In Ed Lee's San Francisco, Utopia and Dystopia Are Neighbors

From the tall windows of WIRED's offices in San Francisco's South-of-Market neighborhood I've watched almost a decade of radical change made physical in concrete and glass. The city's forest of new skyscrapers is at least in part the legacy of Mayor Ed Lee, who died early Tuesday morning after almost seven years in office. San Francisco is rolling into the second quarter of the 21st century with the purposeful but cautious stutter-step speed of a first-generation self-driving car--the wealthiest, youngest, smartest people on earth live alongside some of the poorest; utopia and dystopia are barely a few blocks apart. That's the city Ed Lee built. It's a cliché to say upon a politician's death that he or she had a complicated legacy, but here we are. Lee was a housing advocate who presided over a city in a deepening housing crisis, facing massive gentrification, displacement, and homelessness.