It is not when! It is happening — A PCP in Los Altos moved to San Diego because as two doctors with two kids, they could not afford the townhome they lived in ; she counted 4 doctors that have left for similar quality-of-life reasons in her department in the last 6 months.

City Governments are stepping stones to higher offices(read you scratch my back, i scratch yours), revolving doors of folks entrenched in real estate, commercial interests, local bodies like air quality, judiciary, transit systems, even local news outlets, from the local ecosystem that have forgotten how to think for the common man — i quote here one such person — “We want to make sure we fill our coffers for the next 2008 — expand the mixed zone, bring new development before the next slump”. Packing for density with NIMBY first, not smart eco friendly development is the norm. These city governments do not look up to Palo Alto or Menlo that have managed to maintain non-sprawl cities. They also fight transparency efforts like #SunshineOrdinance.

Yes, city government in the first world really operates like the third world. It is quite time consuming, exhausting to bring change. The juxtaposition of bringing in cogent ideas to a forum where you have 5 people that are for the most part not vested at all except in the quarter just before election can be very draining. Perhaps a Bay Are wide regional effort at tackling Infrastructure across the region in a more startup like fashion might be the best bet — maybe creation of such an authority should go on the ballot.