Why is San Francisco doing so much better than Detroit? I know that sounds like a silly question, or at least one that requires no special brainpower to answer. San Francisco is a beautiful city with a gorgeous ocean setting and two world-class universities to attract talented people who find it appealing to live there. Detroit has no scenic advantages and has for most of its life been utterly dependent on one rustbelt industry that has largely left, forcing massive unemployment and poverty. You can make the same inquiry about Seattle and Cleveland, and not have to dig very hard for a solution. Seattle became the take-off city for Amazon, Microsoft and a host of other high-tech businesses that grew up around them. Cleveland had no such luck.
