The Post‐Industrial “Shop Floor”: Emerging Forms of Gentrification in San Francisco's Innovation Economy

Abstract

The San Francisco Bay Area in California is undergoing a technology‐driven wave of growth arguably more thoroughgoing than the first “dot‐com” bubble, fueling hypertrophic gentrification and tales of a deeply class‐divided, “Blade Runner kind of society”. While Silicon Valley is still the industry's employment center, San Francisco is seeing faster tech firm growth, and is transforming its downtown to become more “livable” and promoting public space as key to innovation. In this context, this paper offers a reading of urban public space not just as a consumption amenity but also as the “shop floor” of a labor process that goes beyond the walls of the firm to mobilize the social itself in the production of privately appropriated value. With innovation now the watchword of gentrification, the stakes of this shift oscillate between the total commodification of urban vitality and the recognition of the social process of value production itself.

Innovation Districts as a Strategy for Urban Economic Development: A Comparison of Four Cases.

“…As with other strategies for urban revitalization, the specter of innovation districts as imposing a particular redesign on a location raises issues of inclusion and social equity (Flint 2016;. Processes that determine a community's future without involving current residents may be deficient in terms of fairness and adherence to democratic values; dominant visions of a future innovation district that do not demonstrate a feasible place for varied populations including current residents imply gentrification, displacement, and exclusion (Stehlin 2016;Lawrence et al 2019). This is one aspect of the general problem in planning and urban development to find the appropriate balance of the new with the old, to accommodate the existing while enabling the incoming-a challenge that ultimately must defy any single comprehensive solution (Rittel and Webber 1973).…”

Linking Gentrification and Labour Market Precarity in the Contemporary City: A Framework for Analysis

“…For instance, specialty food shops frequently adopt a small, full‐service outlet structure, with their labour needs dictating an intense flexibility under an unpredictable schedule (Ocejo )—workers may only be needed for a few hours a day but this restricts them from being able to take on other work. Equally, knowledge‐ and creative‐industry firms locating in such neighbourhoods habitually draw upon the expanding pool of flexible labour through gig economy circuits (Madanipour ; Stehlin ). When combined with the bigger retailers, who may seek to resist displacement pressures by hiring a workforce under flexible arrangements, and the displacement of small, family‐operated businesses, many of which were traditionally characterised by lower levels of precarity (even though utilising informal kinsfolk labour), this means that many types of employment across gentrifying landscapes have increasingly adopted a flexible—and often precarious—character.…”

“…Significantly, flexibility in this context does not solely refer to the firms’ employees but also to the businesses themselves, as many are essentially geographically footloose, settling in multi‐purpose spaces or temporarily renting offices (sometimes for as little as a couple of hours) (Madanipour ; Stehlin ). Indeed, myriad new “coworking” firms like WeWork, Alley, and the Impact Hub have emerged to cater to these new models of working in the gig economy, offering spaces in which to hold meetings with clients or conduct training seminars.…”

Cui Bono? Assessing Community Engagement in San Francisco Community Benefit Agreements

“…To prevent its departure, Mayor Ed Lee successfully launched the CBA popularly known as the Twitter Tax Break (by amending Article 12-A of the San Francisco Business and Tax Regulations Code to add Section 906.3) [22]. Initially, in 2011, CBAs were granted to nine companies, including Twitter [23,24], that relocated to the designated area, despite protests that Lee was coddling the burgeoning tech companies [21].…”