{"id":122720,"date":"2026-01-06T22:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/122720\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T22:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:29:07","slug":"we-took-our-business-community-for-granted-san-franciscos-new-mayor-admits-to-citys-failings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/122720\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We took our business community for granted,’ San Francisco’s new mayor admits to city’s failings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly one year into his tenure, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is offering a candid diagnosis of the city\u2019s recent struggles: The municipal government became an adversary to the very economic engine it relied upon. Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm AI<\/a> conference in early December, Lurie admitted the city\u2019s political class previously operated under the assumption businesses would tolerate endless hurdles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took our business community for granted,\u201d Lurie told Fortune Editorial Director Andrew Nusca<\/a>. \u201cWe said \u2018We can just keep punishing you\u2026 and you\u2019re going to stay.\u2019 Well that didn\u2019t happen. People fled.\u201d (As of 2024<\/a>, San Francisco had lost people every year since 2020, with 2025 census data not available yet, but projected to have stabilized in the past year. Total net population loss is between 30,000 to 55,000, against a wider population of around 834,000.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elected class in San Francisco took people for granted,\u201d Lurie said, from its artists to its restaurants to its entrepreneurs. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to do that again.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lurie, who noted City Hall historically functioned as \u201ckind-of an opponent\u201d to small businesses due to so much bureaucracy and red tape, is now attempting to reverse that dynamic by positioning the government as a partner. However, while the mayor was eager to modernize the city\u2019s archaic infrastructure with Silicon Valley-style innovation, he explicitly rejected the tech industry\u2019s famous mantra of \u201cmove fast and break things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we should be breaking things \u2026 in government,\u201d Lurie cautioned. While acknowledging the city needs to adopt \u201ctools that are well regarded,\u201d he emphasized the implementation must always happen with safety and regulations in mind.<\/p>\n

Safety first, innovation second<\/p>\n

This cautious but forward-looking approach is most visible in Lurie\u2019s handling of public safety, which he identifies as his absolute priority. <\/p>\n

\u201cNothing else matters if you can\u2019t keep people safe,\u201d he said. To that end, the city has deployed new technologies, including drones as first responders and license plate readers, to track criminal activity without engaging in dangerous high-speed chases.<\/p>\n

The strategy appears to be yielding results. Lurie reported crime is down 30% citywide and 40% in the Financial District and Union Square. Furthermore, he noted the city is currently seeing its lowest homicide rate since the 1950s. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are an incredibly safe American city,\u201d Lurie said, while noting there are still major issues to tackle, principally a \u201cbehavioral health crisis on our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battle against \u2018red tape\u2019<\/p>\n

A significant portion of Lurie\u2019s \u201cpartner, not opponent\u201d strategy involves dismantling the city\u2019s notorious bureaucracy. He highlighted the absurdity of San Francisco\u2019s governance structure, pointing out the city maintains 150 commissions<\/a>\u2014almost triple the number in Los Angeles, despite LA having ten times the population.<\/p>\n

To streamline operations, the administration has launched \u201cPermit SF<\/a>,\u201d a digitization initiative aimed at replacing paper forms with a unified digital system. The goal is for business owners to fill out a single form that is routed to all necessary departments, rather than visiting separate windows for fire, planning, and health approvals.<\/p>\n

Return to office: attraction over mandates<\/p>\n

Regarding the revitalization of downtown, Lurie said he\u2019s taking a soft-power approach, including with regard to return to office. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy job as the mayor of San Francisco is not to tell people to be in the office five days a week,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s to create the condition so people want to be in the office.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argued that by ensuring clean streets and reliable public transit, the city can naturally attract workers back, citing the seven-day-a-week office culture of major AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI as evidence of the city\u2019s returning energy, alluding to how \u201c996\u201d culture<\/a> has spread across Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

Defining the narrative<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Lurie said he believes the city\u2019s greatest challenge has been psychological\u2014specifically, the \u201csentiment\u201d of its own citizens. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like the biggest nut to crack was San Franciscans\u2019 opinion of themselves \u2026 you\u2019ve got to love yourself before anyone else is going to love you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said his overarching goal for his remaining three years in office is to restore San Francisco\u2019s status as a \u201cworld-class city that is the envy of the world,\u201d ensuring it is no longer defined by outside critics, but by its own residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the greatest city in the world when we\u2019re at our best,\u201d Lurie said. \u201cAnd I think people are starting to see that again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly one year into his tenure, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is offering a candid diagnosis of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[723,12546,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-122720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-return-to-office","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}