Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area

by Richard A. Walker

This exploration begins by tracing the concentration of IT in Greater Silicon Valley and the resulting growth in start-ups, jobs, and wealth. This is followed by a look at the new working class of color and the millions earning poverty wages. The middle chapters survey the urban scene, including the housing bubble and the newly exploded metropolis, and the final chapters take on the political questions raised by the environmental impact of the boom, the fantastical ideology of TechWorld, and the tech-led transformation of the region.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Economics, Politics, Geography, Technology, Sociology

481 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 13, 2018

Reviews

[Rohit · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential text on contemporary San Francisco Bay Area political economy. This book presents a wide and deep survey of the general dynamics of the Bay Area as they've played out in the last few decades, particularly in the context of the booming tech industry. The book draws on an enormous amount of research, but at the same time presents the information and the central narratives in a very easy-to-read and almost casual fashion. A great book for people at all levels of background knowledge, whether you are a casual reader or a rigorous academic.

[Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great introduction to the state of modern civilization in the Bay Area, albeit one tainted by the author's liberal bias (most notably, in describing outcomes for "people of color", a failure to distinguish correlation and causation). The book stays at the level of trends; some case studies or deep dives would have made for a livelier read. Lots of names zoom by, it would have been nice to get to know a few of them better.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for all Bay Areans.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for an urban geography grad seminar. I liked it. It's long but there are lots of maps/figures. I haven't really read an industrial geography before so it was cool to see the method Walker used; I would like to do this for my home town.

I do have some problems with his understanding of political-economic ideologies, especially what feels like a conflation of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. He also didn't really integrate neoliberalism into his analysis anyway, which seems like a big gap. Otherwise, pretty thorough.

[Wyndy KnoxCarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a brilliantly researched and highly accessible presentation of the Boom Town to Metro Monster of "Size, Sprawl, and Segregation," (p. 236) and "technotopian escapism," the Bay Area "megaregion" (xiii) has become in which "Both Right and Left versions of this dystopia are wrong" (346-7). Walker presents a clear-eyed, data-driven (in a GOOD way) and frankly awe-inspiring history and explication of the crazy mess of land, humans, water, air, highways, businesses and neighborhoods the San Francisco Bay Area; as only a long-time resident and broadly experienced professor emeritus of geography at the University of California, Berkeley could.
Spectre Books from Oakland's PM Press is purportedly "works of, and about, radical political economy;" but after living here nearly a decade and observing the havoc of speed and greed around us, I don't find Pictures of a Gone City "radical" at all. He's just telling the truth he's garnered from vast scholarship, in pursuit of some answers and solutions that would make life easier for the largest number, rather than just the insanely wealthy and/or desperately politically connected elites.
Uncomfortable, All-American, end-of-the-continent truths. I've SEEN "the buying of (California legislative) propositions by the monied interests...undermining the legislative process" (371) in everything from keeping dialysis unsafe and inconvenient to turning delivery drivers into wage slaves so that corporate owners and management could hoard ridiculous power and wealth in the teeth of terrible human suffering and oppression of the unhoused, poor and otherwise disenfranchised. A Canadian departmental director in the Vancouver, BC Women and Children's Hospital, for example, sneered bitterly "It's ALL ABOUT MONEY DOWN THERE" to me about our infant mortality rate, and she was absolutely correct. Americans have lost our way in the humane values department, and it's no more visible than in California and the Bay Area.
Problem is, it's also potentially more fixable "down here" than other places, too, if we'd only use the wonderful tools, human and other social and structural resources we have arrayed within and around us.
Throughout the book, Walker stresses the "five strands" of the Tech world's "success," which actually could be used to heal rather than destroy: "Social Openness," "Labor Power," the "Counterculture Rebellion" of alternative-thinking inventiveness, "Racial (and other) Diversity" and, for better or worse, "the Tech Titans' faith in libertarian capitalism...colliding with the Bay Area progressive tradition that nurtured the IT industry" to begin with. They're "socially liberal but economically conservative," which hobbles them, their previous four strands of success and the whole area with "neoconservatism and neoliberalism" combined.
This leaves us trying to dance both forwards and backwards at the same time, stepping on each others' toes and kicking each others' shins fighting over who goes first, who gets to take the lead and has the best (most distant?) view of the poisonously polluted but very "scenic" Bay. (362-365)
Thorough, extremely readable and well-paced; other sections range from "The Golden Economy: Beneath the Glitter," through "City at Work: Making and Fighting for a Living," "Bubble by the Bay: Anatomy of a Housing Crisis" (193) to "Environmentalism in the Age of Global Warming" (279) and speculations on the "Future for the Left Coast," aptly subtitled, “Dreams, Nightmares and Political Realities.” (350)
The good thing about the Bay Area is that "there's no place quite like it," but that's also the bad thing about it, too. Wonderful book. Congratulations to Prof. Walker. A boon to metropolitan geographers worldwide, as well as Californians and Bay Area residents.

[Mills College Library]

979.46 W1835 2018

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pictures of a Gone City is a critical book about the history (much of it very recent history) of the Bay Area. It's also very dense, which is why it took me nearly a year to finish. In its sections, author Richard Walker discusses the changes that the tech industry has wrought on what he terms the bay region. The largest section is devoted to housing policy, sprawl, and gentrification but he also delves into various other subjects. Walker is undeniably critical of the tech industry but he does take pains to present a balanced perspective, and even when I personally disagreed with his views, I still found the book edifying. My one big complaint is that it was not properly edited—in the beginning especially there were quite a few typos which I was not expecting. That however is a small gripe. If anyone has interest in politics, class, housing, the environment, and/or the Bay Area, this is a must-read.

[Scarlet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too many typos! Like, so many.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Predictably bought @ Bound Together because of the catchy title.

Despite being written by a geographer, the content is not argumentative and almost reads as a collection of news articles. The author is uncritical of the Left in a way that does not benefit the reader. I wish there was sharper analysis of class/race, especially the role that Asian Americans play in the tech industry. Perhaps due to the author being an older white progressive, he is hesitant to criticize Asian American techies, often deferring to the class divergence within the diaspora.

[Master_of_jibes]

Very easy to read while it's definitely derived from the academic work of the author. Reminds me a bit of a "Renaissance Nation: How The Pope’s Children Rewrote the Rules for Ireland" by David McWilliams but in a way, less sparky.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Need to do a deep re-read of this but worth recommending to folks everywhere… 😊

[Happy Red Panda · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone who wants to understand Bay Area politics this is the one I would recommend for beginners.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a a tech-focused economic overview of the pre-COVID Bay Area than a synoptic argument for the importance of the region as the introduction attempts to claim, but useful enough with that in mind. Walker's friend's description of him as a "Marxist booster" feels like the right take: he's consistently and maybe occasionally excessively critical of the Bay Area's capitalist backbone, while clearly, if grudgingly impressed with capital's achievements, but doggedly focused on an economic viewpoint. You'll find almost no mention of the Bay's culture, its ecology, its cuisine, except as they intersect with its overall economic story.

It's also clear this book did not have an attentive editor, as evidenced by the countless typos and, more worrying, citation of editorials to support the author's opinions (e.g. p. 224 where he cites a Jacobin article to support his assertion that the "popular resistance is more often right than wrong" in arguments about solutions to the housing crisis).

I found it... aging to realize how dated a book published in 2018 felt. During Trump 1, pre-COVID, largely pre-AI. Many of the patterns he describes are still in play. His arguments that "there is no capitalist imperative to get rid of all workers" (p. 347) feels especially distant in our current AI moment. One imagines the capitalist tech titans would revel in a world where no one works but everyone (else) buys their wares.