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High Tech Companies Becoming Fools For the City
theodp writes "Drawn by amenities and talent, the WSJ reports that tech firms are saying goodbye to office parks and opting for cities. Pinterest, Zynga, Yelp, Square, Twitter, and Salesforce.com are some of the more notable tech companies who are taking up residence in San Francisco. New York City's Silicon Alley is now home to more than 500 new start-up companies like Kickstarter and Tumblr, not to mention the gigantic Google satellite in the old Port Authority Building. London, Seattle, and even downtown Las Vegas are also seeing infusions of techies. So, why are tech companies eschewing Silicon Valley and going all Fool for the City? 'Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl,' Paul Graham presciently explained in 2006. 'It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage.'"
I grew up in San Fran and let me tell you, after hours its a ghost town,
Huh? You might want to travel outside a 3-block radius of the Transamerica building.
Krugman wrote a similar prediction back in the y2k special issue of the NYT:
Here again, there were straws in the wind. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was much speculation about which region would become the center of the burgeoning multimedia industry. Would it be Silicon Valley? Los Angeles? By 1996 the answer was clear; the winner was ... Manhattan, whose urban density favored the kind of close, face-to-face interaction that turned out to be essential.
http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html
There are suburbs and there are suburbs.
Evanston, IL, is a pre-WWII suburb where you can take the El into Chicago, and can walk to the park, to the grocery store, to a restaurant, to a bookstore. There is a mix of detached single-family homes and apartment buildings.
The suburb where I grew up in California is 30 miles outside of Sacramento. You can walk to... well you can walk to another house. If you want to go anywhere else, you have to drive. Most people commute more than 45 minutes to work. There is a mix of large detached single-family homes and larger detached single-family homes. (Because the locals will scream bloody murder if anyone attempts to build apartment buildings. Something about "property values" and making the community accessible to skeezy people such as singles, childless couples, and people who can't qualify for a mortgage.)
If you grew up in a suburb like Evanston, I understand where you're coming from. If you grew up in a place like I did and loved it, I must conclude you do not have a soul to be crushed.
You have it exactly backwards. The house and yard and good schools are all far, far, cheaper than living in Manhattan or San Francisco. If you can swing rent on a 2-bedroom in NYC (around $3500/mo when we left a few years ago), you can afford just about any suburban house you want in the midwest - pool, yard, the whole shebang. Probably even afford a BMW or two for the driveway.
We moved to the suburbs primarily (maybe only?) for the schools.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
San Francisco and New York are what we are talking about here, not Detroit or wherever you are referring to. Internet companies are NOT moving in droves to Detroit or Cleveland or whatever.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Restaurants, shops, galleries, theaters, sports venues, you name it.
Crime, over population, pollution, noise, traffic congestion, rats and roaches, stupid regulations that limit personal freedoms, high cost of living, etc, etc, etc...
Cities are about as soul crushing as you can get.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
It represents the total slaughter of nature and an exporter of garbage oand sewage beyond imagination.
Environmentally, Manhattanites are far gentler per-capita then their suburban brethren. Most don't have cars, heating and cooling is more efficient, and they occupy a lot less space.
Traveling to and from work in Manhattan is pretty easy - you walk (!!!) about 10-15 minutes to a subway stop, take the (admittedly crowded) train for a few stops, then walk (!!!) to work. The number of obese people I saw in Manhattan pales in comparison to my experience in the suburbs. I think your risk of cancer is higher in Manhattan, but people in general seem pretty healthy. New York City is one of, if not the, safest large city in the US. Manhattan is particularly safe.
Also, the single woman to single man ratio in Manhattan is like 60:40... that ought to be good for nerd health!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.