If you believe San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, there’s no place better to live in the world than the city by the bay. At WIRED’s Big Interview event on Thursday—not so coincidentally held in San Francisco—the mayor told global editorial director Katie Drummond that he’s absolutely convinced that anyone looking to rag on the city doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
The Big InterviewWIRED’s iconic series returned to San Francisco with a series of unforgettable, in-depth live conversations. Check out more highlights here.
Of course, Lurie said, things could always be better. While he hailed positive changes San Francisco has made since he took office 11 months ago, like more office space being filled in the downtown area and a decrease in crime, he acknowledged that some of that might have come in the wake of companies’ return to office policies and the AI boom. Still, Lurie said, if you ask San Francisco residents, 62 percent say that their city is headed in the right direction, compared to just 25 percent a year ago.
Lurie said part of what’s going to help keep San Francisco moving in the right direction is a commitment from residents. Past leaders, he said, “took San Francisco for granted,” thinking “we could just continue on and our success would continue as well.” To make San Francisco resilient, able to weather economic changes and tech booms and busts, Lurie said its leaders have to be “relentless in fighting for [their] city, standing up for [their] city, and welcoming people, saying, ‘We want you here and we’re going to create the conditions for your success.’”
But while San Francisco is often cited as a city for the ultra-rich—like the tech CEOs who have lobbied for the city in Washington and like the mayor himself, who has a connection to the Levi Strauss fortune—Lurie said he wants to push toward making his city more affordable, stressing that he wants kids who are born in San Francisco today to be able to live comfortably in the city for the rest of their lives. He cited the new Family Zoning Map, just passed this week through city government, which will help create denser housing along San Francisco transit corridors, something Lurie says should help with his city’s affordability crisis.
Lurie does seem focused on his city and his city only, despite a tendency some local politicians have to look toward state or national office. “When I was elected, I didn’t know who was going to be our president,” Lurie said. “The people of San Francisco wanted clean and safe streets. They wanted a mayor focused on San Francisco, and I think that is something that I’ve delivered on.”
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