Slashdot Mirror
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.
I hate the suburbs.
I like having my own garage and not being robbed even if I accidentally leave the door wide open.
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.
Those areas have high costs of living BECAUSE they are attractive! People don't bust their ass at Stanford and MIT so they can live in North Dakota. If you want the best talent you have to be in place where the best talent wants to be. People from elite schools aren't interested in living in some hill billy backwater just so they can save 3% on sales tax or some other pissant shit low income tea party losers whine about. My guess is you've never lived in a world class city before.
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.
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.
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.
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.