“On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy… [The] downtown business district — the bedrock of its economy and tax base — revolves around a technology industry that is uniquely equipped and enthusiastic about letting workers stay home indefinitely…. Business groups and city leaders hope to recast the urban core as a more residential neighborhood built around people as well as businesses but leave out that office rents would probably have to plunge for those plans to be viable….”

From “What Comes Next for the Most Empty Downtown in America/Tech workers are still at home. The $17 salad place is expanding into the suburbs. So what is left in San Francisco?” (NYT).

From the comments over there, which I will characterize as left and right, politically:

The left-wing view: “The Techies came to town, made their money, drove up real estate prices and left. They strip-mined the culture, leaving behind a shell of what was once the most vibrant city on the West Coast. There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco. That brought depth and texture to the city, but those people are gone. It became all about money. And what’s a book store, anyway?”

The right-wing view: “Homelessness receives a passing reference in this article. Crime is basically ignored. But these are significant quality of life factors contributing to the exodus of companies and office workers away from major US cities, including SF. Post-2020 life in our country is a lot different than before, in many ways not for the better.”