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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.'"
Even Manhattan is so small that you can walk across it in less than an hour. The length of it can be walked in 3. That's hardly "sprawl".
The soul-crushing part rather depends on the person, but I don't know many who pine for the suburbs. People roughly fall into urban and rural preferences... I'm sure there are people who revel in suburban life, but it's just not something you run into that often (and I live in the suburbs). Most of the people I know moved to the suburbs because they have kids and want access to the good schools. Of course, I have selection bias since I myself have kids and therefore mostly meet other parents. I confess to knowing one neighbor who retired to our suburb because they were tired of Manhattan.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I grew up in midwest suburbs, and I don't think my childhood was "soul crushing". If you don't like the suburbs, well that's fine. You are welcome to not live there. But I just don't get the hateful crusade against them. I personally enjoyed having a decent sized yard as a kid.
totally agree
I cannot imagine anything more soul crushing that just being reminded that you have no identity, no visibility, and that you are little more than just one of the teeming horde which is exactly how I feel when I am in downtown anywhere. It might help if the cities he mentioned had any soul but I grew up in San Fran and let me tell you, after hours its a ghost town, and at other times of the day it is just a constant reminder of how completely f*ck*d we are as a society. the problem is not where the company is, the problem is the company itself.
I hate the suburbs.
I like having my own garage and not being robbed even if I accidentally leave the door wide open.
Drawn by amenities
Locally the only amenity offered by "the big city" over the suburbs is incredibly low rent because no one wants to work there. Crippling decaying infrastructure, one of the worst ranked school systems in the nation (no one between 25-50 wants to live here unless they're rich enough for private schools), extremely high crime, police don't respond to anyone not actively bleeding or shooting (that was weird to discover), one of the most racially segregated cities in the North (burbs are much more multicultural, weird but true), no parking so only locals are allowed, filthy, crippling tax/license/fee burdens, larger scale corruption in govt (note the burbs are almost as corrupt, just not quite as big). So why would anyone voluntarily work there? Oh, I see, rents are about a tenth the cost of equivalent rent in the burbs, assuming you can find burb space at similar level of squalor.
Don't ague that world class cities are better than my "top 20 city". World class cities are surrounded by world class suburbs, so Again the only reason to locate in the city is low rents.
There are exceptions where there are pretty good high rent locations squashed up against water features. They don't matter, less than 1% of the population lives and works there. For the 99% of the remaining population, the big cities suck.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I've always wondered about that lol. Why are the tech companies almost always attracted to areas with exceptionally high cost of living? Must be something I'm missing.
Well, here's what I think they're after: City centers (assuming there is a city center, not all cities have them), tend to be areas filled with the things that make the city unique: tourist attractions, public artwork, nifty historical architecture, headquarters skyscrapers of well-known businesses, etc. Suburban office parks tend to be identical no matter where you go: big glass boxes, concrete and glass boxes, brick and glass boxes, sometimes some marble veneers on the glass boxes, mixed with a variety of chain restaurants to feed the lunch crowd.
Another way of looking at it: If you work in a suburban office park, describe how it's different in any significant way from the one portrayed in Office Space.
I am officially gone from
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.
But I just don't get the hateful crusade against them. I personally enjoyed having a decent sized yard as a kid
"Decent sized yard" is the key. Many, all too many, suburbs don't have greenspace (parks and other places to play) or if they do they are driving distance for most kids. In my suburban neighborhood, the yards are on half acre or less plots, the nearest park is 5 miles away, and the kids have really no where to play outside; so they stay indoors playing video games and getting obese.
When developers build a subdivision in suburbia, they put as many homes in the development as they can to maximize their profits - to state the obvious. Any amenities are an after thought and poorly designed - usually it's just a "clubhouse" and a shitty pool that's too small to do laps in; such as some kidney shaped thing to lounge around to work on one's melanoma. We have tennis courts but they were built in an area that the developer couldn't put a house so he put tennis courts there - which are constantly being vandalized by the little shits who have nothing better to do.
Why do folks live there? Schools. To have their kids go to a better school.
Decent sized yards are usually found in areas where the zoning boards force developers to a minimum sized plot that allows for the decent sized yard - like my parent's house where I grew up. The minimum building lot was an acre and as a result I also grew up with a decent sized yard.
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
I like that part, too. I also like the good schools, the relatively clean air, the quiet, and the ease of getting away from people if you want.
I hate that Chiles is considered an acceptable place to eat. I hate driving everywhere... the sheer insanity of driving to a gym so that you can exercise! I hate the lack of economic and ethnic diversity (though we are in an "old" suburb with at least some of that). Most of all, I hate the static blandness of it all. Same chain stores as you get anywhere else in the US. When we have house guests, we have to all drive somewhere to do something unique... often that means going... to the city!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yep, the parent poster misses the point. People like cities because that's where the cool stuff is concentrated. We aren't talking about cities in terms of the boundaries of the municipality but rather the city centers where culture thrives.
Restaurants, shops, galleries, theaters, sports venues, you name it. Who in their right mind would choose a sterile office park with a subway franchise as the only choice for lunch when you could be near world class cuisine? And be within walking distance of a cultural event after work?
Cities aren't soul crushing, they're the geographic locus of the human soul.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
It might help if the cities he mentioned had any soul but I grew up in San Fran and let me tell you, after hours its a ghost town, and at other times of the day it is just a constant reminder of how completely f*ck*d we are as a society.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I moved to SF as a single person. My parents, who lived in the suburban sprawl of Phoenix, AZ, were always worried about me. It was hard for them to imagine that there were vibrant communities throughout the entire city that provided safety for everyone living in the area. In fact, I don't know of a single area in SF proper that there aren't corner stores and eateries that are open past midnight.
It was also hard for them to realize that it was relatively easy to become friends with owners and other patrons of all these corner spots, and we'd all eventually come to care for each other. If something happened to one of us, the rest of us would inquire what was happening, if there were anything any of us could do, whatever. Of course they couldn't understand that. Suburbs just don't offer that.
If anything is a ghost town, it's suburban America. But I can assure you, such a compact, diverse city as SF is hardly a ghost town. Growing up in SF, surely you realize that you never had to travel many blocks to find plenty of human activity. If not, you were most likely a shut-in.
I work at the Port of New York Authority building, and I'd much rather my job were in some soul-less office park in the suburbs. The choices for housing in the NYC area are to rent in a shoebox in Manhattan for insanely high prices, rent a slightly larger place in Hoboken, Jersey City, Queens or Brooklyn for also insanely high prices (and have a relatively long subway commute), or to buy in the suburbs (also insanely costly) and have a ridiculously long commute (1hr+, whether Long Island or New Jersey). I'm not a city person, I need some space. My wife is an artist, she needs some space to work. I'm not so interested in "nightlife" (#1, I'm married, so the payoff isn't there. #2, I'm a geek, so it never was)
I think there's two main reasons the tech companies are mostly going to cities. One is an ideological attraction to cities and antipathy to suburbs on the part of management. The other is an attraction to cities (particularly including New York and San Francisco) on the part of new grads; when you're competing for Ivy League CS grads, an office in Putnam County, NY or Eureka, IN just isn't going to cut it.
It really depends on the suburb. The older ones tend to be more walkable and have things going on (along with a real downtown area). The stereotypical and HOA infested new ones are boring and sterile and require a car to get anywhere... including out of the subdivision.
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
Everyone is ignoring the insane cost of cities (especially Manhattan). I pay less monthly in mortgage now for a huge house in Austin than i would have paid for a small 2 bedroom in Manhattan. Forcing people to move in to the cities is effectively cutting their income or quality of life. They should be resisting...
Cities were fun when I was 20. It's just insanely impractical now. I prefer to be "near" one, where "near" means I can visit on the weekends with some investment, but I'd rather live and work where I'm isolated from the costs, crowds, and crime.
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.