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'Google Buses' Are Bad For Cities, Says New York MTA Official
An anonymous reader writes "The Director of Sustainability for New York's MTA is calling out Google, Apple, and Yahoo for 'deliberately' building their campuses away from public amenities like restaurants, and public transportation. 'With very few honorable exceptions like Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, who recently moved his company headquarters from suburban Henderson to downtown Las Vegas, tech companies seem not to have gotten the memo that suburbs are old and bad news,' he writes. Instead of launching their own bus services to ferry people from the city to their campuses, as the tech companies have done, the Googles and Apples of the world should 'locate themselves in existing urban communities. Ideally, in blighted ones,' says Dutta." Maybe cities just don't have the right mix of amenities, price, space, parking, and other factors to make them better places to put certain businesses.
If anyone is going to bring us Shadowrun-style corporate arcologies, it'll be Google.
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
I would rather the campus be located away from urban area. Less traffic, less driving, cheap/free parking, cheaper food, less chance of crime happening to me or my properly while at or traveling to work and for most people closer to home. This is double so if locally aimed marketing and walk in customers are not very frequent.
Why is commuting from suburbs to town centers good, but commuting from town center to a suburb bad?
Apparatchik from a tax-dependent transit agency is bad-mouthing private alternatives. HIs approval is neither sought nor required.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This: "Maybe cities just don't have the right mix of amenities, price, space, parking, and other factors to make them better places to put certain businesses."
The Director of Sustainability demonstrates the ludicrous line of thought that puts stadiums downtown.
"Put your company and employees in a more expensive and crowded place (and *blighted?!* = more dangerous) because I say it's better", says a guy who works for a terribly-run monopoly that depends on people needing to get where he's telling them to build.
'...locate themselves in existing urban communities. Ideally, in blighted ones,'
You mean you want Google to locate its campuses in urban blighted areas (slums). No modern tech company will do that, no one would work for them. It is all about attracting the best and brightest minds. I have a suggestion, why don't you clean up your cities and get rid of the blighted areas and maybe companies will want to locate there.
Really.
Apparently the thousands of tech workers that Google, Apple, and others are shuttling from SF to the Peninsula want to live in a city.
Almost daily I read something telling me that my car will become obsolete, my suburban house will plummet in value, and my suburban lifestyle is heading the way of the dodo. Meanwhile, the suburban neighborhood I currently live in didn't exist 10 years ago. Could it be that people actually like living in the suburbs?
The problem with this "urban utopia" concept is that cities suck. They are generally crowded, noisy, smelly, expensive, and all-around unpleasant. Sure, if you are young and don't mind having 3-4 roommates, or you are a history professor type that loves walking everywhere - they by all means - live in a city.
I loved NYC until I had to work there. Holy crap - what a disaster that place is. The experience was so bad, I ran to the suburbs to raise kids - and I'm never going back.
It's no surprise that tech companies, flush with cash, can seek better alternatives. I actually applaud these companies. There are talented employees all over the country - not just in cities. If companies want to bus in their workers - that's great. Government should just get out of the way and keep the roads paved.
I believe he's saying, "If you're bussing your employees from the city to the suburbs, why not put the company in the city?"
If people would RTFA:
"Members of the current generation of in-demand workers wants to live in a city like San Francisco. They prefer an urban lifestyle to a suburban one. They want to be able to walk to grocery stores, restaurants, theaters, etc. They prefer traveling to work using collective transportation, rather than driving -- perhaps, in part, because they can be productive on the way."
Because, if what everyone is saying is so true ("Why be in an urban hell?"), then why are there so many buses heading *from* places like SF to the 'burbs? Clearly the employees like the amenities that the urban areas provide, otherwise they wouldn't live there, and there wouldn't be enough employees to justify a separate bus system to move them to the suburban campuses, no?
And this is exactly what Twitter just did (got a sweet deal in The Mission, not exactly a wonderful area before), but that's created a whole host of other problems. However, rents have shot up, so what he's proposing is working there. Apartments are now fetching $2000/month+ rent in what was a cheap area. These companies have power, and when they bring that power, other businesses follow. And the point of the article is: if the employees recognize this and are living in the cities, why aren't the businesses going there?
make it worth their while. ... quit asking them to do things that are not in their best interest.
And that narrow view sums up the problem. Where is your sense of social responsibility? Or if not that, can you at least muster some enlightened self interest? You know, the thought that improving a neighborhood is in fact in your own interest, and that just moving into a neighborhood will improve it? That's assuming the business isn't one of those irresponsible sorts that sets a bad example by spewing pollution into the environment and then walking away from the mess they made, leaving it for the public or natural processes to clean up.
Except that spending my money to improve a crap hole neighborhood is almost certainly not in my best interests. It would cost far more money, have far greater risks and likely benefit me not at all beyond a PR move. Building a new corporate HQ in a blighted area is almost always going to be a moronically bad idea for nearly everyone concerned except the city which gets to tax you to hell and gone for the privilege. On top of that you're almost certainly going to have greater security concerns and far higher crime rates to deal with.
Can you imagine the recruiting message for getting new employees to work at said HQ? Come work in beautiful downtown Crimeville! AKs provided for your security! Only 12 muggings this week!
Yep, awesome idea.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"