In my opinion, city governments are about personalities. Mayors can wield tremendous authority, so a single person can drastically reshape a city (e.g. Giuliani and Bloomberg in New York). So I guess the hope for San Francisco would be to find a politically opportunistic mayor who realizes that: 1) tech could become to San Francisco what finance is to New York; 2) most of those tech yuppies want to live in a modern city not a quaint charming one, and moves aggressively to court that demographic.
Of course any such reform is a long shot. It's hard to change the character of a city. The best hope for San Francisco is for the tech industry to find it worth staying in the city despite the costs (like finance has done with New York). Otherwise, you might just see a lot of that growth shift to friendlier places like Seattle.
Of course any such reform is a long shot. It's hard to change the character of a city. The best hope for San Francisco is for the tech industry to find it worth staying in the city despite the costs (like finance has done with New York). Otherwise, you might just see a lot of that growth shift to friendlier places like Seattle.