This Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet face-to-face in San Fransisco, the host city of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. It is San Francisco’s largest international gathering since the UN Charter was signed in 1945. 20,000 are expected to come, among them leaders from 21 member countries to promote trade and economic development in the region.
It’s safe to say the world is watching. So San Francisco has had to do some work to combat the image of decline so often assigned to it. And to do that work, the powers that be have gone into overdrive. In recent days, sidewalks have been patched, streets have been cleaned, graffiti has been removed, and the homeless have been moved to indoor locations.
Mayor London Breed has been busy promoting the downtown, which has struggled since 2020, and she has argued that San Francisco gets a bad rap.
Critics, of course, argue that this cleanup is insufficient, done only for an event rather than for perpetuity. They add that the deep problems that make up the “doom loop” require a much more concerted effort.
At a recent press conference, California Governor Gavin Newsom did not deny the critiques, but also attempted to respond to them.
“I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ That’s true, because it’s true,” Newsom said. “But it’s also true [that], for months and months and months prior to APEC, we’ve been having different conversations. And we’ve raised the bar of expectation between the city, the county and the state, and our federal partners as well that we all have to do more and do better.”
