San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie: ‘We Are a City on the Rise’

I first met Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s newly minted mayor, about 5 minutes earlier than we walked onstage at WIRED’s Big Interview event, held in his metropolis final week.

Lurie’s crew let me know forward of time that his window for this dialog was tight: He’d simply come from asserting a brand new metropolis police chief, and had about half an hour for me earlier than he wanted to be on to the subsequent factor. Which was? “No concept,” Lurie quipped, shortly earlier than we had been foisted from backstage and into our dialog in entrance of a number of hundred attendees—a neighborhood crowd, who, judging from their boisterous reactions to Lurie’s each phrase, are among the many 73 percent of San Franciscans who approve of the job he’s achieved since taking workplace in January of this 12 months.

To Lurie’s credit score, the story of San Francisco proper now could be largely a optimistic one. Town is indisputably the worldwide hub of AI innovation and the billions of {dollars} that accompany it, with corporations like Anthropic and OpenAI, together with smaller startups, traders, and loads of younger, AI-focused technologists all calling San Francisco house. Sure, meaning rents are up and housing inventory stays precariously low. However workplace emptiness charges are dropping, shops are coming again to the town’s downtown, and as Lurie’s workplace is fast to tout, a number of key metrics measuring municipal crime—together with homicides and automobile break-ins—are at historic lows.

I wished to speak to Lurie about all of that, however I used to be additionally curious in regards to the greater image: his administration’s dynamic with the federal authorities, significantly within the context of President Trump’s October plan to ship the Nationwide Guard into San Francisco—an endeavor that Lurie managed to thwart, according to The New York Times, by recruiting a robust coterie of know-how executives to work the telephones in his favor.

Lurie wasn’t precisely forthcoming there, consistent with his diligent efforts to focus conversations on San Francisco, and maybe keep away from attracting the eye, or the ire, of the present administration. It’s a special tack than different Democrats governing progressive elements of the nation have taken, from New York Metropolis mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to California governor Gavin Newsom. But when the response within the room final week was any indication, Lurie’s native followers don’t appear to thoughts his “say much less” technique—a minimum of for now.