tech stuff in SF around 2000 during the tech bubble years but it pretty much all died out, while Silicon Valley kept plugging along.

Yes, the world's best and brightest packed into insane cost of living/tax ville and all its producing as of late is social media junk and games to make the larger majority of people and the U.S more unproductive .. Sorta like the smut and junk that come out of L.A's music/media industry w/ great time wasters like reality t.v complete w/ such role models as Lindsay Lohan doing lines off of sidewalks... Angry Birds .. Yes, completely innovative .. lets not forget worms from the MS-DOS days that it ripped off :

or hey ...

Dinosaur Tyconn

Not to mention these are mindless games.. Yes, lets celebrate the widespread wasting of times playing games from 1990 w/ new flare while the economy is in the toilet and Americans by and large are behind on the education curve.

Some of the best films/media as of late are coming from outside of L.A .. great indie films from canada, India .. europe .. detroit even .. music from toronto.... The valley of time's past is not that of the present .. full of iphone apps and other silliness .. The valley of time's past was (as many people forget) funded by govt. defense dollars.. and it was at a point and time where great innovation was occurring in hardware/software.. now all you see is iteration and idiocy....

The Valley has become a grind fest and many of the things that come out of here are nothing more than marketed junk formed out of desperation to get by in the high COL/taxes which serves to exploit and make the broader world bigger idiots .. L.A's media industry is the same ... In this Cocoon far separated from the broad majority of the rest of the world that is dealing w/ real issues, it seems you are least equipped to truly serve the populous w/ things that are needed to propel us into a brighter and better age of discovery.. Unless you think Angry Birds is going to do that.. the future is looking more like :


One reason I am actually leaving the valley next year is because I feel like it is diminishing my ability to think creatively in way of envisioning products and solutions to better the world. Every fool I bump into here is concerned with what iphone app or silly consumer products they can convince they masses to waste time playing w/... in hopes to get rich quick and roam around SF until they are 50 pretending to be playboys.

[destroycreate]

Whatever. Bay Area > Country.

Get over it.

We're cultured and cosmopolitain here, middle-America...no. Go drive to your little strip mall and shop at your big box retail chains and don't forget tonight's dinner special at Applebee's. LAWLZ.

[Texas User]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Whatever. Bay Area > Country.

Get over it.

We're cultured and cosmopolitain here, middle-America...no. Go drive to your little strip mall and shop at your big box retail chains and don't forget tonight's dinner special at Applebee's. LAWLZ.

Quality of life is good if you have the money, it is that simple.

[alexxiz]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Whatever. Bay Area > Country.

Get over it.

We're cultured and cosmopolitain here, middle-America...no. Go drive to your little strip mall and shop at your big box retail chains and don't forget tonight's dinner special at Applebee's. LAWLZ.

Truly you folks are cultured compared to Middle America... or Alabama... I'm proud to have been to such cultured city. More culture than anywhere else and a lot of cultural events, I feel like I've seen the whole World cause I'm here and I feel on top of the world now!

[AADAD]

In a relationship SF is one of the best absolutely.

If you are not it's concrete and emptiness.

I lived off Polk street, in downtown, in the Aves. I know it. I love it. Urban open cultured and diverse. Most cities can't hold a candle to the acceptance that SF has. But if you don't have the dough ray me....it's a wasteland.

IMHO

[yeahthatguy]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Whatever. Bay Area > Country.

Get over it.

We're cultured and cosmopolitain here, middle-America...no. Go drive to your little strip mall and shop at your big box retail chains and don't forget tonight's dinner special at Applebee's. LAWLZ.

Oh the irony ...






^ bay area ...

[yeahthatguy]

Originally Posted by AADAD

In a relationship SF is one of the best absolutely.

If you are not it's concrete and emptiness.

I lived off Polk street, in downtown, in the Aves. I know it. I love it. Urban open cultured and diverse. Most cities can't hold a candle to the acceptance that SF has. But if you don't have the dough ray me....it's a wasteland.

IMHO

You obviously haven't been to a lot of places ... if that's how you feel .. This is good though, this means that other places will stay authentic and cultured for longer and cheap and affordable for the everyday man while the yuppies continue to pack into the same corner of the earth they read about in traveler's magazine.