The 2008 estimated population of San Francisco was 808,976. With more than 6,000 people per square kilometer, the Californian city is the second most densely populated among the largest US cities (with more than 200,000 residents). San Francisco is the traditional focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area and is part of the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont Metropolitan Statistical Area and the still larger San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area, whose population exceeds seven million residents, making it the fifth most populous in the United States according to the 2000 census.

Like most large American cities, San Francisco is a minority majority city, with non-Hispanic whites making up less than half of the population. The American Community Survey of 2006 – 2008 estimated that 45% of the population was non-Hispanic whites. Asians of any nationality represented 31.3%, being Chinese by birth or inheritance the largest single ethnic group in the city, making up a fifth of the population. Hispanics of any race made up 14% of the population. For their part, African-American residents of San Francisco have seen their population in the city shrink in recent decades, from 13.4% in 1970 to just 7.3% of the population in this area. census. This percentage of African Americans in San Francisco is similar to that of the State of California; on the contrary, the percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half the Californian percentage.

San Francisco natives make up a relatively small percentage of the city’s population: only 37.7% of its residents were born in California, while 25.2% were born in another state in the country. More than a third of the city’s residents (35.6%) were born outside the United States.

San Francisco’s median household income in 2007 was $ 65,519 – the third-best city in the country – with the median household income at $ 81,136. Following the national trend, the emigration of middle-class families is contributing to the widening income disparity and has left the city with a smaller proportion of children, 14.5 percent, than any other large American city.

The city’s poverty rate, 11.8%, and the percentage of families living in poverty, 7.4%, are both lower than the national average. The unemployment rate remains, until August 2009, at 10.1%. Homelessness has been a chronic and contentious San Francisco problem since the early 1980s. The Californian city is believed to have the highest number of homeless people per capita of any major American city.

The rates of violence and crime against property in San Francisco in 2006 reported 875 and 4,958 cases per 100,000 residents respectively.

Government

According to a2zdirectory, San Francisco – officially known as the City and County of San Francisco – is an established city-county, a status it has held since 1856. It is the only one with such status in California. The mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. Under city statutes, the San Francisco government is made up of two branches with the same level of power. The executive branch is headed by the mayor of the city and includes other elected and appointed officials, as well as the civil service. The 11-member Board of Supervisors represents the legislative branch, and is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, although San Francisco also uses popular initiative to pass any legislation.

Due to its unique city-county status, the local government exercises jurisdiction over assets that would otherwise be outside its corporate boundary. The San Francisco International Airport, although located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the city and county of San Francisco. The city-county was also granted a perpetual lease over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and its watershed in Yosemite National Park through the Raker Act in 1913.

The federal government of San Francisco uses the city as a regional center for many branches of the federal bureaucracy, including the United States Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, the [Mint]] and the United States Mint (responsible for producing the currency that circulates in the United States). Until decommissioning in the early 1990s In the city there were large military installations such as the Presidio, Treasure Island and Hunters Point, a legacy that is still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the seat of the State Supreme Court and other state bodies. Some foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.

Economy

The Tourism is the backbone of the economy of San Francisco. It is common to find the image of the city in music, cinema and popular culture, which has made the city and its monuments recognizable throughout the world. It is the city where Tony Bennett “left his heart”, where the Alcatraz Birdcatcher spent several of his last years, and where Rice-A-Roni was said to be a favorite food. San Francisco attracts the third-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the country, and claims that the Pier 39 shopping centernear Fisherman’s Wharf is the third most popular tourist attraction in the nation. More than 16 million visitors came to San Francisco in 2007, injecting almost $ 8.2 billion into the city. With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention center at the Moscone Center, San Francisco is also among the top ten destinations in North America for conventions and conferences.

The legacy of fever gold of California turned San Francisco into the principal banking and financial center of the West Coast at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Montgomery Street in the Financial District, known as the “Wall Street of the West,” is home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the corporate headquarters of Wells Fargo, and the site of the now-defunct Coastal Stock Exchange. of the Pacific. The Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and, in the 1960s, built a modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks and venture capital firms are headquartered in the city or have regional branches there. With more than 30 international financial institutions, seven Fortune 500 companies, and a large supporting infrastructure for professional services – such as law, public relations, architecture, and design – also with a significant presence in the city, San Francisco has been designated as one of the ten beta cities in the world. The city ranked 18th in the world on the list of cities by GDP in 2008 and 9th in the United States.

San Francisco’s economy has become increasingly linked to that of its Bay Area neighbors San Jose and Silicon Valley to the south, sharing its need for highly skilled workers with specialized skills. San Francisco has positioned itself as a research center for biotechnology and biomedicine. The Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second UCSF campus, fosters a fledgling industry and serves as home to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the public body that funds the state’s stem cell research programs.