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.'"

Comments

Re:Soul-crushing?

[vlm]

But I just don't get the hateful crusade against them.

Jealousy. Won't come out and honestly say they're jealous of not being able to afford it, so you get mindless blather like "nah nah naa boo boo you suuuuck sooouls nah nah naa boo boo you suuuuck souuuls!" repeat until nauseated. Apparently that's what passes for a detailed logical engineering analysis of why suburb life is worse than urban life. There's some spite to it too, I can only afford to live in squalor so I'll feel better if everyone else has to live in squalor too. Also a little stockholm syndrome where we'll all cheer each other up in the slum by telling ourselves that our dump is really better than someone else's nice place, maybe if we tell it to ourselves enough times we'll actually believe it? There tends to be a bit of immaturity-effect, so if the parents like X (where X might be suburbs, or rock music, etc) then rebellious teenagers (of any actual chronological age) will declare their undying love of -X (where -X might be urban living, or hip hop, etc). Its stealth ageism, in that if you're 23 its time for an exciting adventure, being a crime victim is something that happens to someone else and could never happen to me, and you have no responsibilities (aka spouse and kids), so the city is great fun and adventure, but by 30 its time to move somewhere civilized... right about the time your employer is ready to downsize you for the next wave of cheap recent grads, so mass publicity about moving HQ into an urban environment is kind of a legal "over 25 need not apply" sign. Closely related to the stealth ageism thing there's a "can't keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris" effect where you can transition from a dumpy dorm directly to a dumpy city as a 22 year old kid, but once you've had a job in a civilized area out in the burbs its hard to stomach downgrading to urban lifestyle again, so its another "older people need not apply" sign... Finally there tends to be the idea that urban living is "new" so if you're trying to hide from yourself or don't like yourself or "just have issues", then maybe trying something new like moving to the city will help... unfortunately where-ever you go, there you are, so as a "find yourself" activity moving to the big city is not likely to be as successful as, say, one of the more atheistic branches of Buddhism or perhaps psychotherapy, or rephrased "if you're running from something, then the process of running matters a much more than where you're running toward"