San Francisco residents provided the city with a vote of confidence in the annual CityBeat poll.
The well-respected poll from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce shows those living in the city increasingly feel that things are going in the right direction.
"This particular year has proven for the last two years that people feel San Francisco is going in the right direction," Chamber of Commerce President Rodney Fong said.
Five hundred residents were surveyed by phone or text, and 43% of those surveyed said the city is on the right track, which is nearly double than last year. While 56% said the city is on the wrong track, that's a decrease of 16 points since last year.
People who were polled, business leaders and government officials all said revitalizing downtown remains a top priority. Some of that will mean getting people back into empty offices, including city employees.
"We announced yesterday we are bringing all city workers back to the office so tax payers can get the services they deserve from government," Mayor Daniel Lurie said.
It will also mean continuing to make downtown somewhere that people want to visit and live.
Leaders said they continue to push to convert business spaces into living spaces.
As for challenges, Fifth Third Bank chief economist Jeffrey Korzenik said California continues to lose residents, mostly because it's an expensive place to live and because new policies from the Trump administration will make it more difficult to attract new employees from abroad.
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"The one we worry about the most is policies surrounding immigration because in a tight workforce we've become very reliant on foreign-born labor of all stripes," Korzenik said.
He said the relocation of some company headquarters to places outside the Bay Area is partly because people are already moving to other states.
