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In spirit I agree, but can you provide any references? I'd love to be able to make this argument with a source to back me up.

by state 10y ago

davidw 10y ago
Here's an example I posted on twitter, from Boulder, Colorado: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-board-votes-landmark-home-against-owners-wishes http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-... That seems like a pretty absurd historical designation. It's just creating a burden for the people who bought it. It's a far cry from bulldozing a beautiful old brick building to put in a McDonalds. Edit: > The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be too strict about historic preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the better they seem to do. If you go a bit beyond the US, you could look at Europe and... I'm not sure that's true. Rome has a ton of old stuff that's been reasonably well preserved. Berlin has been torn apart and reinvented. Berlin is doing way better than Rome in terms of startups. Granted, there are a ton of other factors in play, but if it were just about having a lot of historical stuff, Italy would be the startup capital of the world. I think I get what he's talking about... you want architecture and places that feel 'real', not some homogeneous office park. On the other hand... most of Silicon Valley is very new, and not very exciting, and it did "ok".
- ghaff 10y ago
  >Rome has a ton of old stuff that's been reasonably well preserved. Berlin has been torn apart and reinvented. Berlin is doing way better than Rome in terms of startups. So what city should we bomb to create the next startup hub? That was obviously very facetious but there was a quote from the eighties or so when the Japanese were doing so well in manufacturing relative to the rust belt. One of the reasons proffered was that the Japanese had to rebuild their infrastructure from scratch after WWII. The quote was to the effect that the problems of American manufacturing wouldn't be solved by dropping an atomic bomb on Gary, Indiana.
  - davidw 10y ago
    You could throw Munich into the comparison too: it certainly was not spared during WWII, although it didn't have the subsequent cold war problems that Berlin did. It's wealthier than Berlin, but more conservative, and more expensive. Berlin seems to be emerging as one of the startup hubs of Europe. I think if PG reformulated his point to something involving interesting architecture and places, it might be better. Although... even there, Silicon Valley doesn't/didn't have that at all, and it has prospered.

In spirit I agree, but can you provide any references? I'd love to be able to make this argument with a source to back me up.

by state 10y ago

In spirit I agree, but can you provide any references? I'd love to be able to make this argument with a source to back me up.

davidw 10y ago

Here's an example I posted on twitter, from Boulder, Colorado: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-board-votes-landmark-home-against-owners-wishes http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-... That seems like a pretty absurd historical designation. It's just creating a burden for the people who bought it. It's a far cry from bulldozing a beautiful old brick building to put in a McDonalds. Edit: > The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be too strict about historic preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the better they seem to do. If you go a bit beyond the US, you could look at Europe and... I'm not sure that's true. Rome has a ton of old stuff that's been reasonably well preserved. Berlin has been torn apart and reinvented. Berlin is doing way better than Rome in terms of startups. Granted, there are a ton of other factors in play, but if it were just about having a lot of historical stuff, Italy would be the startup capital of the world. I think I get what he's talking about... you want architecture and places that feel 'real', not some homogeneous office park. On the other hand... most of Silicon Valley is very new, and not very exciting, and it did "ok".

ghaff 10y ago
>Rome has a ton of old stuff that's been reasonably well preserved. Berlin has been torn apart and reinvented. Berlin is doing way better than Rome in terms of startups. So what city should we bomb to create the next startup hub? That was obviously very facetious but there was a quote from the eighties or so when the Japanese were doing so well in manufacturing relative to the rust belt. One of the reasons proffered was that the Japanese had to rebuild their infrastructure from scratch after WWII. The quote was to the effect that the problems of American manufacturing wouldn't be solved by dropping an atomic bomb on Gary, Indiana.
- davidw 10y ago
  You could throw Munich into the comparison too: it certainly was not spared during WWII, although it didn't have the subsequent cold war problems that Berlin did. It's wealthier than Berlin, but more conservative, and more expensive. Berlin seems to be emerging as one of the startup hubs of Europe. I think if PG reformulated his point to something involving interesting architecture and places, it might be better. Although... even there, Silicon Valley doesn't/didn't have that at all, and it has prospered.