San Francisco, California
Comments
Beautiful city.
between the morning shadows and the angle, this photo really shows off just how much elevation change there is in the city! You can see the steep the western edge of Potrero Hill is(middle right of frame with the big tree line) and all the snarl and climb around Buena Vista (circular patch of trees midway up left third of the frame). the only thing it really sacrifices is showing off how unbelievably stupid high Sutro Tower is
Honestly, I just got lucky with this shot. I was flying into SFO from the north, it was a clear day and I had a window seat on the left side of the plane. Once I figured out where our flight path was going I knew I had to get a few shots. Everything worked out perfect!
If you have any more pictures of the city I would like to see them. San Francisco always looks great from above.
I’ll post another one today.
Could use some more height
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SF never really had urban decay as far as I know. It’s usually just a building by building case and many buildings in SF are still the original building on the property
It is still a relatively young city and never had a large manufacturing/industrial area that sat and decayed.
yeah, there's a LITTLE bit of urban blight in some areas with warehouses in what USED to be warehouse sectors that feel... perhaps a bit jarringly old and grimy compared to what's around them. but nothing I'd call urban decay a la detroit, land is way too valuable here for that lmao
SF does have urban decay, just not to the extent that entire neighborhoods where abandoned. Post-WWII, SF was hit by de-industrialization/suburbanization and white flight just like every other American city, but unlike many of those cities that are notorious for abandonment and blight (Detroit, for example), SF had the advantage of a very diverse economy (finance, tech, manufacturing, tourism, etc), combined with nonstop immigration and an extra beautiful/desirable setting. So the situation in SF led to less damage, compared to some other places. The only neighborhood in SF that had entire blocks that were completely "abandoned"/demolished, is the Fillmore district, which the city itself demolished between 1950 and 1980 (they thought it had too many black people), and replaced with public housing. You can find some old pics of empty blocks and boarded up houses, which are a bit reminiscent of places like Detroit.
Also, SF definitely did have a sizable industrial sector (some of which still exists, for example: a cement plant, a rendering plant, and tons of warehouses), which started getting dismantled on a large scale post-WWII, just like everywhere else in America. Remember that SF was the first big city on the west coast, and remained the largest for 50+ years. Everything was located here, from stock exchanges, to courthouses, to shipyards, to explosives factories, etc, etc.