I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think one issue is actually Silicon Valley's model of "disruption" — ie new solutions replace old ones. For example, instead of fixing public transit in San Francisco (or SF -> SV) we now have all of these new private infrastructures for transit within SF (Uber, Lyft, Cabulous, etc) and SF -> SV (all those shuttles, see: http://stamen.com/zero1/).
What happens then is that the people with apps, the people with jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook, live in a completely different urban landscape than ones who aren't in the ecosystem. When we can't see the problems of MUNI we don't feel them, and when they aren't problems for us we won't feel like fixing them. I'd love for us to have more of a civic sense as well, vs this complicated and classed (but faster to build!) layering of private infrastructures.
What happens then is that the people with apps, the people with jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook, live in a completely different urban landscape than ones who aren't in the ecosystem. When we can't see the problems of MUNI we don't feel them, and when they aren't problems for us we won't feel like fixing them. I'd love for us to have more of a civic sense as well, vs this complicated and classed (but faster to build!) layering of private infrastructures.