Name: Leading San Francisco: A Conversation with Mayor Daniel Lurie
Uploaded: 2025-12-10
Duration: 20 min 45 s
Description: Almost a year into his mayorship, Daniel Lurie is navigating the challenges and opportunities of keeping a leading tech hub on top. In this discussion, he'll talk about the transformative role of artificial intelligence in city governance, what role the tech community plays in the city's future, and how he plans to bring more business to the city by the bay.

Almost a year into his mayorship, Daniel Lurie is navigating the challenges and opportunities of keeping a leading tech hub on top. In this discussion, he'll talk about the transformative role of artificial intelligence in city governance, what role the tech community plays in the city's future, and how he plans to bring more business to the city by the bay.

Leading San Francisco: A Conversation with Mayor Daniel Lurie

Conferences

Thank you so much. Hey Daniel, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. So you're a year in, almost, not quite. January 11 months. Yes, sir. Are you tired? No, no, not at all. No, I don't. That, that doesn't enter into the vocabulary. Impressive. I think he's part robot, folks. OK, um. It's been an extraordinary year. Um, you have, I, I, I believe at this moment, last I checked, 7 71% approval rating. That's pretty good for anybody. That's pretty good for anybody who's a year into anything, I would say, um. And you avoided a Trump immigration standoff in this city. Um, you have dealt with a litany of civic issues. What are the biggest challenges you face in your opinion as the mayor of San Francisco? I think when we started, I think it was, um, making sure that San Franciscans knew that this city, uh, when we are at our best, is still the greatest city in the world and turning around sentiment, turning around that hope and that optimism, that was our big challenge. We had so many voices from outside of this city. Saying and defining who we were, that we forgot that we are the ones that are going to define San Francisco, and I think we've done a really good job of that. I think those that stayed and fought for our city, that didn't flee, that stayed and fought and invested deeply into our city have seen huge payoffs. I mean. Everything is rushing back in. I mean we've got retail rushing back in. We have people buying office space and buying hotels, and I think sentiment was the big challenge, and I think we've overcome that. At this time last year, 25% of San Franciscans felt like we were heading in the right direction. Today 62% of San Franciscans think we're heading in the right direction, and that's where we can now build from and now we have to execute. We've got to execute on public safety, which we are. Crime is down 30%. We've got to execute on the behavioral health crisis and getting people off the street and into the right kind of treatment beds and recovery beds. And then third priority, we have to strip away the red tape to help our small businesses, our restaurants. Our our galleries get up and running more easily and have a City Hall used to be kind of an opponent for our small businesses. We want to be a partner and we have changed that drastically as well, and we can go into that. But I think the biggest challenge was sentiment. We've gotten there and now we need to go execute, keep people safe, keep our streets clean, and, and create the conditions for success. Well, the sentiment thing is very interesting because you started off talking about everyone else's sentiment outside the city. But in fact it seems like the biggest nut to crack was San Franciscans' opinion of themselves. Absolutely you have to start. You, you got, you gotta love yourself before, um, anyone else is going to love you, uh, and this is now a mental health, yeah, we're gonna, well, we need a couch, um, and I think it's really important that San Francis, you know, we, we lost a little bit of our mojo, you know, we, we also took things for granted. Granted we took our restaurateurs, we took our entrepreneurs, we took our business community for granted we said we can just keep punishing you, we can keep being, you know, uh, a an opponent of yours and you're gonna stay well that didn't happen. People fled. Um, I wish they hadn't, but I understand, uh, to a degree why people felt like this the elected class in San Francisco took people for granted. Uh, from our artists to our restaurateurs to our entrepreneurs, and we're not gonna do that again. And so, uh, this is the greatest city in the world when we're at our best, and I think people are starting to see that again. Yeah, and you were born and raised here, so you really mean it, born, born and raised. So, so this being an artificial intelligence conference, I do have to ask where. Among these priorities that you had and please tell me if they've changed, by the way since you took office a year ago, what, how are you using technology to address them? Are there areas where. It's a lot easier or more difficult. These are big entrenched problems. Probably every major urban mayor has to contend with them. Yeah, I've been clear for now the last couple of years from the time I started my campaign till today, uh, with you here, public safety is my number one priority. Nothing else matters if you can't keep people safe. And so with crime down 30%, uh, citywide crime is down 40%. In Union Square in the financial district where we are right now here in San Francisco and why is that? Is more bodies on the street? I mean, what it's, it's we're still short staffed and the police, but we've, we're using technology, we're using drones as a first responder. We're using, uh, license plate readers called LPRs, uh, so that when something, uh, uh, an a criminal act is committed, we can get a drone up quickly. We can track people. Can do it safely so we don't have to have officers, uh, you know, flying through the streets because that is where accidents can happen and we are catching people now when they commit a crime. So we have, we just launched, uh, relaunched this thing called the Real Time Investigation Center called Arctic here in downtown San Francisco, uh, you know, think the television show 24 where we are. Really able to watch and see what's happening and keep the residents, the business owners, the small business, the retail shops safe, um, and so we're seeing a huge precipitous drop in crime. We are looking at the lowest homicide rate right now since the 1950s in San Francisco. Uh, we are an incredibly safe American city. We still have issues. We still need more officers out walking the beat, so we're going to continue to recruit officers. We have a 40% increase in people wanting to be SFPD now. More police doesn't solve all of our issues because we still have a behavioral health crisis on our streets, so we're trying to get people off the street and into the right kind of beds. But you know the Arctic is one example of technology being used. On all of our fleet of cars we're putting sensors on them to make sure that they're being used efficiently. We know where they are. Our homelessness response, we're managing what beds are available in real time. We're doing a better job. We're rerouting calls, 311 calls, streamlining it using and. With the help of AI and AI agents, and, and so, uh, but we're in the early innings of that, as I know, of course, many people in this room are too. So let's talk about the tech community. You mentioned downtown. That's a big priority for you. You, you, you, you said in previous interviews that, you know, unlocking downtown is unlocking the whole city, right? And so goes downtown, so goes the whole city. So. You know, the tech community has a, shall we say a lot of opinions, yes, uh, about San Francisco and in particular the downtown experience you've been trying to work with them as you said just just earlier a few minutes ago, um, trying to bring them in as open arms, trying to bring them in as partners, um. Opinion sentiment is still divided, right? Some people still talk about SF as it was. Some people still see it as the tech capital, the beacon on the hill. What are you doing to continue to work with them? You're deploying all this technology for your own needs and your citizens' needs, but what are you doing for the tech community to bring them back to downtown, to have them to, to, to make San Francisco what people think it is? Well, first, we are. Working with the community, we work with the business community, we work with the tech community, the tourism community, we want anyone that is home based here, and that is a lot of incredible AI companies that are here, we want them back in the office, and we don't actually have to have this discussion about whether or not it's 3 or 4 days a week in the office when you talk about some of our major companies anthropic, OAI, they're like. 3 or 4 we're in the office 7 days a week and so we're getting people back in the office because we're creating the conditions that people want to come back downtown. Clean and safe streets. I know I sound like a broken record, but my job as the mayor of San Francisco is not to tell people to be in the office 5 days a week. It's to create the conditions so people want to be in the office. So Muni, our public transit, is running efficiently and safely and is clean. Our streets feel safe for people to walk down. You go to Union Square now and it is bustling. A year ago it was not, uh, and so, uh, we, we want their input. We've started something called the Partnership for San Francisco modeled after what New York City started in the 1970s when they were going through a real rough. Time there we launched that there's 35 business leaders, not by the way, not just tech, but tech is engaged and involved, but we have tourism leaders, we have, you know, Visa, we got the San Francisco Giants, we got Ripple, we got, you know, all the companies around the table, and we want to hear their voice. And yes, everybody in San Francisco, it's not just uh tech that has opinions. 840,000 of us all have our own opinions. And I welcome that and that's what makes us such a unique and and great city indeed, um, I wanna come to the audience for a question in a in a minute, but I, I wanna ask you about, so we are both California residents, you and I, um, there have been a flurry of AI laws principally at the state level going on about all that sort of thing. I can't help but imagine that you feel like you're in it whether you are or not as the mayor. Of San Francisco, what's your thought on where the state needs to be in terms of AI policy? Should it be pushing aggressively, you know, we're seeing a fragmentation across the United States in terms of what the states want to do. I mean, listen, I was elected to take care of San Francisco and San Franciscans, and yes, the companies are here. I have not weighed. In on AI policy as of yet, I do think that if you do something that is just focused on San Francisco, we've seen it companies can move to 2 miles away in South San Francisco. They can move to Brisbane. So I'm always a believer in making sure that we have regulations and guardrails in place for this incredible technology that The companies here are unleashing. I think any time you do something that's just city specific or maybe even state specific, you get into a territory where you drive people to other locations, so. Um, not that we shouldn't be leading, uh, not only with the technology but also with, uh, regulations, but I would love to probably see a more, uh, broad based approach, uh, uh, from, you know, our electeds in, in, in the federal government, but, uh, I think we should be always pushing, and I think that's what they're doing in Sacrament pushing pushing. All right, let's go to the audience for a question. Oh look, they're timid after lunch. All right, I've got another one for you, sir. So, oh there's a lot of people we talk a lot about this, yeah, now we, now we can see all of you with the lights up. All right, great, um, you, we talked about the citizens, um, we talked about the tech community. I wanna come back to the citizens. How are you using technology to actually elevate. The non-tech community, the rest of this city, which you, you know, of, of which you're also an elected official representative, um, are there things that can be done? Yes, you talked a little bit about like homelessness and getting folks off the street, but I'm, I'm also thinking about upskilling and. Just elevating the entire city instead of just 11 thing that is around permitting, uh, right now we have a great and good looking permitting office where you can come, you know, to get, you know, your business license and, and, and, and to open a new restaurant and you, but you, you, you, you get in line and you start realizing you gotta fill out, uh, paper forms using. Pen and paper and you go to the fire department at one window and you fill out one form and then you go to planning at another window and then you go to the Department of Public Health at another. I mean those days have to be over um we have we're we're streamlining that we want you to fill out one form on a tablet or on a computer and it goes to all eight departments that oversee, you know, approval process that's right uh and so we've created something called Permit SF. We had a 100 day sprint. We had a 200 day sprint actually later this week we're unveiling some, uh, new. easements around a 300 day sprint just making things easier for the residents, for the small business owners if you want to put new stairs in your backyard or if you want to just redo windows, we have to make things easier for the residents of the city. That's what. Technology is meant to do. It's meant to make our lives easier. We are still living in, in an age where we are not fully utilizing what is right here in our backyard. So we, we are through Permit SF trying to make life easier for the residents of San Francisco. Yeah, I mean, it takes a special person to get excited about. We've got a good looking permit office, you know, um, and, and but we might have those folks here in the room. So, so, uh, as a homeowner, of course I thank you for that. Um, you actually, let's talk about Permit SF just a little bit more. So you, you, you were embroiled in a little bit of a scandal earlier this year around the selection of the technology for that initiative, um, YouGov, I think it was, or OpenGov, excuse me, OpenGov, um, and, and you were criticized because, you know, folks thought that it was not the best tool available, the, the, the selection of that technology was not. Not it and they were, uh, my understanding is your family has ties to that software or something like that, um. It's past you now, but what did you learn from that experience? Uh, well, listen, um, I don't have ties to it, um, but, but let's, let's be clear, uh, when you want to change a system, a legacy system where you have 8 different components to something and you want to streamline and you want to. You know, make life easier for 840,000 people, but change is happening in a really large bureaucracy. You're going to get pushback, and I get it. I understand people are scared of change. I, I am not scared of change. I am not scared to push the envelope and to make sure that we do what's right and make sure that we have more efficiency, more effective government for the people of San Francisco, and there's always going to be pushback when you, when you do that. I think if you come back a year from now and you ask me how has this implementation gone that that'll be the test we're in the midst of of overhauling this there's going to be pushback. I get it that's cool, um, but, uh, it'll, I, I want people to test me on whether or not the the software works and makes people's lives easier, and we're not there yet, but we'll get there, right? I, I believe this is the first time a robot has ever crashed the stage. What's going on at. Brainstorm, um, high germanium. I'm not sure what to say right now. Ah. Could you hold this for me? Yes sir. Thank you. I get to see what questions are coming up next. Very funny, germanium. Thank you. You can keep it. Thank you very much. All right. So let's, let's wrap it in. Come have a seat. Um, the, the, Let's talk about the red tape a little bit. Um. They're so cute, aren't they? Oh yeah, yeah, cool. I didn't know they could parallel park either. Fantastic, um. There you go, um, the, the red, uh, uh, tape of, of, of San Francisco is well known. It is also hardly unique to San Francisco. My hometown of Philadelphia also deals with this problem. My, my residence in, in Long Beach, California, same deal. Like every, a city of, of significant size has bureaucracy. To contend with SFS is particularly well known. You, you have commissions, commissions all over the place. Yes, all over so many commissions, 150 commissions. It's about almost triple what Los Angeles has, and they have 10x the population. A lot more people, right? So is. Artificial intelligence or just technology a way to solve that, or is it simply the way to govern? It absolutely need it can be helpful, uh, to us. I, I, you know, it should not displace people. It should help the people of our city, the workers at, at City Hall and all of our departments deliver more effective services for the people of San Francisco. should free up our employees to do better work for the 840,000 residents and you know sometimes technology works incredibly well and sometimes it doesn't and and and so we've got to be thoughtful about how we implement new, new, new things and I know that's what. The private sector is always looking at and we at the government sector, we tend to be slow to change. I'm going to push forward because what we have been doing in San Francisco in terms of delivery has not always been the most efficient or effective, and we're going to try to lean in on it and use technology. Uh, it's right here, so let's test it out. Fair to say move fast and break stuff a little bit for I, I don't think we should be breaking things, uh, uh, in government, um, but we should absolutely use tools that are well, uh, you know, well regarded, uh, um, that have been tested, um, always with safety, always with, uh, uh, that in mind and regulations and guardrails, but, but, um, I absolutely think we have some amazing. Innovators and entrepreneurs and companies here in San Francisco, we should be using the products. So final question, um, you're almost 1 year in. I asked you backstage if you felt like you were just going, going, going, and, and you, um, and if you ever got tired, and you said no just as you did at the top of this conversation, and then you said I've got 3 years left. It's a ticking clock for you. What are your priorities for the next 3? I think, um, I, I wanna leave San Francisco, uh, in a place where people around the world are like, oh my God, I have to go visit San Francisco. You know, we're, we're here. I know we're at an AI conference, but our number one industry is not technology, it's tourism, uh, and we have been the envy of the world for generations and, you know, hundreds of years now. Like we got away from that, uh, for a few years. We took it for granted as the elected class in the city. Like I'd never been in politics before. I was never, you know, I came from, uh, another field and, and, and people, you know, I think there was probably 4 or 5 people that thought I had a shot at winning and, uh, and so what I, how many were the family, yeah, probably 4 or 5, yeah, and, and so I think, um, what we are trying to create. Is is once again, uh, San Francisco being a world class city that is the envy of the world, and I think we're closer to that than most people realize considering where we were, you know, a year or two ago. Uh, this city is a city on the rise. Uh, we have. We are the innovative ecosystem of the world. That's why this conference is here and and and we also have the most incredible arts and culture scene. We have the greatest restaurants, I believe, on the planet here. Just great a great creative class and we happen to have some pretty unbelievable AI companies here as well so we have it all, uh, we just have to go tell the, tell that San Francisco story to the world and I hope everybody out there is paying attention and come see us here in San Francisco. There you go, Mayor Laurie. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. So may I thank you very much. Thank you.