I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues of “techies” in San Francisco and the surrounding area. They’re supposedly obnoxious, driving up home prices, Google buses are getting a free pass and blocking traffic, the startup ideas are stupid, etc. If you haven’t heard about it . . . well I live in Silicon Valley and I hear a lot about it.
Though admittedly being south of San Francisco, some of it is probably a sort of bias – there seems to be a kind of SF/San Jose area split here.
Now there are issues of changes in San Francisco and the surrounding areas, but in reality none are as simple, clean cut, or frankly tech related as many people may think. A lot of attempts to cover it are sadly over simplified and over generalized. I myself have my own issues with some of what’s going on in San Francisco, but feel a lot of it is blown out of proportion – and population shifts, economic changes, and the like are part and parcel of big cities.
That being said, there’s concerns – and when you get a lot of people moving into an area there is going to be a sense of distance and alimentation. The new population could be totally great people, but they’re still outsiders – and that’s not helped when money and expense is a major issue, and even more so in this economy.