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No Coding in Palo Alto? City Takes On Silicon Valley Growth (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader writes:The birthplace of Hewlett Packard and Xerox Parc and founding place of Facebook is now considering whether to enforce a zoning regulation banning firms whose "primary business is research and development, including software coding," according to the New York Times. As the Times wrote, "To repeat: The mayor is considering enforcing a ban on coding at ground zero of Silicon Valley." Palo Alto Mayor Patrick Burt told the Times: Big tech companies are choking off the downtown. It's not healthy. Palo Alto is a software capital. It has also become a company town, with Palantir Technologies renting 20 downtown buildings, as Marisa Kendall wrote. Other notable tech firms there include Tesla, SAP, Flipboard, VMWare and many others. It has become a center for automation and cars and is home to Ford's research and development center.
Now can we start tearing down research labs to build more NFL stadia...at the taxpayers' expense, of course.
The purpose of a downtown is to be a shopping and restaurant district. If you clog the place up with a bunch of tech firms, the city ceases to be viable for its residents. There's nothing nefarious here; there's just a desire for Palo Alto to remain a normal city with actual residents mixed in with those tech firms, rather than becoming just a place that people commute to.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
In the past, many cities dealt with excessive demand for existing space by creating more space. The most obvious way to do this is to build taller buildings. We need to find a way to sideline the NIMBYs and BANANAs so that core cities can grow again, instead of sprawling into the suburbs.
Downtown in most cities is where businesses are. Wall street is downtown. The US Capital is downtown. Detroit used to have factories downtown. Downtown isn't the shopping district, except where all the businesses left and they made it a shopping district to save it from abandonment.
This is what I've never quite understood: why does it seem that zoning laws are allowed to ignore constitutional freedoms? Banning research and development, "including software coding" would seem to ignore the right to free speech, free assembly and the right to privacy (if it's my property and I'm not doing anything dangerous toward my neighbors, why does the city care what I'm doing inside?)
Look, I understand that we don't want coal factories building next to residences. That all makes sense to me, and I could see an argument that this doesn't restrict constitutional freedom. But where does a city get off telling a person they can't run a business (e.g. sole proprietorship) out of their home?
So while I'm afraid that Palo Alto could follow through on this threat, it boggles the mind how it could in the USA. I also think it would be royally dumb for them to kick out all of these businesses too, but that's a different discussion.
The issue is that:
1) There isn't sufficient money to pay for decent transit.
The county pays for BART to go to San Jose, but isn't doing shit for any of the peninsula cities transit issues.
2) Corporations have been converting retail space (i.e. stuff that actually serves residents) into office space with ~10x the density.
This screws residents.
3) Because of the lack of decent transit, increasing density isn't possible without *severe* impacts to traffic.
And yes, it already takes 15+ minutes to go about two miles on a number of arterial roads.
The traffic is REALLY FRACKING BAD.
So, if you're crying about NIMBYs, shut the eff up, and look at the fact that there are *real* problems here that density cannot solve until the infrastruture to support that density arrives.
I'd rather have cheap housing with increased density. Since that cannot happen reasonably right now, I'd like for the retail -> office space conversions to stop.
Please do this and point all the companies that move out to Champaign, Illinois.
Massively cheaper cost of living and home to an excellent university that turns out lots of CS majors and other technical types every year.
Sincerely,
The residents of Champaign-Urbana Illinois and surrounding towns. We'd love to have your problems..
Do they really think their downtown will improve by kicking all the jobs out of it?
It's time to make Silicon Valley a Silicon Desert.
Look at the City of San Francisco. They want all the tech companies to come in, giving lots of tax breaks and other incentives so they can pride themselves on having all this innovation. But then they complain about all the tech workers coming in and living in the city. Then they complain about buses picking up workers. Did you ever hear a greenie complain about people using a bus? Well, go to SF.
Palo Alto is doing the same thing now. They want all the tech money, but not the tech companies. And watch them whining when large companies decide to move out.
Just imagine Cisco, Google, Facebook and Apple deciding to move out of the area completely, with all their workers. Imagine how many mortgages will be under water, how many folks will lose their jobs, how many tax revenue these cities will have to do without.
Palo Alto should shut the F up really quick.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
That is tremendously unconstitutional.
While I appreciate the point, it's no more unconstitutional than any other zoning ordnance or land use regulation.
That said, it's a perfect demonstration of why you want government to have as little power as possible.
The government isn't the one complaining. they're happy to have the company busses and are renting the bus stops to them. THe people complaining are low income/long term residents being priced out in rent- the bus complaints are just another factor of the rent complaints.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Works for Houston
http://thefederalist.com/2016/...
As to your point, I just love the idea of the politically connected driving me from my home or destroying my business.
... how an overdose of concentration on one particular industry branch can turn your prospering city into a sort of a post-apocalyptic no-go-zone, quickly. I think there is good reason to ensure that there is more in a city than just one kind of employers.
My company opened another office in the Houston metro, and when we were looking for locations, one of our candidates was in a new industrial park that was literally across the street from a group of multi-million dollar homes (and not in the California sense where an 800sqft shithole sells for half a mil, but in the rural US sense of a 5k sqft mcmansion on 5 acres). I had someone explain the zoning laws (or lack thereof) to me and had my mind blown. NIMBY definitely does NOT seem to be a thing down there.
It's rather mind boggling to me, but it seems to work for them.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
What's the difference between a city and an industrial park?
One has residents, and infrastructure for residents. The other does not.
I did not read TFA, (it's traditional), but it sounds like this mayor wants to do the following:
1) light commercial zones must not be exploited for yet more satellite office buildings, and needs to stay as strip malls, gas stations, dollar general stores, et al.
2) satellite office construction projects will have to seek different zoning from light commercial, to avoid having the problems proposal 1) seeks to address.
The headline sounds sensational-- "oh noes! Coders not welcome in Palo alto!"
I read him differently. "People actually live in Palo alto. They need to be able to buy gas and groceries without having to drive all the way to San jose. Light commercial zoning currently covers both the circle k, and pallantir's new office building. There is only so much real estate in Palo alto. Only so much of that can be light commercial. Only so much of the limited light commercial property can be office buildings, if people are going to live in Palo alto, they need light commercial that actually sells products, like a circle k does. We want to make it so new office proposals do not eliminate all other forms of light commercial, no matter how much money they have to wave around."
Wow, you're ignorant. I actually live in the area. The citys are all for the buses and want to expand the programs. The protestors are locals. Of course there are low income residents of SF- they live with roommates, with their parents, or in rent control. They're being priced out, and that's why they're angry. They don't actually care about the buses- they're angry at the raise in rents, and the symbol of them are the big tech companies. They think that without the buses the tech workers would move further into the valley and lower rents in SF. Not realistic, but they're angry and desperate.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Detroit used to have factories downtown.
If by "downtown" you mean within the city limits then that was true a loooong time ago. But Downtown Detroit hasn't had factories of any meaningful scale for ages. The actual factories tended to be in other nearby places like Hamtramack, Highland Park, River Rouge, and other areas. Detroit's downtown has been greatly revitalized in the last 15 years in spite of what many of you who haven't actually visited may have heard but very little manufacturing actually occurs in Detroit proper. Instead most of it happens in the greater Detroit metro area which has a far larger population than the city itself.
Increase the density allowed and allow building of mid and high rise appartments inside of SF and other bay area suburbs. Not an instant fix, but it would fix it over a decade.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I agree; 40 years ago, who would have dreamed that the auto industry would move most their production away from Detroit? That most of the city's factories would be vacant and collapsing? We've already seen the largest company in the world go bankrupt and be purchased by the US government.
Who would have dreamed so many factories would abandon the US entirely?
In much the same way, software development and R&D may well collapse in Silicon Valley.
Nobody has a crystal ball. Diversification in a financial portfolio has always been good advice; how would it be any different for your tax base?
At the end of the day, skilled people have the freedom to move as opportunities do. Cities can't.
While Silicon Valley is in a golden age, who is to say if or when those jobs will abandon the Bay Area entirely?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.