By John Hersey

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.