Below are some reflections followed by a few curiosities. You’ll notice my perspective shifts often rhyme with: “Europe good, actually.” Because of my pro-America bias, any change favoring Europe is notable.

Europe is unproductive (and that’s ok)

In Switzerland, it’s illegal to work Sundays (with exemptions like hotels, hospitals).

This is unthinkable to the American mind, and a blatant rejection of something I hold sacred: the right to sell one’s own labor. While I dislike the restriction, I grew to appreciate deprioritizing productivity in favor of just, like, hanging out.

One sunny Tuesday morning, I found myself in Spiez, an alpine village overlooking Lake Thun. I watched the locals splashing about with their families and lounging amongst shoreline flowers, and couldn’t help but muse: “they probably have zero agents running right now.”

And you know what? Good for them. The only difference between complacency and contentment, I’ve decided, is that the latter appears earned. The bar is placed arbitrarily: the leisurely lifestyle Americans can finally justify in retirement is readily permissible by default in parts of Europe.

I wanted to understand, though — do local status games not compel wealth-generating action? I asked an Uber driver about this, and he explained an ostensibly common German saying: “look only at your own ass.” I chose to interpret this as something between “comparison is the thief of joy” and “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor.”

Locals truly appeared to be running “Base Human” software, with none of the cultural bloatware we’ve encumbered ourselves with in the States. I’m sure they have their own variety of brainworms and status games, but if they exist, they were kept well-hidden in all my interactions.

It’s easy to forget in San Francisco that the desire to be relentlessly productive is a blend of innate and mimetic factors — the latter of which is like fielding an endless volley. German-speaking Europe, meanwhile, felt like a mimetic DMZ.

The axis of time

While studying a cathedral’s facade in Chur, a 5000-year-old town in Switzerland, I found words for a cognitive shift I often experience in Europe. The “axis” of time expands dramatically, its scope in consciousness held wide by the perpetual presence of our species’ past: ancient Roman ruins, prehistoric burial sites, medieval battlegrounds. It’s impossible to forget that something came before.

I call this the “temporal sublime” (h/t Kant): visceral awareness of time’s vastness both ahead and behind, while one peers out from an indivisible “now.” I’d place it in the same phenomenological neighborhood as the Overview Effect — both evoke feelings of dissolution before an incalculably expansive whole.

Life in the US, on the other hand, feels like a never-ending now. Lacking visible signs of our past permits a narrower time “axis.” Under these conditions, history becomes abstract, even irrelevant. Modern civilization becomes easier to take for granted.

I found myself wondering if history’s omnipresence is to Europe what a maternal embrace is to a child: a comforting provision of identity that subtly risks dependency. When it comes to policy, historical identity is sometimes a constraint: what can be done may not comport with “What We Do.” Action taken by Europe may be sure-footed, but restrained by the warm embrace known as The Past. Meanwhile, America’s unmooredness may be its strength. There’s no yesterday to identify with, and no spiritual progenitor owed fealty — only the desire of today, and the promise of tomorrow.

Shared space

Even in urban areas with intense foot traffic, I never so much as bumped shoulders with someone. Locals seem deeply aware of their surroundings and the intentions of those moving around them, as if an internal route planner is constantly calibrating to the environment. In US cities, pedestrian awareness rarely includes more than what lies immediately ahead.

A related theme: cities in German-speaking Europe will just… leave you alone.

American urban environments are an endless assault on the senses — it just took me seeing the alternative to notice. Most commonly this includes bright, flashy advertisements, screaming: “Hey idiot, buy this pharmaceutical! Hire this lawyer!” My travels saw refreshingly fewer, and far subtler advertisements.

The downside: I felt invisible in German-speaking Europe. In American cities, I regularly make eye contact with those passing me, often mutually acknowledged via nod or brief smile. Initially, I assumed the lack of eye contact implied a lack of curiosity, but after asking a local friend, I was told it’s because eye contact is interpreted as an invitation to chat. Whatever the reason may be, I greatly prefer American norms on this.

A loved place

Occasionally, I meet someone who makes me think “wow this person had a loving childhood.” Turns out it’s possible to feel this about a country. Nearly every house, sidewalk, patch of grass in Switzerland felt uncomplicatedly loved. My conversations with locals suggested the same — they spoke of their country with an air of uncompromising devotion, as one might speak of a spouse or child.

Public systems exemplified this, and led to a real perspective change for me: I never thought the U.S. had efficient public systems (e.g. airports), but I figured surely they’re better than other countries. I was wrong. The services I encountered were clearly a product of love. And yes, the product of well-designed incentives is indistinguishable from that of genuine care… but someone cared enough to design those incentives!

Switzerland deserves the crown

My friend Kyle Qian once remarked that the US “does nature differently” from everyone else. Visiting Switzerland, I see what he meant. In the US, nature and civilization are separate places. Going into nature is like visiting a zoo. In Switzerland, nature and civilization are woven together to form a contiguous, ornate tapestry.

While the Bay Area has the most beautiful terrain on the planet, Switzerland wins overall. They’ve discovered the art of adding beauty to the land they develop. You would be forgiven for thinking the Alps themselves formed for the purpose of cradling Swiss villages. Contrast this with the environment-agnostic, copy+paste approach common in the US… no wonder we’re so hesitant to develop in nature!

Of course, there’s America’s beautiful, walkable exception: the ski town. Sadly, these are closer to Disney villages — destinations engineered to extract money from tourists — than they are real, livable places. A simulacrum of my dear European alpine village.

In praise of homogeneity

I now feel that American culture is thin, but wide and varied; European regional culture is narrow, but deep, consistent and rich — like a sauce left simmering for a thousand years.

I went to a parade including Bavarian organizations that have been active for nearly a millennium. A medieval crossbow club marched by, wearing traditional garb and carrying bows. This obscure-seeming club alone (amongst hundreds in Bavaria) contains a dizzying array of traditions, tournaments, and honors — no doubt a product of centuries of passion.

During my trip, I saw signs of similar social richness everywhere I looked, and found myself pondering Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone. Is the dearth of community a uniquely American affliction? If the Europeans have escaped, Putnam would likely argue they benefit from their dense, pre-car urban developments and cultural homogeneity.

In America, diversity is the default. Entering with different values and assumed norms disrupts little, as there’s no stable state to begin with. Switzerland has this stability, and it is worth preserving. Homogeneous, high-context environments obviate the “overhead” otherwise paid by residents in negotiating values and norms. Everything is implicitly understood, enabling a low-friction, more productive day-to-day.

Visiting German-speaking Europe was like running my hand over finely woven silk, after having only felt rough American patchwork. Cultural diversity is absolutely essential in the aggregate, the same way a balanced outfit includes articles of clothing of varying but complementary fabric types. Low-level homogeneity, with high-level diversity, seems to me like the best of both worlds.

Curiosity miscellany

• Helvetica (as in, the famous Apple font) is named after the Helvetii, the indigenous people of Switzerland

• “CH”: you see this everywhere in Switzerland, including the Swiss TLD (.ch) and currency (CHF). I learned this refers to the country’s official Latin name: Confoederatio Helvetica

• Traditional cocaine. There’s fully sanctioned, traditional “cocaine” sold and used throughout Oktoberfest. It’s called Wiesnkoks, and it’s composed of dextrose powder and menthol.

• Offline life. The youth don’t seem subject to the “weather of the internet” like their American counterparts. In fact, they seemed downright disconnected. Even on transit, I rarely saw doomscrolling.

• Don’t believe the lies. Switzerland isn’t that expensive. At least, the groceries aren’t. American grocers force a “pick two”: healthy, affordable, convenient. Not only did the Swiss find a way around this, they also maintain their low prices regardless of location — even tiny mountain-top villages where they have substantially more pricing power! Once again, incomprehensible to the American mind.

• Language laugh theory. I have a pet theory that one can identify a non-English speaker from their laugh alone. During the trip, I noticed German laughs were indistinguishable from those of English speakers, and figured the laugh-style boundary may not divide languages, but language families: Germanic vs. Romance. Then I realized most German speakers also speak English, and… the mystery continues.

I walked into one such shop this morning to get a sari adjusted for my mom. The elderly proprietor peered at me over her bifocals, reluctant to part with the drama playing on her phone. I relayed my mother's request in broken Hindi and received a quote so low that it felt unseemly to haggle.

I was raised in Ashburn, Virginia — one of a few DC suburbs marked by a growing Indian population. Let me tell you: Ashburn doesn't have what I see in Edison. Even the Bay Area doesn’t!

DC and the Bay are places of Indian-professional monoculture; everyone is a software engineer, healthcare worker, or "tech implementation manager" (insert other vague PMC title). Ashburn is an especially focused version of this, with rare entrepreneurial activity outside of Beltway Banditry. Owning restaurants is common, but they feel inauthentic, like they’re contorting to fit the cultural caricature that patrons are assumed to want.

I didn’t realize how true this was until visiting Edison — a place that apparently avoided (or outgrew) the culture-slop failure mode. It’s unvarnished and slightly chaotic; negative-sounding qualities that I’d argue lend it texture.

While I wait for that sari adjustment, I’m walking between shops with quintessential ‘90s eggshell-white plastic fans humming away, Hindu idols above every doorway, and Bollywood dance clips looping on a muted Panasonic. Each business appears as an expression of jugaad — solving real needs with trade skills no doubt passed over many generations. The whole scene feels honest; it’s hard not to love something that presents itself so plainly, so unobstructed by self-awareness.

If you know me, you know my world doesn’t contain many ‘oughts,’ but my opinions on urban life come closest. One romantic ideal I’ll never lose sight of: grabbing a bite from the shop downstairs – whose patrons know one another, and whose menu is nutritionally and economically similar to home-cooked food. This is rare in the US, but Edison does okay – it’s possible to grab a $7 (healthy-ish) entree after a $5 haircut, with a stream of familiar faces on the walk over. The dream!

Before we get carried away in neo-urbanist reverie, I should mention that the town feels… neglected (dutifully avoiding stronger language here). Unlike similar areas, it’s not easy to point at correlates like poverty. It isn’t a poor area — the pothole-ridden parking lots are filled with Teslas and BMWs. It’s a frank expression of what Indians care about, and (for better or worse) that list rarely includes potholes. The stores have stained ceilings and crooked doorframes because ignoring superficial issues saves businesses money, allowing them to deliver value in ways (even resource-unconstrained) Indians do care about: $7 entrees and $5 haircuts. What presents as an odd juxtaposition of wealth and poverty is sometimes… selective frugality?

I’ll admit – at least on the economic side, this partly also reflects my own preferences. I’d rather not pay a premium at a sandwich shop just because it has excellent decor. I’m there for a simple transaction: I want a good sandwich, and I’ll enjoy it no less sitting on a plastic folding chair!

I’m leaving Edison soon, and what I appreciate is clear: the unmanicured humanity in its cracked sidewalks and faded store signs, and a real social fabric (in suburbia, no less!) with apparent longevity.

Some things are less clear. I admittedly have minimal contact with Indian culture; I grew up in America, eating Frosted Flakes and playing backyard football. Some tendencies on display (scrappiness, jugaad, efficiency) resonate deeply, others not so much (perennial neglect of the commons). I think of myself as Very American, so suddenly being “in India” is an awkward dance between identities. Like any first-time partner dance, the pair is fumbling around and stepping on each other’s toes. I trust they’ll find their rhythm, but I won’t rush it.

Tomorrow I’m driving back to DC, repaired sari in hand, and a little confused. Contrary to what I hear in the Bay, I don’t think everything in one’s inner world needs to be perfectly sorted and topped with a neat bow. In fact, I like mine a little unruly, a little textured.

Faint giggles, muted by sun-stained upholstery and the reference section.

The soft, earthen sweetness of yellowed pages and weathered binding.

As a kid, I would trace paths between bricks in the wall of my local library. With my extended index finger, I became a ship captain, navigating uncharted waters. I’d stand on my toes, searching for a new passageway through the northerly seas, as crumbs of dislodged mortar fall to my feet.

I went back recently, decades later. The space was smaller than I remembered.

Where were its labyrinthine hallways? Its vaulted ceilings? My cathedral had shrunk to a cottage!

But the sun streams in, bright as ever. It pours gold down the walls, to the floor — forming those same, cozy pools I had enjoyed during travels to Hogwarts and Mars.

I approach my old friend, the brick wall, but he seems not to recognize me. I hear no crashing waves. I smell no brine.

A cascade of emotion begins, and lasts no more than 2 seconds: disappointment, followed by embarrassment that I had expected anything, followed by amusement at the strangeness of it all.

Still standing there, studying the aged brick, something else appears: appreciation. What was once a barren dirt plot had become a cherished library, thanks only to human hands and shared vision.

This tendency — to create, to provide, to see something where nothing yet exists — has brought incalculable good to the world, and I've grown to deeply admire it in others.

After two decades, the library I stood in was a far cry from that of my memories. It was plain — austere, even. But it’s come to represent something that extends far beyond its shrunken rooms.

The world is still painted with narrative and possibility. The colors may have changed, but they’re no less bright. They’re all around us, even in aged and broken brick. Sometimes you just have to squint.

Original Twitter thread here

Loam (n) - highly fertile soil used in gardening

Trellis (n) - structure that supports plants' vertical growth

The word that best captures San Francisco's spirit is creation. Depending on your circles, this might feel specifically like innovation, or expression. Either way, the people of this city appear uniquely interested in this deeply human act: taking an idea from the mind, and bringing it into the world.

I attribute much of the city's greatness to this tendency. A long-standing culture of creative expression and scrappy entrepreneurship has produced incalculable value for the world. From social and artistic movements, to the iPhone — the Bay Area is a clear net exporter of culture, ideas, and technology.

How did this rocky peninsula in California become so intellectually fertile — so productive? Most importantly, what can we do to potentiate its rare cocktail of creative energy?

I believe San Francisco's most beautiful future will be found by fostering conditions that promote the growth of creative experiments. I liken this to gardening, where the likelihood of new growth is a function of soil quality, and the scale of that growth is a function of ambient support.

The Goal: Vitality

While San Francisco ought to progress along a variety of dimensions, I'm specifically interested in the city's cultural, intellectual, and economic vitality. This might be measured by the amount of original research taking place, technology being built, or art being published — more generally, it's about the quantity and scale of experiments starting in San Francisco.

What are experiments? I define the word fairly broadly, as concerted attempts to enrich the lives of others and self. An experiment is a fundamentally creative act; it’s the point of contact between one’s vision and the world. Often, this takes form as an appeal to artistic sensibilities, technical innovation, or commercial enterprise. Some examples: starting a company, painting a neighborhood mural, writing a compiler, running a Hegelian phenomenology discussion group, opening a restaurant, bringing a bunch of goats to Dolores Park and letting people play with them.

Just as important as what this future looks like is what a vital San Francisco increasingly feels like. To me, this is an amplified form of its best characteristics: a contagious sense of agency, liberation from social convention, and desire for a life of consequence. The city should be an inebriating, propelling force — a welcome home for sky-high aspiration and single-minded obsession.

How do we get there? If the best proxy for vitality is the volume of experiments being run, then we should consider the conditions necessary for experimental growth.

I'll enumerate below what I think these conditions are, but first, it’s worth quickly calling out what allows this growth to be self-perpetuating: enabling a rich and fulfilling life for those people who themselves produce the conditions under which experiments can flourish: those who value intellectual exploration, personal expression, and agency. This population has long been drawn to SF, and is disproportionately likely to create things that ultimately contribute to the city's vitality. Most importantly, in their pursuit of a beautiful life, they light the beacon that attracts others who will do the same.

You’ll notice a circular dependency here: creating a beautiful life to attract those who will create an even more beautiful life. San Francisco’s greatest advantage is that the cultural cold start has already been surmounted — the flywheel is spinning, and the garden has been seeded. Let’s help it grow.

Loam: Fertile Ground

Gardeners promote new growth by using fertile, nutrient-dense soil. Similarly, if we want to encourage the growth of experiments in SF, we need to create the conditions that make them likely to begin. This means increasing:

1. Density of aligned individuals

2. Meaningful social exposure

3. Space for exploration

Together, these produce conditions for encouraging new growth.

Density

Density’s magic lies in what it enables: casual collisions — serendipitous encounters between people in day-to-day life — at the grocery store, in line for coffee, or while out for a stroll. The logic is simple: friends who live nearby are more likely to bump into one another. These unplanned interactions form a powerful, easily overlooked social adhesive — one I consider indispensable in strengthening in-person community.

The more obvious benefit is reducing friction to planned social activity. Greater density puts more people within an accessible radius of one another, resulting in a deeper social pool with more frequent and spontaneous activity. In other words, density unlocks social opportunity that would be impractical otherwise.

While density alone provides a strong sense of urban vitality, it doesn't guarantee community (paradoxically, cities are often isolating). Community is more easily derived specifically from density of aligned individuals — those who share interests, values, or vision. When arranged intentionally, this is typically referred to as co-location.

A prominent local example of co-location is The Neighborhood — an area surrounding Alamo Square that has attracted researchers and engineers as readily as it has writers and academics. Network effects are powerful; countless ambitious individuals from all walks of life have chosen to move in, making it the city's de facto center for non-traditional intellectual and entrepreneurial pursuits.

While significant opportunity exists around self-organized housing, even more remains on its underlying layer: urban development and design. Housing supply is an undeniable constraint which, when eased, enables increasingly dense and lively neighborhoods while generating downward pressure on price.

On the urban design front, promising efforts include: expansion of mixed-use zoning, re-imagining streets for human-scale activity, and additional public spaces. Space outside of home should increasingly become space for us to enjoy together, rather than merely distance to travel before a destination. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of these topics — together, they drive much of urban lifestyle quality, and frankly deserve an essay of their own.

Density, especially when paired with thoughtful urban design, is a powerful socioeconomic force. Its promotion of face-to-face interaction not only increases subjective quality of life, but also has material impact on productivity and innovation.

Density is the foundation of a rich urban life, and a flourishing San Francisco.

Meaningful exposure

The volume of interactions produced by density are indispensable, but insufficient. We also require opportunities for meaningful exposure catering to specific segments of the population. It’s these opportunities that allow people to discover that which they share, and build the lasting relationships that form a basis for community.

These opportunities are most readily available around community-oriented spaces I call “planets” — in SF, this is largely group housing, but can also include third spaces, etc. It’s worth briefly examining the unusual role they play in San Francisco’s social landscape.

Group houses function as “planets” — each has a cultural gravity that selects for a unique orbital community. These “orbits” intersect heavily with those of similar houses1, forming a cultural cluster. Group houses of a cluster provide their community with reliable space to convene2, but perhaps most importantly, space for ambient interaction — unplanned, ongoing social activity that occurs as a natural consequence of a shared environment. This might look like late-night discussions in the kitchen, or chatty afternoon co-working in the living room. Ambient interaction is impractical outside of dense, socially connected neighborhoods. However, group houses are effectively hyper-dense, tiny neighborhoods of their own — where casual collisions are maximized, and where friction associated with social activity is minimized.3

People naturally cohere around that which they share. However, to persist as a community requires space to be a community. San Francisco’s planets fulfill this need, creating opportunity for meaningful exposure by naturally filtering to sets of aligned individuals4, providing reason to convene, and reliable space in which to do so.

Meaningful exposure is indispensable in the formation of relationships and community. It both increases quality of life, and promotes experimentation5 — you’re more likely to run experiments with friends, or because of friends, than alone.

Space for exploration

When given time, energy, and exposure to new ideas, seeds of inspiration eventually sprout leaves and flowers. This is exploration — the inherently open-ended process of discovering what is, and what could be. There’s no obvious destination, and one is armed only with a gut sense that there’s something out there — to be understood, to be felt, or to be built. So, one does the inexplicable thing: raise the sails, and head for the horizon.

In practice, exploration often comes down to simply doing a lot of things — reading, writing, meeting new people, and tinkering continuously. While it’s impossible to know exactly what it looks like, there are reliably helpful ingredients: a community of others on the same journey, exposure to orthogonal ideas, opportunities for serendipitous interaction, and access to tailored events and discussions — all of which should be readily available at spaces designed for exploratory work.

I see unique value in spaces that make themselves home to general exploration, like The Commons. Here, you’ll just as easily find linear algebra study groups as you will painting classes, meditation groups, or Greek philosophy discussion circles. It’s in many ways modeled after university life, offering curriculums across a variety of topics. Unlike university life, members are motivated not by GPAs, but by genuine curiosity. Alive with playful energy, optimism, and creative agency, The Commons lives at the heart of the unique, long-standing culture of San Francisco.

These spaces provide something that most only have for 4 years, if at all — opportunity for discussion and debate, for exposure to truly new ideas, for collaborative creativity, and for curiosity-driven inquiry alongside a community. Together, these form a torch in the hand of an explorer — its blaze illuminates pathways that would otherwise go unseen.

Trellis: Supporting Growth

A significant portion of experiments that come into existence never progress beyond the seedling stage, or otherwise fail to create nearly as much value as their initiators would have liked. This isn’t a surprise — scaling is hard, and often requires a non-negligible amount of time, energy, and money. If we want to improve experimental outcomes, support is crucial.

Three categories with considerable impact potential:

1. Domain-specific communities

2. Access to capital

3. Lifestyle infrastructure

In an ideal garden, plants grow as well as their genes allow. Similarly, if an experiment fails or stops growing, it shouldn't be because of insufficient support, but because of limitations inherent to the experiment itself.

Domain-specific communities

There's a remarkable buzz when everyone in a room is excited about the same thing. Much like constructive interference between waves, passion shared between people has an unmistakable amplifying effect. This effect can be harnessed for collective benefit by domain-specific communities.

When executed well, domain-specific communities make members better off than they would be individually. This is partly due to the above, but also to the myriad opportunities for knowledge exchange, mentorship, and collaboration that inevitably appear.

These benefits can disappear just as easily. Filtering is crucial — not for experience, since a major benefit is sharing of expertise and mentorship, but for genuine interest. In my observation, the constructive interference effect requires the overwhelming majority of members to be truly enamored by the domain — failing to account for this can just as easily produce destructive interference.

Well-assembled, domain-specific communities behave like engines for progress within their respective domains — increasing collective intelligence and productivity. This exists in SF for a handful of domains (like AI), but significant headroom remains. For every domain filled with passionate thinkers, there should be a space serving to unlock the innumerable benefits unique to collective passion.

Access to capital

How much value are we being deprived of simply because the people best prepared to create it are deterred by financial risk?

Traditionally, this is discussed in the context of venture capital and tech companies, but I'm just as excited by the prospect of funding projects in other domains, like the arts, using alternate models. Patronage was responsible for the production of many of our species’ most brilliant works — Michelangelo's David, the Sistine Chapel, and many of Mozart’s symphonies. Why should this model be left to history? Where is San Francisco’s Medici?

Modern grant programs may be the closest modern analogue of patronage. These programs are excellent, but insufficient — not only are they few in number, they’re often limited to specific domains rarely including culture and the arts. Personally, I’m most excited by the prospect of funding works that seek to inspire, imagine the future, or create beauty for its own sake. It’s only too easy to underestimate the downstream benefits these efforts can have on civic pride and motivation.

Francisco San is a favorite of mine — it aims to make SF "more whimsical through eventures and installations," with cited examples of "parties, pop-ups, puzzle hunts, art, races, (un)conferences, distribution of interesting objects or anything in between." Beyond adding an air of light-heartedness and whimsy to San Francisco, it has a deeper function I think of as cultural deglazing — loosening calcified notions of what the city does, and producing reminders of agency: “we can just do things.” Culture is a function of group behavior, and Francisco San funds behavior that is incredibly valuable, but is rarely rewarded by the market.

Of course, the tech/entrepreneurial side is just as important. South Park Commons is a notable example, offering to pay people as they explore alongside a broader community. In doing this, they unlock talent that would otherwise be trapped in the golden handcuffs of a 9-5 job — easing the difficulty of transition, and functioning as an employment off-ramp.

Regardless of domain, access to capital significantly reduces personal financial risk in undertaking experiments, enabling both greater volume and diversity of efforts. Even in SF, funding dollars appear outpaced by worthy projects — projects whose value will remain unrealized so long as they are undercapitalized.

Lifestyle infrastructure

There’s a reason people love working on-campus at tech companies: they provide nearly anything you could want within arm’s reach — frequently offering healthy food, barbershops, athletic facilities, and medical care. While I’m not suggesting we turn San Francisco into a Google campus (though we could do with more slides and ball pits), it's worth considering the value these campuses offer: lifestyle infrastructure — bundles of services that reduce overhead associated with lifestyle needs.

There are independent services in SF that can be thought of as components of lifestyle infrastructure, including Jeff's Blueprint meal delivery service, and Stedman's health optimization program. Both are designed to offer quality products within their respective categories, while simultaneously saving countless customer hours.6

These types of services, when coupled with density, produce an “unbundled” campus-like experience. Moving one step toward centralization, we see partnerships between vendors, offering packages of multiple services under a single subscription. Another step in the same direction, and we have the campus — a space that offers lifestyle infrastructure to a population of aligned individuals7. As I see it, every “managed” campus sits somewhere on the spectrum between monastery (organizers pay) and university (members pay).

An example of the “monastery” model is HF0, a startup incubator in Alamo Sq. that aims to meet portfolio companies’ lifestyle needs under one roof (including housing) — allowing them to simply focus on work. This model is excellent for tech companies and their investors, but could also work wonderfully for artistic or spiritual pursuits — rather than equity sale, funded by other means, like grants or income share.8

A "university"-style campus may offer more autonomy to members, as they’re paying for themselves. Similar to actual universities, this could involve a subscription fee to access managed services like: housing, food (perhaps from local vendors), or spaces for education and productivity. While there isn’t an extant example, it’s possible that Solaris will shape up to be the first of this sort.

The Lower Haight-Alamo-Hayes region (roughly “The Neighborhood”) already offers a decentralized, campus-like experience. At its current pace of growth, the area will soon have nearly 100 group houses, gyms, and third spaces, all in a reasonably dense urban zone — one that has already largely selected for the aligned population mentioned at the start of this essay. However, significant opportunity remains for:

1. New services and amenities catering to campus residents

2. Bundling these services together to form lifestyle infrastructure

3. Managing lifestyle infrastructure so it can be delivered simply and at scale

Lifestyle infrastructure reduces overhead associated with the fulfillment of lifestyle needs, enabling the redirection of time and attention to the things that matter most. The campus model is particularly exciting because it promises to deliver lifestyle infrastructure while further promoting our foundational ingredient for vitality in San Francisco: density of aligned individuals.

The future

I’m deeply excited by the prospect of an increasingly vital San Francisco. This essay describes my mental map of the most important factors in getting us there. Generally, this involves fostering conditions under which experiments can flourish. To use my gardening analogy, this requires fertile soil to promote new growth (loam), and support for existing growth (trellis).

Note that this essay mostly covers the social layer. In the future, I’ll discuss the policy layer9, which introduces a new variety of topics: incentivizing economic activity, promoting housing development, combating crime, homelessness, and governmental dysfunction. Like the social layer, this can be understood using the loam & trellis framework I’ve introduced here. Unlike the social layer, these topics are thankfully already receiving unprecedented attention.

We’re now at the call-to-action part of the essay. There’s much I could ask of you, but here’s just one: create (or fund) the things that genuinely excite you; the rest will fall into place. San Francisco’s spirit lies in this simple act10 — recognizing it is crucial, and cultivating it even more so.

San Francisco’s significance extends far beyond the city's limits. Our world moves forward through creation — of ideas, culture, art, technology — all of which occurs with abundance in San Francisco, and has made it a disproportionate contributor to our species’ progress. Making San Francisco a beautiful place to live, and to increase the vitality of the city, is to move San Francisco forward. To move San Francisco forward is to move the world forward.

Much will change in the coming years, but one thing is certain: San Francisco will continue to grow as the home of agency, of inquiry, and the deeply human act of creation.