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Is San Francisco The Brooklyn To Silicon Valley's Unbuilt Manhattan?
- anigbrowl 14y agoNo, San Francisco is the Manhattan to Silicon Valley's Atlantic city :-) Seriously, there's a reason SF is so expensive; that's where the banks and the lawyers are. SF was, for a time, the capital of California and is still the main nexus of political power. And I say that as someone with a love for LA as well as the Bay.
- potatolicious 14y ago> "there's a reason SF is so expensive; that's where the banks and the lawyers are." I highly doubt this. Bankers and lawyers have some upwards price pressure on the market certainly, but the rent explosion coincides very well with both dotcom booms. The bulk of the expense of SF is due to people like us. See: http://thecacgroup.com/research/cities/san_francisco/historical_rental_vacancy_rates http://thecacgroup.com/research/cities/san_francisco/histori... There aren't any reasonable parallels between Manhattan/Brooklyn and SF/Valley IMO. The author mentions the endless debate about who is San Francisco's Brooklyn. The debate is endless because there isn't a candidate that even approximates a good answer.
- dllthomas 14y ago> SF was, for a time, the capital of California Everywhere was, for a time, the capital of California...
- podperson 14y agoI'm not sure the original statement was even true (I can find no evidence for it) but SF was the cultural and financial capital of CA until the 1950s. Walk around some of the palatial buildings in SF and you quickly realize that after WWII it was not only expected to be the premiere city of California, but the seat of power for American Empire in the Pacific. That said, I think the article's critique of SF (and those I've read in this thread) are pretty much spot on.
- dllthomas 14y agoOh, the original statement was true, though apparently it was brief enough that no business was actually conducted... The capital bounced around quite a bit immediately post-statehood. The capitol building in Benicia still exists, and is pretty neat (though the park is slated for closure, if note closed already).
- jedahan 14y ago...isn't Oakland San Francisco's Brooklyn?
- balbaugh 14y agoThere must be a better way for the Awl author to title the article. Maybe, "Should San Francisco be Silicon Valley's Brooklyn?". Or maybe, "Why Is Silicon Valley Not A Major Metro Area?".
- Aloisius 14y agoThe San Francisco Bay Area is not a major metro area? There are over 7 million people here.
- balbaugh 14y agoI agree that it is a major metro, but the article is comparing San Fran to Brooklyn and Silicon Valley to Manhattan in that it should be a major metro area with its large industries but that people instead choose to commute to SF.
- greghinch 14y agoThough only something like 800,000 actually live in SF.
- Aloisius 14y agoSan Fracisco is half the size of Brooklyn. It seems silly to compare it to all of New York (which is 6x bigger in land area).
- xxpor 14y agoAsk someone from the east coast what are the 10 biggest cities in the country. I would bet 99/100 wouldn't guess San Jose is in there.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIt took me two minutes to finally parse out that headline. It sounds like an awful SAT sample question.
- philsnow 14y ago
- rayiner 14y agoAwesome article, delivering harsh stinging truth: "As disappointed visitors and new employees discover, Silicon Valley is a dull and ugly landscape of low-rise stucco office parks and immense traffic-clogged boulevards. The fancy restaurants are in strip malls, like you'd find in Arizona or something." Perfect description of the Valley. Somewhat better than say Northern Virginia, but by a hair.
- randallsquared 14y ago"Somewhat better than say Northern Virginia, but by a hair." In my experience of 2011 (visiting Santa Clara), quite a lot better than NoVA (where I lived at the time), but for the opposite reason than I think you'd say: everything in the Valley seemed open and spread out and inviting, rather than crowded and dirty, like NoVA feels. NoVA is just a step above cities I've been in, such as DC and NYC; the Valley is much more relaxing.
- rayiner 14y agoAre you talking about Arlington/Alexandria or "real Northern Virginia" (Vienna, Tyson's Corner, etc)? The former are really just part of D.C. They are as densely populated as the city proper, and were legally part of D.C. until Virginia took the land back right before the Civil War. Arlington is where D.C.'s high-rises are (as a result of the stupid building height restriction in the city proper) and is well-integrated into the city's subway network. Of course, Alexandria and Arlington are also the only tolerable places in Northern Virginia.
- peterhunt 14y agoLots of mentions of bars and hip restaurants, no mention of school districts; I think this blog is coming from a fairly narrow perspective which reduces its credibility.
- natrius 14y agoGood school districts already exist on the peninsula. The author suggests merely densifying them, which is anathema to the people who currently live in them.
- nickpinkston 14y agoA very good point - it would seem that Noe Valley exists for families with pre-school aged families that eventually move south to better schools. In my hometown of Pittsburgh, the city has enough housing for 700K people (currently 300K) and the county has like 2M+. Pittsburgh is where people go to have fun in many great, vibrant neighborhoods, but the school system is abysmal, so young, professional families have no interest in living there without being able to afford the private schools.
- civilian 14y agoI think schools were included in the umbrella of "basic human infrastructure". Even if the author didn't intend it, that's where my mind went.
- rayiner 14y agoThe "quality" of the schools is almost entirely a function of the economic/racial makeup of the district. If you moved all the middle/upper middle class whites and asians from the Valley into San Francisco, boom you'd have "good" schools.
- rdl 14y agoEven the white or Asian parts of SF have kind of shitty schools compared to the peninsula.
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- mmanfrin 14y agoI feel like the East Bay gets glossed over a lot in these pieces about the growth of the Bay. The East Bay, unlike the north or south bay, has BART. The East Bay has an easy commute to the city. The East Bay has the lowest housing and land prices close to the city. I could see parts of West Oakland being redeveloped in to high-rise office and residential parks, to match those on the opposite coast of the bay. Hopefully this might mean BART runs past 12.
- colmvp 14y agoWell one of the great things about Brooklyn is the fact that the MTA runs 24 hours (yes, it's less frequent in the early morning) and subway stations are widely distributed. Thus, I never had any hesitations about living in random faraway spots in BK to save some money.
- potatolicious 14y agoI don't think the BART could run past 12 even if they wanted. It's a system that's stretched to its very limits - for example, only a maximum of 3 cars can be out of commission (for repairs, refurbishment, etc) at any one time due to how over-committed their fleet is. The soonest replacements are still years away. There's also a substantial crime problem to be solved in the East Bay (and SF, to be fair). The West Oakland and downtown Oakland BART stops are in the middle of neighborhoods with very pronounced crime and poverty - similar to Civic Center or the worst areas of the Mission. These places are a fair ways away from becoming places where working professionals want to settle. Culturally and politically speaking, I do not believe either SF or the East Bay have a realistic chance of effecting a NYC-style crime turnaround, which was based around fundamentally conservative tactics that's very far from the politics of the Bay Area.
- scarmig 14y agoJust as a factual correction, downtown Oakland is far, far safer than West Oakland. And has fewer insane homeless people than San Francisco.
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- textminer 14y agoSilicon Valley is stucco-corporate ugly. San Francisco is charming, yet now grossly-expensive. The two are linked by decrepit transport systems that are being supplanted only by Google/Yahoo/Facebook's own shuttles (services that do nothing for low-wage Valley workers or entrepreneurs trying to begin new endeavors). East Bay is charming and inexpensive. There are residents and young people who discuss more than option-pool restructuring and PHP/Rails. As long as I can continue to work in San Francisco, and as long as rents stay as high as they are in that city, I'll choose to live here.
- bengl3rt 14y agoSan Francisco is charming, yet now grossly-expensive. Except it's not charming at all... it's much colder than the rest of California (it honestly feels like a different planet), MUNI absolutely sucks compared to any transit system in the civilized world (NYC/Europe/parts of Asia), and the homeless problem is the worst I've seen in any major urban center. San Francisco has a long way to go before I'd consider it a world-class city.
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- jspthrowaway2 14y agoI pass a pile of human feces at least once a week on my walk to work, and the street in front of my office smells like urine 24x7. I've caught someone taking the wheels off a car parked on the street once, at about 2 in the afternoon on a completely parallel-parked to the brim street. In the space of a four-block walk, I'm harassed by on average 8 or 9 homeless people who react to your refusal to give them change with hostility. On a recent walk in the neighborhood shortly after sundown I was accosted by someone selling heroin, who reacted to my refusal to purchase with hostility and brandished a weapon. I agree with him. A lot of people view San Francisco with rose-tinted glasses. While I have passed feces in New York on the stairs up from the subway, I'd contest that every visit I've ever made to New York has left me feeling cleaner than the average commute to SoMa.
- jakozaur 14y agoGreat vision, but building higher building is very controversial in peninsula. That blocks transiting from car culture to more urban environment. E.g.: Proposal of ~ 8 floors high buildings in Palo Alto near the Caltrain. http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=26860 http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=26860 Protests: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-proposed-high-rise-buildings-at-27-university-avenue http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-proposed-high-rise-... Sounds like they are protesting against highly toxic waste treatment in their yard, but it is only a bit higher building in one of the most suitable place in Palo Alto. Tech will tend to move to places which are more pro-development like Redwood City.
- rndmize 14y agoOh man, does that petition start by comparing taking someone's life and livelihood to constructing a new building? Honestly now. The Bay Area feels like a typical tragedy of the common scenario - no one likes the absurd housing prices, or endless traffic, but no one is willing to allow high density housing/construction in their area. So the burden increases on everyone, bit by bit.
- ef4 14y agoIt doesn't even take 8 story buildings to reach critical mass for high-density urban living. You can get high-density, highly-walkable urban neighborhoods at as little as three stories. In fact it's better for walkability to have a whole neighborhood of three or four story buildings than to pack the equivalent housing into a few 8 story buildings with lots of empty space between them. Not that I expect the homeowners of Palo Alto would go for that, either.
- jakozaur 14y agoAgree, but cost of rebuilding cities is huge and jumping from 1 to 3 story are much higher than building 4-9 story buildings near the transportation hub.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI've often wondered what might happen if Apple, Google, and Facebook joined forces, bought a couple of Tunnel boring machines, and bored a pair of tunnels from Cupertino to San Francisco, right underneath El Camino. If you looked at the number of people carried by private busses between San Francisco and the south bay it would get good ridership. If you threw in access to as much dark fiber as you wanted between those two points and added big fiber drops to PAIX, MAE-EAST and SF, you could offset costs by selling this capacity up and down the peninsula. I also know if Google built the tube they could figure out how to do it for a whole lot less than the $1B/mile that these things command in the public sector.
- mammalfriend 14y agoBut why do this for San Francisco, specifically, instead of just developing another area of the bay that has more space and fewer political issues? The city has a host of infrastructure and political problems that make things like basic housing development extremely difficult. And while it's fun when you're 20-30ish, single, and without kids the vast majority of employees will bail from SF when they get a little older. I know this seems far off, but it happens to almost everyone. Then... where?
- natrius 14y agoIf you're very interested in your question, I highly recommend Ed Glaser's Triumph of the City[1]. Short answer: Density is valuable, and developing a new dense area is difficult. No one is going to pay for a skyscraper or a cute, tiny Victorian house in the middle of nowhere because the demand isn't there. You have to build where people are, but neither San Francisco nor the peninsula suburbs want to let that happen. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120549 http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...
- mc32 14y agoWhat about San Jose? They have lots of land and or low density tracts which they could rezone for high density -and the city is amenable to actual renewal and progress, unlike SF. I know it has a reputation for bland mega-suburb feel (as though it were just a bunch of adjoined and conglomerated suburbs called a city) but it could change. Geology* could be an issue, if going over, say, 20 floors, but anything above 8 to 10 is good for density and could be made a viable alternative to SF hegemony in the region. As a bonus, SJ, compared to SF has a functional gov't and has lower crime. *http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2199 http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2199 [PDF]
- Apocryphon 14y ago"Building costs money, but the whole planet's technology business is centered in Santa Clara County, down the road from that other Gold Rush town, San Francisco." It's an outlying concern, and I'm all for transforming Silicon Valley into to a metropolis (so long as it doesn't remove too many of the green preserves of the Peninsula and South Bay), but this sentence made me think of one long-term threat to development in the Bay, especially high-rises: earthquakes. Wouldn't the possibility of the Big One preclude too many skyscrapers from being built? And is it safe for the bulk of the tech industry to be located at such an area? The counterpoint, of course, is cities such as Tokyo and Taipei, which already have been dealing with this issue on even larger scales.
- lylemckeany 14y agoI don't think the possibility of the Big One precludes too many skyscrapers from being built. Skyscraper building techniques are such that this is of minor concern and the large skyscrapers would most likely fair better than most older, shorter buildings these days.
- rdl 14y agoI'm a horrible person for this, but I love Silicon Valley along 280 -- the hp offices/Stanford/ VMware area of palo alto/Menlo park to work, and atherton, Hillsborough, woodshed, etc to live.
- timr 14y agoSilicon Valley is in the waning phase of a hype cycle, but it will come back. The movement of every 20-something tech employee to SF is unsustainable, and eventually prices will rise to levels that even tech salaries can't support (they're basically already there -- $3k a month for a 1 bedroom puts your housing spend at 36% of gross pay, if you're making $100k a year). Thus, you're living with roommates in a sketchy neighborhood, getting hassled for change/cigarettes/attention every 15 feet, and stepping in poop on your way to the hour-long shuttle ride to Google. Totally worth it, right? Except that you work 10-hour days, and you don't make it back to the city until after 8pm most evenings, anyway. The "lifestyle" you're paying for mostly happens on the weekends (the ones where you're not working), and consists of meeting up with the friends that you didn't have time to find (because you're all busy paying the bills), or dating (which you can't really do, because the city has turned into a tech-fueled sausage party; the gender bias in technology really starts to suck when only nerdy male engineers can afford to live the glamorous city life.) Meanwhile, there are actually some charming neighborhoods down the peninsula, the weather down there is dramatically better, and you can have a garage (from which to build a startup, or a surfboard, or work on motorcycles, or start a band) and a dog. I predict a reversal of fortune in 3, 2, 1.... (Note that I say this as someone who currently lives in SF. It ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're working all the time.)
- xxpor 14y agoOr you could just live in Seattle :) Note: I'm terribly biased.
- caniszczyk 14y agoor Austin... or Portland...
- timr 14y agoHah. I spent seven years of my life in Seattle that I want back. The weather and the dating scene up there made me want to stab myself in the face. I will say this, though: I never thought Seattle was affordable until I moved down here.
- salem 14y agoIf they want to be able to pay for it, why not buy out the land, build a cut and cover subway extending south from the new central line, and profit from the increased real-estate value around the subway. It worked for Manhattan.