San Francisco lost a whopping 6.7 percent of its population during the COVID-19 pandemic, the second-largest percentage drop after New York.
Since the 1970s, California policymakers have embarked on a land-use strategy designed to promote “urbanism”—the idea that we all ought to live in dense housing developments, that suburban sprawl should be limited by government planning restrictions, and rural land should be protected for farming and open space.
During his first stint as governor, Jerry Brown oversaw a report called, “An Urban Strategy for California.” In it, the state detailed a policy we’ve seen play out in the ensuing decades. The goal was to “create a more compact urban environment” and curb “wasteful urban sprawl” by focusing new construction in “existing cities and suburbs.”
