Governing a city of unicorns: technology capital and the urban politics of San Francisco

San Francisco is now widely considered to be the most important city in the world for the location of new technology start-up firms, especially high valuation "unicorns," and is increasingly seen as both a locational and metaphorical extension of Silicon Valley. In this paper, I trace some...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban geography 2016-05, Vol.37 (4), p.494-513
Main Author: McNeill, Donald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation
California
Chambers of Commerce
Cities
High tech industries
Housing
Housing authorities
Housing market
Investors
Local elections
New technology
Political economy
Public transportation
Regulation
San Francisco
San Francisco California
Sharing economy
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley-California
smart cities
Startups
Taxation
Technology
Tenants
Trade
United States
Urban development
Urban policy
Urban studies
Valuation
Venture capital
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Summary:San Francisco is now widely considered to be the most important city in the world for the location of new technology start-up firms, especially high valuation "unicorns," and is increasingly seen as both a locational and metaphorical extension of Silicon Valley. In this paper, I trace some of the political strategies and tensions that have accompanied the city's prominence in this area, and in particular the distinctive role of technology and venture capital in the political economy of urban development. The paper has four empirical sections. It describes (1) the political machinations surrounding the 2011 and 2015 municipal elections, which saw the election of Ed Lee as Mayor with significant support from individual technology investors such as Ron Conway and Marc Benioff, and accompanied by various "tech-friendly" policy shifts; (2) the foundation of the "tech chamber of commerce" sf.citi as a means of enhancing the policy influence of the tech industry in San Francisco; (3) the introduction of a low taxation regime in the city's Central Market area that has attracted technology companies such as Twitter as tenants; and (4) the urban policy tensions associated with the evolution of new "sharing economy" firms such as Uber and Airbnb, which have aggressively challenged municipal regulations in the taxi and property rental fields. Throughout these machinations, we can see a reshaping of capital fractions, with venture and angel capital increasingly involved in reengineering the labor, housing, and public transport markets of the city in order to circumvent the accumulation problems that tech investors had suffered in the earlier dot.com failures.
ISSN:0272-3638
1938-2847
DOI:10.1080/02723638.2016.1139868