San Francisco comings and goings

The picture shows parts of San Francisco, centered on the Mission and Bernal areas. Those blank spaces in the lower of center portion of the image: think Bernal hill and Holly Park.

I snagged the map from James Fallows. Here's his explanation:

The green dots on the maps are the neighborhoods and cities expected to grow rapidly by 2017; the blue shows "average" growth rates; and the magenta dots show areas that people are leaving.

... This map was prepared by Jim Herries at the mapping firm Esri, our partner in this project, and it offers a very fine-grained look at expected "population pressures" over the next few years.

That won't come as any surprise to anyone living in contemporary San Francisco. The city's population is churning madly in response to healthy tech companies enabling their workers to use the city as a bedroom community.

I do wonder though about that magenta rectangle in the Mission. Were densities so high among immigrant and other low wage workers in that sector (think apartments where single rooms were rented to whole families) that upscaling the neighborhood reduces population? Perhaps.

Here's the same mapping technique applied to the whole country, again from Fallows. Anyone interested can do what I've done above at his post, zeroing on an area of particular interest.