No owner of an oil company wants to live next to a refinery. No owner of an auto plant wants to live next to the plant. In the Industrial era, owners wanted t

No owner of an oil company wants to live next to a refinery. No owner of an auto plant wants to live next to the plant. In the Industrial era, owners wanted to live far away from where the work was done because it was ugly and polluted. This created the suburban pattern and cheap housing close to work for workers. This is basically Oakland. Rich Tech entrepreneurs, executives, highly paid programmers, and VCs want to live close to the tech "factory" and they want it to be a nice place. They don't care where everyone else who works there lives, just as long as they don't screw up their nice neighborhood with excess traffic, pollution and density. It's as simple as that. All this stuff about economic policy and zoning laws and the general decline of western civilization is a whole lot of overanalyzing, IMHO.