A lot of the reasons Boston's university town status hinders development are shared by SF. First, SF does have a lot of university affiliates from places like Stanford and Berkeley. Second, it has a lot of working professionals, and most of the reasons Boston is hard on development are not exclusively because it's a university town, but because it's a professionals' town. Lawyers, doctors, and researchers are all susceptible to the "tend my own garden" mentality, and most lack the time for engaged civic participation. The university town aspect merely lends itself, potentially, to the extra encumbrance of overbroad and unsympathetic thinking when it comes to justifications offered by developers.
(I also wonder if working and potentially living in campus environments affects academics' or university affiliates' attitudes toward urbanism. When you're immersed in and accept a towers-in-the-park development as an acceptable, workable model, you might have a skewed understanding of the dynamics of the street.)
