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

0:00NPR believes in your right to be curious about the big questions and the unexpected ones. That's what Shortwave, their science podcast, is all about. When we stop to ask questions, the world gets more interesting. Shortwave spends each episode answering one big one, like, why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? And how can trash be good for the environment? It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's playful and full of wonder. Science is for everyone. On Shortwave, the hosts take your questions very seriously without taking themselves too seriously. They follow your curiosity wherever it leads so you can discover something new right alongside them.

0:40I personally really loved the episode about where the moon came from. That's something I'd always wondered about, and now I don't have to wonder anymore. Shortwave makes me curious and then gives me the answers. Follow NPR's Shortwave podcast and exercise your right to wonder. Every company says AI will make employees more productive, but most employees are still stuck waiting on IT. Waiting for app access, waiting for password resets, waiting for someone to fix a laptop issue so they can get back to work. That operational drag adds up fast and IT teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up. Servo was built to automate that work.

1:17You describe what you want, automate it in plain English, and Servo builds it for you. No complicated workflow builders, no consultants, just faster support and fewer tickets slowing everyone down. Serval positions IT as the AI-powered operational backbone of the company, not just a support function. The company guarantees customers can automate 50 % of IT tickets and backs it up with a free four-week pilot. Learn more or start a free four-week pilot at serval.com slash uncanny. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash uncanny. Serval dot com slash uncanny.

2:04From Wired, this is The Big Interview. I'm Katie Drummond. I first met Daniel Lurie, San Francisco's newly minted mayor, about five minutes before we walked on stage at Wired's big interview event held in his city last week. Lurie's team let me know ahead of time that his window for this conversation was tight. He'd just come from announcing a new city police chief and had about half an hour for me before he needed to be on to the next thing. Which was, No idea, Lurie quipped, shortly before we were foisted from backstage and into our conversation in front of several hundred attendees. It was a local crowd who, judging from their boisterous reactions to Lurie's every word, are among the 73 % of San Franciscans who approve of the job he's done since taking office in January of this year.

2:48To Lurie's credit, the story of San Francisco right now is largely a positive one. The city is indisputably the global hub of AI innovation and the billions of dollars that accompany it. With companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, along with smaller startups, investors, and plenty of young, AI-focused technologists all calling San Francisco home. Yes, that means rents are up and housing stock remains precariously low. But office vacancy rates are dropping, retail outlets are coming back to the city's downtown. And as Lurie's office is quick to tout, several key metrics measuring municipal crime, including homicides and car break-ins, are at historic lows.

3:24I wanted to talk to Lurie about all of that, but I was also curious about the bigger picture. His administration's dynamic with the federal government, particularly in the context of President Trump's October plan to send the National Guard into San Francisco, an endeavor that Lurie managed to thwart, according to the New York Times, by recruiting a powerful group of technology executives to work the phones in his favor. Lurie wasn't exactly forthcoming there in keeping with his diligent efforts to focus conversations solely on San Francisco and perhaps to avoid attracting the attention or the ire of the current administration.

3:57It's a decidedly different tack than other Democrats governing progressive parts of the country, from New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani to California Governor Gavin Newsom. But if the response in the room last week was any indication, Lurie's local fans don't seem to mind his say less strategy, at least for now. Here's that conversation which was taped live at Wired's big interview event in San Francisco.

4:22Wow, some fans. Someone has a 70-something percent approval rating, I'm hearing. Wow. God. How are my socks? Oh, they're black. I usually have more fun socks on. They're not fun. I know. Actually, well, if I took them off, there's stripes all over. Sure.

4:48Take off your shoes.

4:55Interesting. Katie told me that the director of Wicked was here earlier. He was here. And then... I said, it's a high bar. Yeah, and then someone else, and I was like, what am I doing here? And who are you? She's like, I'm in charge. He said, who are you? And I was like, I'm the boss. It was embarrassing for him. Yes. So I was going to do like a wind up and introduce you, but you just took your shoes off, and that took up an entire minute. I'm at home. Let me just fast forward. you spent many, many, many years working outside of City Hall. You were not in politics. You ran a first-time campaign.

5:34You were elected mayor in 2024. You've been in office a little under a year. And you have been very publicly, in a very sort of specific way, focused on San Francisco's, let's call it, recovery, sort of the comeback story of this city, from homelessness, public safety, rebuilding the city's downtown. You also, of course, I'm sure many of you know, made headlines recently for keeping the National Guard out of the city, out of all of this. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. And I would say, you know, Wired has a huge office here, and we've been here for, you know, over three decades.

6:10And for me, sitting in New York, where I live and work, sort of watching our team here react to that announcement from President Trump and sort of watching that unfold as journalists, but also as human beings, as people who live and work in this city, was remarkable. It was a really stressful 24 hours, so I want to hear more about how that was for you. But also of paramount importance to us at Wired, you have a killer social media game. I'm going to ask you a little bit about that. So please give a warm welcome to San Francisco's mayor, Daniel Uri. Now, as the mayor knows, or found out backstage because he told me that he didn't do any prep for this, But I did tell his team, we are taping this interview for the Wired Big Interview podcast, which runs once a week.

6:54It's one of two episodes that we do. The other one is a roundtable with my wonderful colleagues, Lauren and Mike. If you were here earlier, you saw Lauren interrogate Lisa Sue of AMD. That's kind of what the podcast is like. It's excellent. But we always start the Big Interview podcast with some high-speed questions. And we're going to do the same right here. So are you ready? No. I don't have a choice. Yeah, no. where it's, you have nowhere to run. It's excellent. What is San Francisco's best kept secret? Our neighborhoods, you know, whether you're talking about North Beach. Oh, this is supposed to be quick, quick answers.

7:30It's too late. Just keep going. If you, you know, we talk a lot about Union Square and we talk about downtown and the recovery. 60 % of our tax revenue and our jobs and our small business were downtown. Now that's dropped to 40 % in terms of our tax revenue. And I stress the importance of the recovery downtown because it drives everything else in our city. And our neighborhoods are so unbelievable. I went to the Vogue Theater on Sacramento Street last night. It's been around since 1912. We just relit and redid the neon thanks to some great San Franciscans. And we're revitalizing some of our old school theaters all around our neighborhoods.

8:13The neighborhoods are best kept secret. And once we get people downtown, they go explore the mission, they go explore the sunset, they go explore North Beach, and they're hooked. If you weren't in politics, what would you be doing instead? Doing what I did before, which is philanthropy in the nonprofit world and or sports. Sports as a participant. No. Oh. Engage. No offense, but I was surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Have you... I've been complimented on the social media already, but I actually, if you know one of the... I actually threw a football and people were like, oh my God, you can throw a football decently well.

8:57So go watch the social media. Okay. So sports. Sports. He would do sports. If you didn't live in San Francisco, where would you live instead? My second favorite city in the country is New York. Interesting. Yeah. What's the best burrito in this city?

9:17I'm allowed to ask that. I don't live here. I don't know about your burrito. I had Gordo's last night, which was a staple for me growing up. La Taqueria, if you know San Francisco. Like, you can't go wrong with La Taqueria. And La Vaca Biria is now rising in the ranks on my list. Okay. What is your social media hate follow? I don't even know what that means. It means, no, we're going to, you have nowhere to run. This is part of educating. It means you follow a bunch of stuff on social media, but like some of it, some of the people or the companies or whatever, you follow so that when you're scrolling, you can be like, oh, God, I hate that.

9:53You know, we turned my personal account, which, you know, I really didn't use before the campaign. We don't follow anybody. And so I don't get that hate stuff. I love seeing what my critics say about me. It gets me fired up. Do you read the comments on your Instagram? No, I don't read the comments anymore. I used to, and that was a bad thing. Yeah, yeah. What other mayor do you have the biggest professional crush on? Oh, wow.

10:30Oh, I think Michelle Wu in Boston is pretty awesome. Amazing. Love it. Okay, I want to start back at the beginning. You were born and raised in San Francisco, whole life. You didn't need to be doing what you're doing. You didn't need to run for office. You don't need to be the mayor. It's just, I mean... But you don't. People always say that line. I did. I was watching my city go a direction that none of us... But that's the question. Did you just look around and think, I could do a better job like what inspired you to to take that leap well so I ran an organization called tipping point community for a very I started and ran it for a long time it was always in service to the community and and tackling poverty and and and it was my way of serving um I ran uh super bowl 50 uh the mayor ed lee and and and the owner uh jed york asked me back then 10 years ago to run super bowl and I had such a good time doing that and by the way we're hosting Super Bowl 60 in about nine weeks here in San Francisco.

11:34And and I did. I was walking my kids to school and we were all getting more and more frustrated about the conditions that we were seeing on the streets of San Francisco. And we sort of just said, oh, this is just how it has to be. And we took everything for granted. All everyone took San Francisco for granted. Our elected officials took it for granted that we could just continue on and that our success would continue. And that is not the case. You have to continually be relentless in fighting for your city, standing up for your city, and welcoming people to your city and saying, we want you here, and we're gonna create the conditions for your success.

12:16And we forgot about that. I know what it takes to work hard every single day. And I saw a moment that required, I believe required somebody from outside the broken system. And now your office has shared some remarkable statistics. Crime down 30%, car break-ins at a 22-year low, overdose deaths in the city are dropping. I could go on and on. There's more like this. So your story as San Francisco's mayor so far is a turnaround story. It's a success story. It's a good story. I'm curious, though. You've been in office for 11 months. how much of that success story do you take credit for, do you think has to do with the policies that you have implemented?

13:00And how much of it is about what was happening before you got into office, right? RTO mandates, the natural sort of cycle back from COVID, sort of how much of it do you see as the success that you own as opposed to a trajectory that you inherited? I think, you know, you'd have to go talk to some other pretty traditional politician for them to answer that by saying it's about like I did this. I did that. That's why I'm asking. Yeah, I that's just not how I'm wired. I'm wired in this city. A year ago, 25 percent of San Franciscans a year ago today, essentially 25 percent of us thought we were heading in the right direction.

13:43Today, 62 percent of San Franciscans think we're heading in the right direction. And that is because of so many factors. You have to count the AI boom. You have to count tech me. But you also have to count our restauranteurs and our entrepreneurs in the arts and culture scene who always drive our comeback. And when you have empty storefronts and you fill them with local crafts people, like San Francisco's spirit has really shown through over the last year, last two years, when everyone was knocking us, those that are true San Franciscans, we stayed, we fought, and we knew that it was a bad decision to bet against San Francisco.

14:30And so this is not about any one person, but I do think leadership matters. And that means at all of the departments, that means in our police department, that means we have a fire chief who came in in February who has done a remarkable job. We have a number of new department heads that are just bringing kind of a renewed spirit and energy. So it's been a total team effort. But let me also say, I just came from a department head meeting. We have 59 different departments and we all gather once every couple months. And our large agencies, we meet every week. 20 department heads, all of them, they meet every week.

15:11They used to meet every couple of months. and I got them all in the room every single week. But we just had an update meeting and we went through the list of all the accomplishments for the year. And I ended the meeting and I said, I really thank you all for all of this, but I am not satisfied. I am not happy with where we're at. We still have too many people dying on our streets. We still have too many pockets of our city where people are openly dealing drugs at night. So we have a long way to go, and I am just going to be relentless. I am not satisfied, but I am proud of the trajectory we're on.

15:51We are a city on the rise, and when we are at our best, this city is the greatest city in the world. Now, you were born and raised here. You've seen this city through a lot of different eras. Right now, San Francisco is indisputably sort of the epicenter of the AI boom, right? Right. How has that boom and the money and the people and the startups it's brought to the city, how has that changed the culture of San Francisco? What is different right now in San Francisco as a result of this moment that we're in? We are a city that has gone through booms and busts for our whole history. We are constantly changing.

16:38We are constantly innovating. We are constantly the center of the world. We have been and will always be. I want to create a durable and lasting recovery. I don't want to do what we did in the 2010s where we just fly like a rocket ship and crash land. That's why we're trying to create and support and create the conditions so that it's not just about AI, because it's not it's about health care i mean we're a few blocks away from one of the great health care uh institutions in in ucsf uh on the planet and uh let's get into biotech let's get into healthcare let's get into you know our arts and culture our restaurants our number one industry people forget they always talk about ai our number one industry is tourism and we need to invite people back to San Francisco.

17:29And I have to tell you, during the 10 day period, the week before Thanksgiving through this past Sunday, the 10 day period was the most highly trafficked 10 day period in our airports history, beating pre pandemic levels. You can clap for that. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. So 1.8 million people went through our airport. And that to me tells me that this city is on good footing. So what has changed, but we've seen this before, is rents are through. This is my next question. Yeah, rents go right up. Housing and affordability. And so we just had a major legislative win, something that has not been done in decades in San Francisco.

18:12We passed a new zoning map. It's called the Family Zoning Plan, where we are committed to creating denser housing along commercial corridors and transit corridors. something that we've been talking about throughout this country. We need to create more housing. And San Francisco on Tuesday showed the nation that we care about affordability, that we are going to build more housing for families, and so that the kids that are growing up in San Francisco actually have an opportunity to stay in San Francisco and raise their own kids. So this boom is creating even more on affordability issues. It's expensive to live in San Francisco.

18:57San Francisco's residential rents have risen more than any other city in the U.S. this year. There was an urgency to housing and affordability in this city years ago. And it continues today. And actually, when I asked the Wired staff, I'm interviewing the mayor of your city. You guys live here. I don't live here. What should I ask him about? it was housing, housing, housing, affordability. I mean, it is top of mind and there's an urgency to it. And so I think I'm curious about how quickly can you move and can you move quickly enough? Well, you know, we have a political class that is ideologically opposed to things for no good reason.

19:37And we... But we've changed that. Say a little bit more about that. It was we have people chirping from the sidelines in the city always, but we had people chirping inside the building for a long time. What we have changed fundamentally in City Hall is that now we have a mayor and myself that wants to work with all 11 supervisors. No matter what they say, if we disagree on one issue, the next day I'm walking down the hall and talking to them. I'm going to their offices. I'm saying, how do we get more housing built? how do we make life easier for our small businesses? We're stripping away red tape left and right through a program called Permit SF to make it easier to run a small business.

20:22Now we have this family zoning plan where we're going to build more housing. And there's already talk of lawsuits. There's people that are stuck in the past that don't want our city to move forward. and I have to say the Board of Supervisors is doing a tremendous job. It's a new day there and there's going to be people trying to pull them back and suck them back and just try to divide us and I'm thrilled by the progress that we've made but back to the housing and the affordability issue is so crucial. We got to build more housing. We got to uplift our public schools. We have to have world-class transit.

21:05Muni does a great job, but we're seeing a huge budget deficit next year. I'm at work tirelessly over the next 12 months to make sure that we pass a revenue measure to bring funding and support Muni and save Muni, because transit is crucial for our affordability agenda here in San Francisco. You've really, you've stacked the audience. I see you have. These are my people. These are your people. Now, let me rewind to October, and I'm going to just sort of recap this in case anyone has forgotten. President Trump announced he was sending the National Guard into San Francisco. Sure, yes. I mean, yeah.

21:47You deterred the president from taking that step. What was particularly fascinating to me, though, was how that process unfolded. You had technology executives who call San Francisco home, whose companies call the city home, who played a role reportedly in both Trump's initial announcement and reportedly in his decision to call it off. And they reportedly worked with your administration to do that. So I'm curious if you can take us behind the scenes a little bit. What prompted you to take that strategy, right, to leverage executives like Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, you know, Mark Benioff to get on the phone with the president?

22:22I mean, what sort of prompted you to take that step? Well, let me just be clear that that was not me calling any of those executives and saying, do something for me. I was clear just in the public realm and in talking points that I did not think that that was what was needed. We are a city, and you rattle it off. I mean, we are at 22-year lows in terms of car break-ins. Crime in citywide is down 30%, but it's down 40 % in downtown. I've told everybody that public safety is my number one priority. And I think what I kept hearing from the East Coast and what I heard from other leaders, they were using talking points from a couple of years ago about what was impacting our city.

23:13And so I've said this very clearly and I and when the president asked me what's going on in San Francisco I said to him what I'm saying to you right now I said uh things are going really well we need help on the fentanyl crisis we need help with drug enforcement and and operations especially in the overnight hours because we've done an incredible job with ending the not ending but really shutting down on open air drug markets during the daytime hours, but then with our staffing issues and shortage, we have a tough time in the overnight hours. And so we welcomed continued, and let me be clear, continued partnership with the FBI, the DEA, and the US Attorney's Office, which we've been doing for years and years.

24:03And so we are continuing that. We have some historic numbers in terms of drugs. We've taken 20 pounds of narcotics off the street just in the last month. We made hundreds of arrests during these overnight hours. And so everybody thinks that there was some grand plan, but I think we just laid out the facts. We laid out that we welcome the continued partnership. And that's what we're doing. And it's working and you're seeing it in the numbers. It was reported, though. I mean, I think it was The New York Times who quoted the mayor of Chicago who said, quote, if the only way in which you can communicate with this president is to be a billionaire, that leaves out the vast, vast majority of everyday people.

24:47And I think that comment was specific to the National Guard incident. But to be in San Francisco, to lead San Francisco, you know, you are surrounded by, as I said, these very, very wealthy executives who live here, who work here, and who also happened to have the president of the United States on speed dial. How do you think about that situation that you find yourself in as the leader of this city? And how do you sort of navigate the power dynamics inherent in that situation? I think what we made crystal clear, and I do in normal everyday conversations with CEOs, because I go visit these companies all the time, you know, Notion and Databricks and many other, when I go to office openings, they understand that a strong San Francisco helps create a strong United States.

25:40And if you start messing with that, and if you have, you know, a attack on our city and making us feel less safe, because I think that's what would have happened. We would have had a less safe city, would have created a real real crisis on our streets instead of what people are experiencing right now, which is a surging city that is on the rise and helping them understand like things are going really well here. And so just reinforcing that and understanding that, you know, if our community is, you know, under attack or perceived to be under attack, like businesses will start shutting down small businesses uh our big businesses uh right here where we are uh in dog patch and mission bay like the major companies will be impacted uh negatively and so just making sure that people understand the consequences because you've seen it in other cities and it does not it does not go well i'm curious about sort of your approach to governing san francisco within the larger federal context within which you operate.

26:53And you have taken a very different tack than other political leaders at a municipal level or a state level. Gavin Newsom is one example. Zoran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, is another example, who have really come out swinging with regards to President Trump and the administration. You know, what happens at a federal level obviously affects the city of San Francisco, right? So just a few weeks ago, there was an analysis which found that the, quote, big, beautiful bill, could leave San Francisco with a$400 million hole in its budget, particularly with regards to health care and food assistance programs.