Startups Ditching Silicon Valley For New Cities (economist.com)

The rising cost of living in Silicon Valley is pushing startups out, the Economist reports, and re-focusing innovation in new cities around the country [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the story: More Americans are leaving the Valley than moving to it. In 2017 several counties in the area saw their largest combined domestic outward migrations in around a decade. In a recent survey by the Bay Area Council, a think-tank, 46% of Bay Area residents said they planned to leave in "the next few years," up from 34% in 2016. This is not just a case of people of more modest means being pushed out by carpet-bagging techies. At this year's "FOO camp," a freewheeling annual gathering of hackers and others, a session called "Should I/you leave the Bay Area?" saw a strong turnout. Participants shared their gripes about the high cost of living, bad traffic and a "toxic" culture obsessed with money.

Comments

Makes perfect sense

[LynnwoodRooster]

The world is small, thanks to communications and travel systems. Why go to the Bay area with exceptionally high costs and congestion? If you want great central California weather, there are lots of places just down the coast around SLO that are great. The LA/Ventura/OC area is great. And then there's the rest of the country as well. The only reason to be in the Bay area is you want to be there because you perceive it has "extra value" in terms of how others perceive you. In essence - vanity.

Re:Makes perfect sense

[jellomizer]

Sounds like hell. Which I think is the point. If you have an environment filled with like minded people then how do you expect to innovate?

Re:Makes perfect sense

[CohibaVancouver]

The night life game there, where admittedly vanity is key, is seen as an end of it's own to a lot of locals.

Young locals, certainly - But once you're 35, the 'night life game' starts to become pretty unimportant (and for many 35-year-olds it's likely been unimportant for a half-decade already). You'd rather be at a pub with your friends, sharing stories and nachos.

Re:Makes perfect sense

[PopeRatzo]

But once you're 35, the 'night life game' starts to become pretty unimportant

That's true. For me, wild nightlife means putting a few drops of cannabis oil in my CPAP machine.

so what's new?

[crgrace]

This is old news. I've been hearing this story (and it's true about out-migration) my whole life. I remember when I first saw a big article about the "Hollowing Out of Silicon Valley" or something similar in the early/mid 1980s. The article was about how semiconductor and electronics manufacturing was the main employment driver in the San Jose area and the offshoring of manufacturing to Asia, coupled with high housing prices, was going to turn San Jose into Detroit by 1990. Didn't happen.

Interestingly, the article was mostly true. There aren't many (just a few) fabs left in Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley has mostly turned into Software Valley (and swallowed up San Francisco). What the article didn't anticipate was the combined strength of an innovative culture and importing the best of the best in the world to contribute. I think the cliched term is "Creative Destruction".

Every since the early 1990s I think more Americans leave California than move here. However, at least in the town I grew up in, it was mostly low-skilled Americans moving out and high-skilled moving in (which has led to SERIOUS gentrification). This effect, coupled with a lot of high-skilled foreign immigration, had made my area more dynamic than I've ever seen it.

When I was a kid, we had no ethnic food beyond Mexican and Chinese in my town. Now we just opened a Burmese restaurant to go along with the 20 other cultural restaurants. I think that's a sign of progress.

My whole life (and I'm in my 40s) California was a "Liberal Cesspool of Business-Hating Over-Regulation, one step away from a spectacular collapse". And yet, here we are, doing better than ever.