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Welcome - my name is Kevin Klinkenberg, and this site "The Messy City" is my blog and company website. I started blogging on urban planning and design issues in 2007, and began working in the field in 1993. Please feel free to connect with me on any of the social media sites listed here. Thanks for reading.

If you have half an hour to kill

...and want to really dive into why housing is so expensive in San Francisco (spoiler alert: it's not at all simple) then read this exceptional expose in Tech Crunch. A teaser:

Here is a very long explainer. Sorry, this isn’t a shorter post or that I didn’t break it into 20 pieces. If you’re wondering why people are protesting you, how we got to this housing crisis, why rent control exists or why tech is even shifting to San Francisco in the first place, this is meant to provide some common points of understanding.

This is a complex problem, and I’m not going to distill it into young, rich tech douchebags-versus-helpless old ladies facing eviction. There are many other places where you can read that story.

It does us all no justice.

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  1. Sign up for my email list
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  6. Tell a friend or colleague about this site

Why I do this, cont'd

Rust Belt boosting