Future-Proofing San Francisco

[upbeat music]

[Announcer] Please welcome Katie Drummond

and Mayor Daniel Lurie.

[lively music]

Ooh.

Wow.

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.

[audience laughs]

Take off your shoes.

[notepad smacking]

Woo.

Interesting.

So she, 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?

[Katie laughs]

He did. She's like, I'm in charge.

He said, And 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 windup and introduce you,

but you just took your shoes off,

and that took up an entire minute.

So, 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.

You 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.

[audience cheering and clapping]

I know. 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.

And 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 the 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 Lurie.

[audience clapping]

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.

It's one of two episodes that we do.

The other one is a round table

with my wonderful colleagues, Lauren and Mike.

If you were here earlier,

you saw Lauren interrogate Lisa Su 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.

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, is this supposed to be quick answers?

It's too late. Just keep going.

[audience laughs]

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 re-lit and redid the neon

thanks to some great San Franciscans.

And we're revitalizing some of our old school theaters

all around our neighborhoods.

The neighborhoods are our 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. [laughs]

Engage with the team.

No offense, but I was surprised.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[audience laughing]

I've been complimented on the social media already,

but I actually, if you know,

I actually threw a football and people were like,

Oh my God, you can throw a football decently well.

So go watch the social media.

Okay. I mean, God. Come on.

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?

Oh.

I'm allowed to ask that. I don't live here.

I don't know about your burritos.

I had Gordos 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 Birria 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. Ooh.

You 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, you know, I love seeing what my critics say about me.

Gets me fired up.

Do you read the comments, like on your Instagram?

No, I don't read the comments anymore.

I used to, and that was a bad thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What other mayor do you have

the biggest professional crush on?

Oh, wow.

Oh.

I think Michelle Wu in Boston is pretty awesome.

Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

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.

[Daniel] It's just, I mean.

But, I mean, but you don't.

People always say that line, well, I mean, I did.

I was watching my city go a direction that none of us liked.

But that's the question,

is did you just look around and think,

I could do a better job?

Like what inspired you to take that leap?

Well, so I ran an organization

called Tipping Point Community.

I started and ran it for a long time,

and it was always in service to the community,

and tackling poverty, and it was my way of serving.

I ran Super Bowl 50.

The mayor, Ed Lee, and the owner, 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.

[audience clapping]

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 had 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 going to create the conditions for your success.

And 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.

You know, 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 know,

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?

And 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?

How do you think about that?

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.

That's just not how I'm wired.

I'm wired in this city.

A year ago, 25% of San Franciscans,

a year ago today, essentially,

25% of us thought we were heading in the right direction.

Today, 62% of San Franciscans

think we're heading in the right direction.

[audience clapping]

And that is because of so many factors.

You have to count the AI boom,

you have to count tech community,

but you also have to count our restaurateurs

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, you know, 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.

And so this is not about any one person.

But I do think,

I do think leadership matters.

And that means in all of the departments.

That means in our police department.

That means in our, 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 had, you know, 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.

They used to meet every couple of months.

And I got them all in the room every single week.

But we just had a 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, you know, 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.

We are a city on the rise.

And when we are at our best,

this city is the greatest city in the world.

[audience cheering and clapping]

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.

We are constantly innovating.

We are constantly the center of the world.

We have been, and we'll 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 healthcare.

I mean, we're a few blocks away

from one of the great healthcare institutions, in UCSF,

on the planet.

And 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.

And 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 airport's history.

Beating pre-pandemic levels.

You can clap for that if you want.

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, you know.

This is my next question.

Yeah. Rents go. Housing and affordability.

Yeah. And so, we just had a major legislative win.

Something that has not been done

in decades in San Francisco.

We 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

[audience clapping]

throughout this country.

We need to create more housing.

And San Francisco, on Tuesday,

show 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 a, you know, affordability issues.

It's expensive to live in San Francisco.

Well, I mean, San Francisco's residential rents

have risen more than any other city in the US this year.

Right. I mean, there was an urgency to housing

and affordability in this city years ago, right?

And it continues today.

And actually, when I asked the Wired staff, you know,

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.

[audience laughs]

But we've changed that.

Say a little bit more about that.

We have people chirping from the sidelines

in this 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 in 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 PermitSF

to make it easier to run a small business.

Now 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, you know, uplift our public schools.

We have to have world-class transit.

Muni 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.

[audience cheering and clapping]

You've really, you've stacked the audience,

I see you have. [chuckles]

[Daniel] 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.

You deterred the president from taking that step.

But 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, Marc Benioff,

to get on the phone with the president?

I mean, what sort of prompted you to take that step?

Well, let me just be clear

that was not me calling any of those executives

and saying, Do something for me.

Like 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 rattled it off.

I mean, we are at 22-year lows in terms of car break-ins.

Crime 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.

And so, I've said this very clearly,

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, Things are going really well.

We need help on the fentanyl crisis.

We need help with drug enforcement

and operations, especially in the overnight hours.

Because we've done an incredible job with ending,

not ending, but really shutting down 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.

And 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 like 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.

And 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 happen 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.

And if you start messing with that,

and if you have, you know, an attack on our city,

and making us feel less safe,

because I think that's what would've happened.

We would've had a less safe city,

would've created a 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.

Our big businesses right here where we are

in Dogpatch and Mission Bay,

like the major companies will be impacted negatively.

And so just making sure

that people understand the consequences.

Because you've seen it in other cities

and it does not go well.

I'm curious of what sort of your approach

to governing San Francisco within the larger federal context

within which you operate.

And you have taken a very different tack

than other political leaders

at a municipal level or a state level.

Gavin Newsom is one example.

Zohran 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 healthcare

and food assistance programs.

Right. That's one example.

So, I know that you are very focused on San Francisco,

but how do you think about your strategy at a federal level?

How does that play out for you?

Because you're certainly not sort of, you know,

aping Donald Trump on social media.

That's not what you're doing.

You have colleagues doing that.

How are you approaching it?

Let me just say this,

when I got into office, when I was elected,

I didn't know who was going to be our president.

And the people of San Francisco,

they wanted clean and safe streets.

They wanted a mayor focused on San Francisco.

And I think that is something that I've delivered on.

And of course, when things rise up,

I'm going to not only respond,

but I'm going to be on the offensive.

And I think we've shown, with my administration,

that focusing on San Francisco,

and focusing on public safety,

and focusing on the drug crisis on our streets,

and making sure that there are consequences

to those that are dealing drugs on our streets,

which there are now.

And stripping away red tape.

That focus is what the people of San Francisco

want me to do.

Now, you referenced the healthcare funding,

that is going to be devastating to our city.

And so we will, of course,

work with anybody that wants to help San Francisco.

I think you've heard that, you said colleagues,

like all of my colleagues have said,

across the country, in terms of other mayors,

like where there's room to work together,

we will work together.

But I got to focus on what I can control.

I cannot control what's happening in DC.

I can't control what's happening in Sacramento.

I can only make sure that we spend our dollars

more effectively and efficiently.

I mean, we have a $16 billion budget here in San Francisco,

and we have, last year, when I came in office,

we had a historic budget deficit, never before seen,

$879 million budget deficit over two years.

We closed that in terms of a two-year budget.

But this year, because of the healthcare cuts

that are coming in a year,

it's going to be closer to $1 billion.

So, last year was bad,

this coming year is going to be worse.

And I'm focused on what I can control.

And of course, if we can work with our federal

and state officials who can go to DC and help us,

I will do that.

Right. We're almost out of time.

So I was going to ask you all about your social media game.

If you haven't checked it out, he's prolific.

But I want to close by looking ahead.

So as I said, you're less than one year

into a four-year term.

You've got a lot of runway.

Let's say we come back here in three years.

I'm interviewing you again.

What do you hope I'm asking you about by then?

Can you drive crime down even lower?

Can you, you know, fill up the remaining

few percentage points of empty office space downtown?

Like I hope you people are, you know,

that the retail space and vacancy is, you know,

all full in three years in Union Square.

We're seeing such demand and people returning to the market.

We have, you know, Zara and Uniqlo and Pop Mart,

and all these retailers, many of whom left,

are now coming back to San Francisco.

And I think, I hope that you're asking me,

how do you maintain your status

as the number one city in the world?

That's what you should be asking me here in four years.

Number one city in the world.

And can you still throw a football?

Do you have the energy left?

Yeah. Or do I still have hair?

[Katie laughs]

Will you take your shoes off again? Yeah.

That's going to really haunt me.

Yeah. That one.

I'm sorry I did that to you all.

This is being recorded. It was on video.

It's on video?

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. We're going to clip it.

We're going to put it everywhere.

We'll send it to your team.

You can put it on your Instagram now.

Let me just say, first off, it's a honor to meet you.

I've been a fan of this publication

since you had the hard copy, the magazine.

We still have a magazine. Okay. We still.

Spend a little more time in your newsstands.

I'm going to favorite your podcast show now,

and I'm going to listen to it.

I fall asleep at night listening to podcasts,

If you can believe that. It's a problem.

I've never admitted that before.

Just don't tell me you fall asleep

listening to our podcast

because I think we would have to throw you out.

Yeah. I haven't listened to your podcast.

So now, I'm going to.

So, thank you for having me,

and thank you for doing it in San Francisco

and to your employees in San Francisco.

Go get involved in the community.

We have like weekly trash pickups

in 17 different locations around the city.

A city that is on the comeback

needs everybody engaged in the community.

Go visit your local art gallery

and your art institutions

and get involved in the community.

Like, it's happening in our city.

It's really coming back,

and I couldn't be more hopeful and optimistic.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. Great.

[audience clapping]

[upbeat music]