Hollow City

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California's Bay Area hosts a significant portion of the U.S. venture capital and internet businesses, leading to a booming economy and an influx of high-paid workers that has drastically altered San Francisco's landscape. Once an anomaly among American cities, San Francisco now exemplifies the cultural impoverishment affecting many urban centers due to shifting wealth distributions. In a collaboration between writer-historian Rebecca Solnit and photographer Susan Schwartzenberg, this work examines the city's transformation, marked by soaring rents that displace artists, activists, and the economically vulnerable; the homogenization of architecture and industries; and the decline of public life and civic memory. Solnit's narrative connects current evictions to historical instances of urban renewal and the economic dynamics of artists, referencing influences from Haussmann's Paris to the relationship between the Beats and the African-American community in the 1950s. She explores how wealth is erasing the cultural richness of urban life, leaving little room for idealism, dissent, and vulnerable populations. Schwartzenberg's photo-essays capture the extensive construction and demolition reshaping the city, highlighting the dominance of dot-com businesses, retail chains, and the rapid loss of spaces for artistic creation.