Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland

A Stanford University Three Books Selection for 2019

“Essential.… A conflicted and complex portrait of a city starving for solutions.” ―Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco is changing at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, the Bay Area has been reshaped by Silicon Valley. The richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and cracks in the city’s facade―rapid gentrification, an epidemic of evictions, rising crime, atrophied public institutions―are growing wider. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s classic works of oral history, Cary McClelland spent years interviewing people at the epicenter of recent change, from venture capitalists and coders to politicians and protesters, capturing San Francisco as never before.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, The United States Of America, Technology, Politics, Urban Planning, Cities

272 pages, Paperback

Published November 19, 2019

About the author

Cary McClelland is a writer, filmmaker, lawyer, and rights advocate whose work has taken him around the world. He met his wife in San Francisco, where they settled down and built their first home. They now live in Brooklyn with their son.

Reviews

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever been so pleasantly surprised by a book. I picked this up at the San Francisco Public Library as research for my own book on Silicon Valley, and expected it to be a bit of a slog, as research books often are; instead, I couldn't put it down.

This is not simply a journalistic account of modern-day Silicon Valley, as I'd assumed from the title. It's a collection of stories, featuring the voices of an incredibly broad and diverse group of people based in San Francisco: Uber drivers, union organisers, software engineers, public defenders, longshoremen, even the occasional venture capitalist. Sometimes you will find the interviewees to be witty, brave, inspiring; sometimes you will be heartbroken by their stories; sometimes you will roll their eyes at their idiotic, self-serving blather (*cough*, Tim "my grandpa was a VC" Draper).

Props to the author for the thoughtful curation, but honestly, this book is carried by the depth of the individual stories, and all the author needs to do is get out of the way (which he does admirably). The poignant reflections on social issues like racial injustice, economic stratification, the prison-industrial complex, and the damaging effects of wealth concentration - to mention only a few - are the heart of the book. That the most insightful commentary comes from those who have experienced the most hardship is a stark reminder of how precious other human beings are, and how infuriating it is to live in a system that unfairly crushes some while glorifying others. It makes you mourn for what was lost - all the lives ended prematurely, all the potential not unlocked, all the stories never told. And in a weird way, it makes you pity those who have blundered into material success, because the ascent seems to have severely damaged their critical thinking faculties, as well as their ability to relate to those who have been less fortunate (i.e., most of the rest of humanity).

This is a true gem of a book, and no matter how much you already know about the city, or what your personal background is, I think this book will teach you something new.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book shared some important perspectives that don't always get a proper hearing. Interviews with activists and social workers trying to increase equality in the Bay Area or to deal with the impact of inequality were moving and informative. Unfortunately, the collected interviews weren't organized particularly well. The transitions were strange. Even within sections, I didn't think there was a clear theme or takeaway. Many of the interviews that weren't with activists or social workers didn't teach me anything new about the area. This may be less true for readers who aren't from the area or who haven't already read other books about Silicon Valley.

I also have to admit that I personally enjoyed this book less because the author seemed biased against new tech workers and against change. The only tech workers who were interviewed reviewed history; were extremely unsympathetic; or were disillusioned. People were interviewed who clearly blamed newcomers and were grumpy about people coming here for their careers. No one new to the area was interviewed and the problem of people who are from the area blocking changes (like building housing for the homeless or building more high rise apartments) was largely ignored.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey

[Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book about modern San Francisco, pieced together through the actual voices of those living here now. But this is bigger than just San Francisco, as you could tell this story about so many other cities in the world.

Solutions begin by understanding the scale of the problem, and this book opens your eyes to just how bad it has become.

[Louise Desmarchelier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book got better through the chapters. You’ve got to get through those first few chapters of just listening to tech and finance bros talk — bc who wants to hear that — to get to the more interesting testimonies.

At times, this felt like being on a guided tour of the bay and that was awesome!

Although the representative value of juxtaposing many testimonies is limited, at times the author successfully managed to create a conversation between the various testimonies following each other. You can feel this is written by a journalist not a sociologist, which is fine, but is good to have as an expectation entering the book.

Some of the interviewees’ perspectives were really eye opening about the bay’s history, and so valuable to read. I end the book with a deepened interest for this region, and wanting to keep learning more about it!!

[Joanna K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Gives you exposure to so many different stories, and view points on San Francisco and its rapid growth. I really like the fact that it’s all interview based and doesn’t try to suggest solutions or the right or wrong answers. You can just immerse in the stories told by different people and decide for yourself what resonates with you.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Am I the enemy?

[valeria martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting POVs but painful format

[Amin Rezaei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silicon City, or Silicon Valley, Technology, American Economy, Geniuses, Inventors, Investors, etc it's what poped-up in my mind when I first read the title (eye-catching), Well I read it and I'll be more than happy to share my review with all of you here on 3ee.info a great book review source in the US Book Market as well as on social media.
Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley, is written in the Story-Telling Technique of writing about the technology, the US history, Americans, Immigrants, and Giant companies in the different industry such as Apple, Facebook or Intel and etc. Cary McClelland the author of the book, successfully written this story, by using his talent in filmmaking and writing provided an interesting book.

After the great recession in 2008 San Francisco and San Jose became the two wealthiest cities in the nation, while they attract more educated and investors from all around the world, many believe the region is the engine of the new American economy and the problem is that The richer the cities get, the more unequal they get.

So now you know what this book is all about, and maybe you think the bottom line is predictable, but the Author very professionally explained his point of view and described the situation which Silicon Valley is in. this book is not just about a specific area but about the American history as well, about many emigrants who came to this country and faced a lot of problems to study to become a part of this nation's economy.

I absolutely give a pure 5-star review to this awesome book not just because I loved the title but I believe the older this book gets the more valuable it becomes.

I highly recommend it to whoever is enthusiastic about: America's History, Economy, Technology, Innovation, etc.
https://lnkd.in/es7NjkR

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Curious to read more about this book that seemed like would talk about the affects of the Silicon Valley and the tech waves on a city like San Francisco. Author McClelland interviewed many people from tech people to artists to activists, etc. to get a feel and sense of the City by the Bay and how it has changed in light of the rise of the SV to the south.

The book interweaves history with the stories and viewpoints of various people and their experiences with the city when they first arrived if they came from somewhere else, how it has changed, what they love/don't love, etc. Sometimes people from previous sections return to discuss another topic which made for an interesting leap here and there.

Overall, though? This was entirely the wrong format for this type of book. For some reason I thought it was more of a traditional microhistory but it was fine that it was not. And while these snapshots are nice, they don't feel very woven together and it just read like a mishmash of viewpoints. It would have read better as a blog or "Humans of San Francisco" sort of project and I'm not sure a book was the best way to convey this.

Could be just me. Borrowed from the library and that was best.

[Priscilla Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Through these interviews, the author humanizes the changes that are not only occurring in San Francisco, but the USA as a whole touching upon gentrification, the distribution of wealth, poverty, homelessness, mass incarceration, etc. A real eye opener that was captivating and heart wrenching- but also gave me a lot of hope. Highly recommended!

[Mari Abreu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at City Lights Bookstore, and I can’t think of a better choice to understand the city of San Francisco, including its cultural, political, social, and economic dynamics. It explores a city that is constantly changing due to the movements of its own population, which undoubtedly serves as its most powerful force.

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating. A thorough and humane cross-section of the city, looking at many people living in and through the changes of San Francisco. An important examination of the many forces driving change across the United States. Highly recommended!

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this book in the gift shop of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I immediately knew I had to read it. Through a series of interviews with a variety of figures, some truly important and others fairly entitled narcissists, a deep picture is created of the evolution of the Bay Area over the past decades. There's a good amount of technological history and deep dives into culture, but it is mostly focused on a heavy exploration of the political and sociological issues surrounding the changing landscape of the city. What these reflect about San Francisco is less a microcosm, the interviews effectively argue, but say a lot about the evolution of our nation and our planet. After all, as one particularly thoughtful quote from the book says, "What happens in San Francisco, ergo the world."

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up the book while visiting City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Through the voices of people like Uber drivers, venture capitalists, public defenders, baristas, teachers and others who form the corpus of San Franciscans, the author pieces together stories to explain why Silicon Valley and its money has changed the city that spawned the Beat poets, the Black Panthers, the LGBTQ movement, unionism from the waterfront to the farm workers, and which was a home for the counter culture into a place focused on wealth and business. It’s a bit dated- it’s 5 years old- and the bust many of the voices wonder about has arguably come post-COVID. Also the author does not go far enough back to consider the era of prior business and capitalism transcendent in a San Francisco run by the robber barons and their progeny - which provided the contrast to the counter cultural movement that arose in their wake. This is a highly readable oral history in the style of Studs Terkel with a Stanford Ph.D student substituting for Terkel.

[Hassan Aljama · Rating 4 out of 5]

When i started reading the book, it felt more of the old guards weary of the changes happening in the Bay Area and how the identity of the city is fading. This is something not particular to San Francisco but rather is shared by many of the older generations living across the world. The more I read through the book though, the more I appreciated the thoughts and ideas discussed in it. The clash of cultural identity and the young newcomers seeking to generate wealth in silicon valley was thought provoking and eloquently described through the many conversations and experiences narrated in the book.

[Leni Corwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley,” is composed of fascinating conversations the author had with various persons who live in or near Silicon Valley and make up a cross-section of Bay Area society. The interviews illuminate the impact the tech invasion has made in the Bay Area, both positive and negative, and is a must read for techies, luddites and everyone in between.

[David Schwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author interviews many people about the recent dot.com related changes in San Francisco. A wide range of people were interviewed including venture capitalists, artists, engineers, and political activists.

[Fiona Maguire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone from or living in The Bay

[Maddie Pace · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many thought provoking stories and people woven through this book. San Francisco is a fascinating city, at the intersection of many cultures.

[Eliza Edel McClelland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, thoughtful, and truly balanced look at the effect of big tech on what has become the most expensive city in the country and what that does to the people and the economy. In this compelling book we look at San Francisco’s new gold rush. With the authors gentle framing we hear from the change-makers and those most deeply effected by this boom. While this is focused on the bay area, it is quite universal to the cultural and financial implications of gentrification in any US city.

[Landall Proctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author does a very good job of using the interviews of an incredibly diverse set of residents to tell the story of San Francisco's evolution from their vantage points. As soon as one would end I was anxious to learn of the perspective of another. San Francisco is certainly a changing, evolving city and with those changes are inevitably some winners and some losers. Silicon City doesn't pick a side, it just presents the evidence.

[Cavak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do yourself a favor and look up "gentrification" before reading Silicon City. And while you're reading McClelland's interviews with San Francisco residents, you can fully appreciate that peeling separation from the sterile dictionary definition when evictions are issued, local companies are bought out, prices are spiked dramatically, and a colorful city begins to lose its identity. Oof.

What I liked is that McClelland includes views expressed by those from all walks of life. Poor, rich, new, old, raised, relocated, they're all included to some degree. It was a pleasant surprise to address California's shady practices for homelessness, and capital punishment and rehabilitation too.

Silicon City is an honest and thought-provoking look into what gentrification really is in the wake of Silicon Valley's rise. There's a love for this specific city within the interviews that makes it stand out from other sociology books, something that I wish for everyone to read. Hopefully, it may lead to empathy to address conflicts that arise from worrying socioeconomic instabilities in Western societies. Thank you, McClelland, for compiling a varied set of voices that may not have been heard.

I received the book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.

[Juhi]

My local bookstore propped this up at the front display, and I’m so glad because I’ve been looking for this book since I moved to the city. It’s a collection of vignettes from like a hundred people who call San Francisco home – a product designer, an angel investor, a software engineer who returned to her childhood neighborhood, a college student, a tattoo artist, a longshoreman, a local bookstore worker, an emergency provider, a journalist, a union worker, a member of the Frisco Five, a politician, a Buddhist nun, a seasoned psychedelic, an urban planner, a farmer, a couple who lost their home in the fires, a gay couple who lived through the AIDS pandemic, folks who were part of the bustling Black middle class… well you get the idea. The resulting tableau was stunning, so many little windows into these concurrent lives that span the city’s history and many neighborhoods.

I’ve struggled with making sense of the city’s extremes. The extreme wealth, the refractory poverty. The influx of rich professionals, the forced exodus of the working class. A breathless quest for innovation against the city’s rich history. Corporate greed evolving at warp speed and the city government’s inability to keep up. And I’ve struggled with how I fit into it- I’m a temporary transplant, a young professional passing through, using the city as grounds for my personal self-actualization.

Through this chorus of voices, McClelland encourages us to resist these sharp ideas of separation. Maybe we all have more in common than we realize – a lot of folks in San Francisco are pretty fun, have big dreams, a creative soul, a lil seed for counterculture and disrupting the status quo. But McClelland also avoids easy oversimplifications because we’re still a split city, where most rich professionals don’t know a local working class person and vice versa. I’m still not sure what the solution would be. A city can’t survive without its working class that’s mostly been pushed out and forced to commute in; teachers can’t afford to live near schools and even doctors can’t afford to live near their hospitals. Eclectic vibrant neighborhoods are being compressed into eerie similar monoculture. Learning about the city’s recent history helped me understand what’s happening today, the fears around losing jobs at the 2008 recession and how desperately trying to keep the tech companies in the city has backfired. The solution’s not that the city needs to get along really, it’s that everyone here should have access to housing, dignity, and real freedom.

Over and over, the metaphor of the gold rush came up. People move to San Francisco looking for a quick buck or a change in their fortune or the hope of making a dream come true, and a lucky few strike gold. But towards the end, another metaphor emerged. The transcontinental railroad shifted the way we think about time and space, and it made SF a player on the national stage. But building this revolutionary technology that shrunk the distance between SF and the rest of the country, it had a massive human toll and exploited the labor of an immigrant worker underclass. The city’s history is so interesting to me, but it’s hard to look back and think about everyone who didn’t survive the earthquakes and pandemics and rising cost of living.

This book deepened my understanding of my city, and it made me feel more compassion for all of its residents (all of them, even the people who make up the tech industry). I feel a renewed commitment to exploring local small businesses, going on walks in other people’s neighborhoods, learning about the city’s history. We have something so special, so precious here, and I want to help protect this city and the people who make it.

[CTEP]

This month I read “Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley” by Cary McClelland. I actually just picked up this book from a book display because although ‘Silicon Valley’ is a place I hear a lot about in media, it wasn’t place that I felt like I knew much about. This book opened my eyes to the ways the tech industry disrupted the cultures and communities of the Bay Area, while also presenting a variety of different opinions and viewpoints. The author interviewed and summarized the interviews of almost 50 people in the Bay Area, all from very different backgrounds. The synopses tell most of the story themselves, and McClelland organizes them into six parts, giving each a short introduction.

As is the case with most socioeconomic disparities, it is hard to contribute it to a single cause. However, after reading this book, it is clear that the tech boom overwhelmingly led to the gentrification of, and exaggerated existing inequalities in the Bay Area. Tech giants headquartered in Silicon Valley include Netflix, Apple, Adobe, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Intel, Tesla, and many more. Because these companies are located outside San Francisco, they don’t pay taxes to the city, even though many of their workers live there. After World War Ⅱ, there was a prominent black middle class in San Francisco. Now, African Americans make up only 3% of the city’s population. Rent was hiked up on properties that were near Google Bus stops (the luxury buses that transport tech workers from the city to their jobs in the valley). Teachers can no longer afford to live in the city they teach in, and as a result, the profession is experiencing an insanely high turnover. That combined with region-wide budget cuts to education has led to some schools in the Bay Area having ZERO PERCENT literacy.

I found that these stories broadened my understanding of the divide tech has created. There were also some valuable insights put forth by others in public service. One interviewee suggested that the public sector needs to become as innovative as the tech sector, and I don’t disagree with that. Another person interviewed, who works as a diversity counselor for the tech industry, presented the merging of social justice culture and technology as the solution to inequality, and I found that to be the most compelling solution put forth.

Everyone who reads this book will probably take something different away from it, just because of how it’s structured. It is a fun read because each interview is only a few pages, which makes space for a lot of voices. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the spatial relationships of the tech industry and Bay Area.

[Nishit Asnani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silicon City is an ambitious work: the author interviews people associated with San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, spanning across class, race and points of view, and presents them together as a collection of stories. This ranges from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to sexologists, activists and tattoo artists, right up to former drug dealers and juvenile advocates.

Firstly, I'd say that I liked the format - it made for stories that were short enough to be read and digested entirely on a 10 minute journey on the Caltrain. As for the stories themselves, I would commend the author's effort to present diverse ways of looking at and interpreting the world that we all co-exist in.

This book is not a great piece of literature and it doesn't present great ideas for technology or business or politics. It's not a purely academic pursuit and it's not a purely creative one either. But most likely, it's worth your time.

I understand this book as an effort to make people empathetic - to help them understand the problems of those living not so far from them, working in their free cafeteria, driving their shared rides, building their university campuses, writing rhymes in some dark corner. It gives the reader a tiny glimpse into the needs and desires and stories of those who seem so distant, whose worldviews seem so alien. Just a tiny glimpse.

And for that, I appreciate the book. It does what it intends to do. It makes you belong. And care.

[Stefania Galtieri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the concept of the book, which was to see a city through interviews with different actors in the city, exploring different perspectives while hearing their stories. Definitely this last part made the book much more usable and interesting, precisely because it was not exclusively a presentation of the issues of san fran and silicon valley but had a lot of personal stories, it made it almost a "novel" at times.

On the other hand, I think the book is a bit biased: most of the interviews were with activists, former homeless, expatriates, and generally people who bring a fairly common point of view, which is that the city is gentrifying, that it is adrift, and that tech has irrevocably changed the san francisco of artists and writers. Instead, I think it is not emphasized enough how much (also!) tech has made san francisco the cosmopolitan, rich, and effervescent city it is today. The point of the book was to bring as many points of view as possible, and missing this part in my opinion made it repetitive at times.

Ultimately I would say that I did not like that the end of the book leads to nothing. I would have liked a kind of closure that recapitulated what had been said in the book, which instead is completely missing.

Overall, I liked the book; I think it is a good resource for learning about the city and observing its dynamics.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I am a fan of this book and it's stories, I can't give it a 5/5 review.

Silicon City includes different perspectives on the bay area, from long-time residents, to new tech company hires, to ladies who work at the cafeteria of big tech corporations, and many more. I appreciate the history of the Bay Area that is interwoven into this book. I learned more about how these tech companies are driving up costs for non-tech residents of the Bay and surrounding areas, all while their billion dollar companies get tax breaks and are not forced to pay fines to help the communities they are ultimately forcing out.

Though the book did have six different sections, I do think it could benefit from having more structure. I agree with other reviews saying that the book seems to skip from story to story. Maybe if they could have split the book into sections like a) those who came and conquered b) those who were kicked out c) those who tried to make it, but didn't and d) those who fight for others.

While I still do recommend this book, I do not think it is only book to read about gentrification, the tech industry, and the bay area.

[Krithika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book expecting a straightforward history of San Francisco, but it turned out to be so much more. As someone who has spent most of my life in the Bay Area, I never truly noticed how the city's landscape has transformed in light of Silicon Valley's growth—each billboard promoting the next big tech, the increasing number of empty storefronts in downtown, local markets being replaced by upscale establishments, and the streets moreso bustling with young tech professionals.

The book starts with a brief overview of Silicon Valley's rise, highlighting the bold, risk-taking spirit that has established it as a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation. It delves into the dramatic growth that has ushered in a new kind of wealth in San Francisco. However, what I found most compelling was the way it illuminated the stories of individuals who often get overlooked in this narrative—the bookstore owners, construction workers, union organizers, Uber drivers, etc.

That said, I did find the perspectives to be somewhat biased, leaning towards a frequent anti-tech sentiment, with fewer voices represented from those actively shaping the tech scene in San Francisco.

The book highlights pressing social issues linked to the tech boom, including gentrification, deepening economic and racial disparities, and a spiraling housing crisis in the Bay Area. It raises a key question: How can San Francisco balance its rich historical and cultural identity with its emerging status as a tech hub? As stated, "The challenge for the Bay Area is not whether it can choose one identity—libertarian tech supercity or state-sponsored liberal utopia—but whether it can find some harmony where the best of each can merge" (pg. 14). This dialogue is crucial for envisioning a balanced future for this vibrant city.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished Cary McClelland's _Silicon City_ on Audible. The book came to my attention as the result of a panel he was on at the Texas Book Festival in Austin. I listened to it mostly flying back and forth from Houston to San Jose and driving south from San Jose to a customer site. The book is an oral history of people who call San Francisco home. They're from all walks of life, and their stories create a tapestry of a complex ecosystem. As the subtitle indicates, these life stories are all impacted, changed, transformed by the long shadow of the tech industry in the Valley. At times it's a tough listen since the stories are so raw. This is real life folks, and sometimes it ain't pretty.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really encapsulated the current challenges facing San Francisco and the Bay Area in a unique way - in the actual words of the people on the front lines of these seismic changes. The author is a filmmaker and did a great job of capturing the words of individuals as disparate as a longshoreman, venture capitalist, tattoo artist, homeless advocate, etc., etc. In short, a representative from all the strands of the bay area that are both pulling it apart and holding it together. Though the book offers no "solutions" I didn't expect it to do so. It was better - it gave a street level view of how a city evolves - from commerce, to art, to real estate, etc. A really important book and an amazing snapshot of a point in time.