Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction. The government won't issue permits. The unsurprising result is that it has a really bad case of suburban sprawl, constrained by geological boundaries. Unfortunately, this means that even if you don't want to live in suburban sprawl and commute a long distance, it is pretty much mandatory in Silicon Valley because the city planners have essentially outlawed all other arrangements.
The insanity runs deeper when matched to their obsession with having more people use public transit. Public transit doesn't work in a low-density suburb larger than some states in New England. In typical fashion, the left-hand bans all development that would allow public transit to be usable and the right-hand insists that people should stop driving and take public transit. This is just one example; Silicon Valley is full of fundamentally inconsistent bureaucratic mandates.
This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government. In some cases, it is entrenched special interests demanding these things; the sum of these policies may be insane but the politicians do not care as long as the special interests are happy.
Isn't this, in fact, democracy at work? The older people who already live there, and vote in greater numbers than the young, don't want the development, and the politicians merely reflect that.
Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data? Are you involved in a local Bay Area government? Are you working to change the things you don't like?
The article, and this response is very frustrating to me. The notion that the government is broken and that our policies are insane and that politicians don't care just does not match my personal experience. Yes, there are many, many problems -- from the garden variety to the wickedly complex. I can however comfortably say that Palo Alto is generally run by decent, intelligent people responsible to an engaged, accessible city council.
Available and affordable housing for example, is and has been part of the city plan, done in coordination with the Association of Bay Area Governments[1], who develop regional growth projections and plans[2] that cities are required to incorporate into their general plans. These plans are created in concert with regional transportation, environmental, etc. plans. How the growth is managed within each city is up to the city of course -- and that's where the NIMBY and rich vs. poor issues are played out on the ground. I find it absolutely challenging and amazing to see (and be part of) the balancing of the various factors to actually govern. There are winners and losers in every decision, and it's important to remember that we're not playing a one-round, zero-sum game.
I can't say anything about the state and federal governments -- but it's easy to get involved and make a contribution at the city level, and absolutely will be enlightening. The first step in conquering the "denial of reality" problem you complain about seems to me to be understanding how cities actually work, and then working to make some constructive improvements.
That the city council is comprised of nice people is irrelevant. What matters is how they vote. And city councils in wealthy suburban neighborhoods have an extremely reliable track record of preserving the status quo in terms of urban development in order to protect the property values (dressed as "quality of life") of the existing residents.
Here's my suggestion for constructive improvement: Ignore existing residents' concerns about "quality of life" and allow builders to construct high-density housing. This will have the effect of increasing housing stock and making housing more affordable, without having to regulate affordable housing in special cases that almost always end up pleasing nobody.
The zoning, height limits, floor area ratio limits, etc. in various cities are the substantiation of the claim. Also, the (brutally obvious) fact that housing is ridiculously expensive here.
Some city plans include provisions for some affordable housing, but that misses the point of the article. The point is about housing supply: creating a few units of "affordable" housing and requiring them to be sold below market to income-qualified people doesn't address the supply problem at all. It just changes the distributional effects of the supply problem a tiny bit.
The claim is not that politicians are stupid, exactly, it's that bay area incumbent residents, collectively, have made stupid land-use decisions. As long as you own real estate here, and the value of your home keeps going up, why would you complain? You'd only have a problem if you were trying to move here, or if you're trying to recruit here, or if you have the imagination to see all the increased economic activity that would occur if the housing supply problem was solved. And most residents don't have the ability to see that.
Sorry to be a bit confrontational, but can you please substantiate your claim of "Most areas of Silicon Valley are militantly opposed to anything that looks like high-density construction" with data?
Read the original article. Edward Glaeser also discusses Silicon Valley in his book The Triumph of the City.
I too agree. I finally understood when I moved here why americans have a streak in them that dislikes government. It's because theirs can be so bad and huge sometimes.
Here's a smart idea : Build homes and offices elsewhere in the U.S. I never understood the constant swimming against the tide in the Valley. Expand elsewhere... It's becoming uncomfortable and unreasonable for a great deal of people. On a grand scale this is bad for the U.S :
> More expensive to hire people here
> More concentration of wealth
... > Wealth gets pissed away into the inflated shoebox called Silicon Valley.
Think outside the box .. but the nature of the valley is that everyone thinks inside it .. Go figure.
After some observations, A visiting friend commented : You have some of the highest paid/intelligent people in the U.S located here yet they live no better than the garbage man in other states... I don't know if this is incredibly stupid or smart.
Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.
I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy. Manhattan's finance, creative and ad industries do, as with other financial and creative centers. Hollywood is Hollywood for similar reasons as well.
Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements. This is fairly unique in the United States, and is the very first thing any region needs to address in trying to become "another Silicon Valley" but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.
> I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy.
It certainly did. Unfortunately, the most innovative idea to come out of the autombile industry - the assembly line - had the subsequent effect of destroying innovative learning and thinking on a vast scale. Detroit became a one-industry city and that industry demanded a large, mostly unskilled workforce inimical to the kind of entrepreneurial activity that might otherwise have diversified Detroit's economy.
Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.
Yes, and it's not physical density but time-to-get-there that matters. That said, it's impossible to provide the latter without either (a) making living arrangements more dense, or (b) providing an efficient rapid-transit infrastructure, which usually leads to urbanization.
Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements.
Bingo.
but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.
I agree. That's bizarre but quite interesting, because kowtowing to employers on microgripes means they miss out on something far more important (to their long-term interest) than whether they can enforce noncompetes: whether they can find talent at all.
They tried that - North Dallas was a rising star as a tech magnet. Nortel/Enron/Worldcom ( and dare I say Cisco? ) killed it dead. There's a modest smattering of tech left there, but it's all very weak and thready in pulse. Perhaps also ditto Atlanta. I don't know what is holding Dallas up now.
I won't go to the Valley, and it's been worth it. I'm north of Houston right now. Had a chance at a really compelling Valley gig last year, with an awesome boss and turned it down purely because of location.
We as a culture have traded "making a comfortable living" for "making a killing".
Its very interesting to see people in each region perceives the other regions. I'm a brazilian, and wouldn't imagine that US has so few good places to live.
All of the good places to live in the USA are balls-expensive, because there aren't very many of them.
The Upper Midwest (Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor) is great if you can get an interesting job there. The weather isn't as bad as it sounds and the cities themselves are beautiful (although I wouldn't recommend most of the suburbs).
Ann Arbor has absolutely no nightlife that doesn't involve young kids and drinking too much. Chicago's bar and club scene is full of the hyper-douches that (for the most part) weren't smart enough to make it to the coasts. And almost every major urban center in the US requires a car to live.
I grew up in Detroit and spent a lot of time traveling and working around the midwest, and those kinds of places are exactly what I envision when I think of unlivable American cities. They simply don't have the density to support the kind of scenes that make living in a city fun. Chicago is borderline, but the car thing and the snow thing totally ruin it. The parts of the city that are close to anything fun are expensive to live in.
Fact is, any state with a default 2AM bar/club time is at a severe disadvantage.
I think the list for the US at the moment is NYC, SF, and perhaps maybe Seattle or Portland - but I haven't been to the northwest so I can't comment directly.
Chicago's bar and club scene is full of the hyper-douches that (for the most part) weren't smart enough to make it to the coasts.
There's a lot more to Chicago, and if that's your take on it you obviously haven't spent much time here. It has an incredibly diverse and vibrant nightlife.
Also, the notion that if you live in Chicago it's because you weren't "smart enough to make it to the coasts" is incredibly insulting and narrow-minded.
I'm with you on "the snow thing" but every other critique makes it sound like your definition of a livable city is one in which you and your friends can reliably get hammered every night.
The rest of the bay area is car land. Especially the peninsula where most of silicon valley is concentrated. I tried living in the peninsula on a bike for 5 months, wasn't so nice.
You have a funny definition of "isn't as bad as it sounds." I live in Indianapolis and that's about as close to Chicago and all points north as I wish to go during the winter.
Edward Glaeser explores this phenomenon in some depth in his recent book Triumph of the City. Over time, cities that refuse to let the market meet the demand for affordable housing through height/density limits and so on tend to transition from dynamic engines of economic development into exclusive boutiques for the very wealthy.
These "dumb rules" are one of the main reasons that, by some people's quality metric, the Valley is such a great place to live (if you can afford it, of course). Oakland, San Jose (at least the downtown area), and San Francisco all have pretty high density. Some people like cities, but I think most people would prefer, all else being equal, to live in Portola Valley or Woodside.
Being a nice place to live is a luxury that the rich enjoy and everyone else suffers for. Silicon Valley is the biggest tech hub in the world and home to billions of dollars worth of industry. Zoning should reflect that, rather than the whims of the lucky few who can afford to buy into the current inflated market.
Low density suburbia is what makes the Valley appealing? You can get that anywhere in America for a fraction of the price. What distinguishes the Valley is obviously its status as a tech hub. And most people may prefer to live in a mansion on the hills, surrounded by other rich people, just like most people would like to live in the Hearst Castle. But back in reality, people are choosing between a 1000 sq.ft. million dollar house in the Valley, and an hour long commute to something more affordable. The people who like the status quo are frequently those who bought a house in the 90's or earlier and saw a 500% return on their 10x leveraged investment, and don't want to see that price drop even a little. But even they complain about traffic.
by some people's quality metric, the Valley is such a great place to live
And, by other people's, it's a terrible place to live because you have to drive everywhere. As "The Soul of the Commuter" describes, driving makes people unhappier in almost every possible way: more socially isolated, fatter, and less connected to their communities: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... .
Sure, the Valley won't Detroit-enize. But that doesn't mean that decay isn't at work already. Zoning like that mentioned in the article leads to
1) urban sprawl, which means
2) more land being used inefficently (wasted) and
3) more hours of life commuting (wasted), which leads to
4) more need for cars, leading to
5) more hours in congestion (wasted)
6) poorer people getting the worst of those points above, making
7) building public transport even more political feasable, while
8) public transport is the least efficient in low-density areas (wasted)
One could say that the decay of Detroit is at least contained in terms of space. Also, just because a bust is to be expected, it doesn't mean that people should be deprived of Jobs that never come to existance due to handicapped growth.
The emptying out of Detroit is contained almost entirely within the low-density residential neighborhoods. The downtown area stubbornly clings on in large part because density makes it easier to serve with new business and core infrastructure.
Low density is what made the emptying so contagious and the costs so unsustainable. Low density requires continual growth to pay for the long utility runs and the long service routes for everything from busses to police patrols to trash pickup. And because service erodes as buildings empty, more buildings empty. And when the remaining 20 or 30% of your population is scattered, it's very hard to introduce new businesses or retrench old ones to serve them. The erosion is almost impossible to contain without Flint-style abandoning of large swaths of area and relocation programs for anyone who remains. (Detroit has been trying similar, but it's expensive and slow.)
I don't know much about SF and the valley and I'll refrain from commenting there. But you guys know demonstrably nothing about Detroit and you may want to follow the example.
Totally true - I visited Detroit a few months back and was surprised how much it reflects its MotorCity roots. The roads are so massive in width, lot size in the neighborhoods is ridiculous and so much space is dedicated to highways with sparse exists. You can see why a local business couldn't exist - the density never gets high enough to allow a critical mass. Add to this that many of these neighborhoods are at like 20% capacity.
I was thinking that Silicon Valley's problems could become an opportunity for places like Detroit.
Of course, it takes money to attract new people to a city, but I think it can be done if the cost of doing business (i.e., cheap office space, business taxes, access to skilled labor, etc.) is attractive.
I'm not sure I follow your analogy. Las Vegas is a case of suburban boom and bust, not urban conversion. If anything, Downtown Vegas and The Strip continue to do quite well.
I suspect I'll be down-voted for saying it, but Silicon Valley does not need housing or offices. People need to move out of SV. Software can be done from anywhere...why bother doing it in an undesirable area? Everything in the Bay Area is overpriced, and most of it is pretty boring. SF certainly is not boring, but it has also turned into a dump (was way cleaner when I was a kid, not sure what happened). And yes, there are VCs outside of SV, believe it or not -- not that proximity to VCs should be a deciding factor of where to base your company.
(For the record, I grew up in the Bay Area, if it matters.)
I live in Sydney & for a city of over 4.6 million people, most residents would consider it a great place to live, with great entertainment & night life, good public transport, low unemployment, good schools & recreation facilities. That being said we also have a housing rental shortage that keeps rents high, some pollution problems, seriously bad crime statistics and horrendous traffic conjestion in many parts of the city. Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world and like Canada most of our population lives in a narrow 100km band (in our case from the coast). Most parts of the world are livable if you find your urban village. If you are not in a village the lifestyle is crap, if you are in the village, life is great.
Google "urban planning." The "dumb rules" may not be convenient for you or me in the short run, but they exist for a reason: water, sewage, traffic, pollution, supporting a sustainable quality of living for the long term.
I don't have the answer - and I notice that you don't really offer one - but I know that the answer is not to throw out all our laws in a short-sighted imitation of some polluted Chinese metropolis.
they exist for a reason: water, sewage, traffic, pollution
Not really. See Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City, Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High, and Ryan Avent's The Gated City for more; pay particularly close attention to the sections about how urban life tends to be far more sustainable than alternatives.
You're welcome! They're all impressively researched while being relatively easy to read. If you want to add one more, Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic is good too.
As all four books point out, there's basically no intellectual case to be made in favor of low height limits, strict parking requirements, and lot setbacks in urban or heavily urbanizing places. The only "case", such as it is, comes from NIMBYism and existing landlords or landowners who are seeking to nominally protect their perceived investment.
Hey, I (much) prefer urban life. Starting from the ground up, I wish they'd built Palo Alto and Menlo Park to be real cities. I wish I lived in a city with a real subway, and the people density to support it. And women.
But all that's not the same thing as adding skyscrapers today's mid-Peninsula. Most of these responses are coming from an idealistic blank-sheet mindset. In the real world, we don't have the option to start from scratch.
Actually, they are "dumb" rules designed to create suburban sprawl. There is a new movement to create pedestrian friendly neighborhoods with higher density at transit nodes: SmartCode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartCode
There are plenty of examples of cities that are prosperous, clean, and not stifled by pollution: Montreal, London, Paris, Zurich, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Sydney to name a few.
Montreal is a dying metropolis, with very high taxes, Greece-style debt and an out-of-touch central bureaucracy that is more interested in culture wars than good management. Former premiere Lucien Bouchard mentioned that he was "shocked" when bankers threatened to cut Quebec's bond rating; the idea of deficit spending was so entrenched that the idea of it having a negative impact was seen as laughable. Wall to wall graffiti (and not attractive graffiti) are the hallmarks of the town, as are the poorly built roads and collapsing overpasses.
I left Montreal to go to "30 year recession" Japan and the difference is night and day. I don't believe in the future of Japan, but I am even more skeptical of Quebec's. Bringing it up as a success story makes me doubt your comment, eventhough I strongly want to believe what you said.
Montreal is also thriving, creative and dynamic in ways few Canadian cities are. Its got an actual art scene, which is pretty rare for Canada. Its great food, decent mass transit, and fun neighbourhoods.
It may be falling down and overrun with student protesters but at least it is not the never ending soulless sprawl that is Toronto.
I support the student protestors. Not their violence, obviously, but I suppose violence is inevitable in these sorts of situations.
If the government cannot confront organized crime and its parasitic presence in its construction requisition system, it is basically engaging in selective budgetary restraint - which means it doesn't believe it "really" has to engage in budgetary restraint. Mind you, the budget problems are real - but attacking soft, weak targets means the gov't doesn't believe it.
It is easier to ask for sacrifice when you are seen as having tried to avoid it. That didn't happen. Now we see the inevitable outcome, and the media spin on it is shameful.
My personal belief is that Jean Charest's administration will be remembered akin to Nero's, except that JC's administration will actually deserve the dishonour.
In the words Bowser and Blue (barely) put into his mouth:
"Le déclin inexorable de la ville de Montréal
C'est pas ma faute
C'est la faute du fédéral!"
That said, it'll take a long time for the effect of the PQ on the economy (not their fiscal policy as much as the financial flight when separatism became "real") to stop echoing through the city. Desjardins does not an economy make.
All of these cities you list are actually stifled by pollution and are (very) far from being clean. I happen to live in one of those and visit regularly others in the list.
The problem is far from being solved. However, it's true that the pollution per inhabitant is much lower than in the Silicon Valley.
You must be crazy. You can lick the sidewalks in Zurich, although you'd probably be arrested. It's certainly the cleanest major city I've seen. And the tram come every minute.
That's either a pretty silly troll or you haven't travelled much outside of affluent Western Europe. I've also been to most of those cities and can only say, if you think they're "stifled by pollution" then your first 10 minutes in Beijing are going to be rather eye-opening (or is that eye-watering).
Zurich (and Geneve for that matter) consistently lead the list for the most expensive places on earth to live in not to mention that it is damn near impossible to find a place to live. Geneve's rental market currently has less than 2 promille vacancies.
London has a massive affordable housing shortage. London councils are moving tenants to other cities because of new government limits on state aid for rent payments[1] Earning £35K, expect to spend about 2/3rds of your salary on rent. A 1 or 2 bedroom flat in a 'normal' part of town will cost you at least £1300/$2000 per month.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/24/tory-westminst...
NYC doesn't belong on that list. Yes, it's prosperous, but it's dirty, polluted, and packed with jerks, to top it off. I live there. Forest Hills and parts of Brooklyn are about the only areas I know that are clean and beautiful in NYC, though I haven't been to Staten Island or the Bronx much.
Unfortunately these cities are part of the reason for the current problem.
You had poor people living in rookeries and tenements up against the wall of the smoke and pollution belching dark satanic mills. So philanthropic reforming politicians introduced zoning laws to separate industry and housing and move all the people out to fresh air of the suburbs.
100 years later it's not too much of an issue to have your air-conditioned condo tower in the same zip code as your air conditioned office tower - but the rules still apply.
The downtown core here is ringed with self-store, car lots, freight terminals and other low rent low density industry. While the area around every suburban transit station is ringed by condo towers.
But you can't build in the industrial zone around downtown because of planning rules and taxes. Amazingly you pay 20% tax to build on a brown field site and nothing to bulldoze trees in the suburbs.
It's not a binary situation. There is a medium between the high rises of Manhattan and the large single family homes of the suburbs.
More to your point, dense cities can be much more sustainable than suburbs. Money spent on infrastructure benefits more people. People living in apartment buildings use less energy for heating and cooling. Commuting doesn't necessarily require a car so you use less fossil fuels.
The insanity runs deeper when matched to their obsession with having more people use public transit. Public transit doesn't work in a low-density suburb larger than some states in New England. In typical fashion, the left-hand bans all development that would allow public transit to be usable and the right-hand insists that people should stop driving and take public transit. This is just one example; Silicon Valley is full of fundamentally inconsistent bureaucratic mandates.
This is one of those classic denial-of-reality cases that give Americans their famously low opinion of government. In some cases, it is entrenched special interests demanding these things; the sum of these policies may be insane but the politicians do not care as long as the special interests are happy.