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A lot of the tension between SF and SV comes from that region's refusal to accept its status as an employment hub. Communities like Palo Alto want to preserve t

A lot of the tension between SF and SV comes from that region's refusal to accept its status as an employment hub. Communities like Palo Alto want to preserve the fiction that they are spacious suburbs, and use zoning laws to enforce the fiction. Silicon Valley is really exporting its housing dysfunction to San Francisco, which adds its own.

mwfunk 10y ago
Everyone I know who lives in SF and works in SV (and I've known a lot of them) lives in SF because they want to, not because it was the best choice economically. They want to live in SF because of the culture or the nightlife, and are willing to endure sitting on a bus for 3 hours a day and paying way more to get way less in order to live there. For all of those people, if all they cared about was finding housing, it would have been way more practical to just get a place in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or San Jose (or Morgan Hill, for that matter, although that's getting back into painful commute territory). Now, one might say, "but it's so much more boring to live in Sunnyvale than SF!", but that's still a choice being made for lifestyle reasons and not a housing decision that they were forced into. I would also say that if anyone is bored almost anywhere in this day and age, that that's far more a personal failing than a property of where they live, but that's totally besides the point. :)
- idlewords 10y ago
  If Silicon Valley urbanized, it would have culture and nightlife, and be a much more attractive place to live. Consider also that you and I are techies, and move in techie circles. There is a large population of people working non-tech jobs for whom cost is the overriding concern.
twblalock 10y ago
Most of the startup jobs are in SF and the peninsula, not SV. Even employees of SV companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple choose to live in SF and commute to the valley every day, which is why the tech shuttle buses exist. They certainly aren't saving money by living in SF -- they live there because they want to. It's just the trendiest place for young people to live in the Bay Area right now. Palo Alto is a bit unrepresentative of SV. It has very high barriers to new housing. On the other hand, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, which are much larger than Palo Alto, are building stuff everywhere. So is Redwood City, just to the north of Palo Alto, which has seen its downtown area completely transformed over the past few years. The cities I mentioned are building a lot more housing than SF is building, even though they have fewer startup jobs, so it's hard to justify any accusations that they aren't doing their part.

mwfunk 10y ago

Everyone I know who lives in SF and works in SV (and I've known a lot of them) lives in SF because they want to, not because it was the best choice economically. They want to live in SF because of the culture or the nightlife, and are willing to endure sitting on a bus for 3 hours a day and paying way more to get way less in order to live there. For all of those people, if all they cared about was finding housing, it would have been way more practical to just get a place in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or San Jose (or Morgan Hill, for that matter, although that's getting back into painful commute territory). Now, one might say, "but it's so much more boring to live in Sunnyvale than SF!", but that's still a choice being made for lifestyle reasons and not a housing decision that they were forced into. I would also say that if anyone is bored almost anywhere in this day and age, that that's far more a personal failing than a property of where they live, but that's totally besides the point. :)

idlewords 10y ago
If Silicon Valley urbanized, it would have culture and nightlife, and be a much more attractive place to live. Consider also that you and I are techies, and move in techie circles. There is a large population of people working non-tech jobs for whom cost is the overriding concern.

twblalock 10y ago

Most of the startup jobs are in SF and the peninsula, not SV. Even employees of SV companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple choose to live in SF and commute to the valley every day, which is why the tech shuttle buses exist. They certainly aren't saving money by living in SF -- they live there because they want to. It's just the trendiest place for young people to live in the Bay Area right now. Palo Alto is a bit unrepresentative of SV. It has very high barriers to new housing. On the other hand, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, which are much larger than Palo Alto, are building stuff everywhere. So is Redwood City, just to the north of Palo Alto, which has seen its downtown area completely transformed over the past few years. The cities I mentioned are building a lot more housing than SF is building, even though they have fewer startup jobs, so it's hard to justify any accusations that they aren't doing their part.