New Yorkers do not lament Manhattan. Super high density south along the waterfront with subway access to downtown, (midtown in Manhattan) gives the best of all worlds. I lived in midtown for 22 years in NYC and took subways everywhere north, east, south and west. I even took a subway to Hoboken to get to my car. Car was only good to west and southwest. Even the occasional trip north was easier west of the Hudson. J'Carlin
Current political correct thinking among the marginal middle class is that gentrification is bad. It displaces the poor, and incidentally the marginal middle class, in favor of all those productive rich techies, many of whom are not like "us." "We" do not want SF to be like Manhattan, the ultimate in gentrification.
The problem with this thinking is that transportation is what enables the marginal middle class and the poor to take advantage of gentrification, as service people to the gentry. In Manhattan in my lifetime the lower east side, Hell's Kitchen and everything north of 96th street was tied to downtown and midtown by the subway system, so that servers, artists, and grifters were a short cheap ride from the source of all the "New Money" that is money generated externally from the local economy.
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