

Silicon Valley Is Stuck In An Uncanny Valley Of Density - friism
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2012/05/11/silicon-valley-is-stuck-in-an-uncanny-valley-of-density/

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hkmurakami
The question to ask, is not whether we _can_ become as dense as Manhattan or
Brooklyn, bur rather, do we _want_ to be more like our Northeastern
counterparts?

In the 70's, most of what is now called "Silicon Valley" was farmland. All
those shopping centers and apartments named after man-made formations of fruit
trees are because, well, there used to be a lot of those trees there a few
decades ago.

In four short decades, we have developed the land to the point where, as
others here have mentioned, "no more open land" to be easily developed. We are
now faced with a choice: do we develop further? If so, to what end, and for
whom? What are the costs?

But first we must consider, who is the _"we"_ in my queries above? Whose
interests should be considered? The long time residents of the Valley? The
young, vibrant, restless newcomers?

Understandably and naturally, there is friction. There is tension. The old
timers already have what they need: a comfortable single family home with a
family to fill its corridors. Why would they or should they allow others to
disturb their peace and comfort that they worked so hard for? They fight to
protect the space and luxury they feel entitled to, and arguably are.

The newcomers find it increasingly difficult to not only find such an abode,
but to find even a reasonably priced rental until located within a reasonable
distance from their offices. Understandably and naturally, they pine for
amenities that are well within reach for others their age in other parts of
the country. They rightfully feel that _they_ are entitled to what they need:
reasonable living arrangements.

Both sides have legitimate arguments. Silicon Valley is a beautiful place, and
it would be a shame to turn it into a concrete jungle. But on the other hand,
there is an undeniable generation inequality with respect to real estate: real
estate prices in Palo Alto only declined by about 15% during the worst times
of the financial crisis, and have most likely reached new heights by now.
Every year, it becomes more difficult to find affordable housing, particularly
near the mega-employers like Google. The year over year increase in rent in
Mountain View is in excess of 10%. Only the privileged amongst the youth can
afford the slim pickings that are available, as the rent is enough to crush
the savings of more modestly salaried engineers.

Who is right? It is more of a generation divide than a class divide. I
sympathize and empathize with both sides, being both a young, modestly
compensated professional in the tech sector, and also the son of immigrants to
Silicon Valley who sacrificed a monstrous portion of their lives to attain the
little that they have to show for it. Whichever way the ball rolls, I'm in
line for both pain and pleasure.

"We", both the old and the young, are both _right_ to lay claim to what we
believe should be rightfully ours. Such a situation does not have a simple,
elegant solution. But we can at least start by acknowledging to each other
that yes, you are completely justified to want what you want.

~~~
niels_olson
> It would be a shame to turn it into a concrete jungle

Hi! I've lived in several coastal and Midwestern cities, and travelled many of
the others. I have been to a number of foreign cities on three continents. I
was stunned at how underdeveloped Silicon Valley is. Concrete jungles are
awesome! They sound scary until you realize the modern alternative is the far
more common concrete wastelands of suburbia: isolating, sterile, cultureless
come to mind. Tokyo, Manhatten, downtown SF: they are the most human,
inspiring places on earth.

> We ... are both right

Here's what kills me about arguments like this: they're conversation killers.
The argument deserves to be had. Instead, you're playing the general good will
against itself for some karma points. To hell karma points! Fight for what you
believe in! Anything less is a vote for the status quo.

I've moved 17 times. I believe in the concrete jungle.

~~~
ekianjo
Sorry, but "Tokyo... one of the most human, inspiring place on earth". Living
in Tokyo is not fun. There are way too many people. You barely have space to
walk, and the trains are overcrowded. It's very noisy, and if you want to go
out of the city you need to take a 2 hours ride to start seeing actual green
stuff.

To my mind, inspiration comes from flexibility, i.e. when you can choose to
change environment as you please. A mid-size city is ideal for that, since you
can have times in the city and off the city, that change your perspective. If
you live in Tokyo, you just cannot do that, and you are stuck in a world that
is very different from everywhere else, and out of touch with a lot of what
most people consider "reality".

Disclaimer: I live in Japan.

~~~
patio11
Tokyo is very much not my cup of tea, but for people who enjoy city life
because it is city life and not because of non-city things they can find in
the city, Tokyo can be a very nice place to be. Is it crazily overcrowded?
Yes. Is it overly expensive? Yes. Is it possible to experience alienation from
humanity to a level almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world while
simultaneously having no elbow room? Yes.

You can _also_ live in a shoebox apartment in a walkable neighborhood with
forty-seven little restaurants at which the owner will remember your face
after your third visit, well-maintained parks and orderly, efficient public
services, connected via the world's hands-down-best mass transit system to a)
a commercial center which has just about anything anyone could possibly want
to buy (and that is not always a compliment) and b) a _stupidly_ convenient
rail network which will whisk you to anywhere on Honshu, including the parts
of Japan that I rather enjoy, in less time than it takes many Americans to get
to work in the morning.

If New York has any appeal to you, Tokyo will probably be your kind of town.
If it doesn't, Tokyo will probably not be.

~~~
ekianjo
The a) and b) do not only apply to Tokyo. The top 10 cities in Japan can offer
the same degree of convenience, less the "alienation from humanity to a level
almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world", which I find a very good
description of the situation, by the way.

Concerning the "well maintained parks", several parts of Tokyo feel/look
dirtier than many other places in the country, except maybe the southern part
of Osaka.

------
adamjernst
Too late. Single-family homeowners now control the zoning boards in Silicon
Valley, and they're generally opposed to building new apartments or mass
transit. New infrastructure is far too expensive these days anyway.

I suspect this is one factor behind the resurgence of New York on the startup
scene.

~~~
ktizo
How can new infrastructure be far too expensive for what is still the richest
country on the planet?

Europe is building high speed rail links across the continent, even during a
recession that is combined with slash and burn public sector policies.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe>

~~~
WildUtah
The problem is that costs for building the same transit infrastructure in
America are ten or even fifty times higher than in Europe or Japan.

Part of the difference is inefficient procurement policies letting contracts
to very high cost bidders with corrupt hand tailored RFQs and hiring expensive
labor from well-connected limited pools. Part of it is active local democracy
of communities that have been trained by the freeway boom to see
infrastructure as a disaster for places that get it. Part of it is a very slow
environmental review bureaucracy. Part of it is buy-American policies even
when none of the top countries in some industries are American.

But the main problem is that transit is built and run in America as a way to
spread political influence for committees that distribute pork and a fun
indulgence for influential people who won't ride it. In Europe and Japan,
middle class voters expect transit to work and the politicians and bureaucrats
who build it intend to ride it themselves.

BART to SFO cost almost $2 billion. A good connection to CalTrain would have
cost under $200 million. Heck, for under $1 billion you could also have
connected CalTrain and BART at Embarcadero or Montgomery with a lower total
trip time for most passengers.

I don't know what BART to San Jose will cost, but you could have really high
quality BRT down El Camino with similar benefits in just a year with the money
BART will spend on engineering studies over the next three decades planning
the San Jose train.

But the authorities enjoy being involved in a big splash white elephant
project more than building good transit.

A very good and short brief:
[http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-
ra...](http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-
construction-costs/)

More:
[http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/cost-...](http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/cost-
concerns-reasonable-and-otherwise/)
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/12/07/washingt...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/12/07/washington-
post-only-idiots-think-infrastructure-spending-is-wasteful-and-americans-are-
idiots/)

~~~
mahyarm
The problem with caltrain is frequency of service. It should extend out until
an hour after bar closings and have minimum every 20 minute service. Otherwise
it become unworkable for most people.

~~~
fdr
As a resident, seconded. Even living in San Francisco, the utility of a
Caltrain connection is much reduced vs. BART. Was 10x too much to pay, if it
is as the OP claimed? Maybe. As a former resident (and having grown up in) the
east bay, the same applies: the Bart connection is much preferred to Caltrain,
which is a big plus because the snarl of getting from the north-east bay to
the airport is considerably worse vs. people taking their cars from the south
bay, having also lived there as well.

I have also commuted on Caltrain, and liked it, but it's in weird places
farther north, not well integrated with BART, and not frequent enough.

All in all, I don't think the difference in price (projections are awfully
fickle) or at least utility is as clear as the OP suggests.

------
lfaraone
I don't think the author understands what "Uncanny Valley" means. I get the
pun, but its not apt.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>

~~~
micaeked
makes sense to me: more is good, less is good, middle is not so good

------
ojbyrne
Comparing the 2 densest boroughs of NYC to the entirety of the Bay Area seems
pretty specious to me. Last time I looked, there was a giant sprawl of suburbs
around that city too.

~~~
natnat
San Jose, which is ostensibly a city, is only a little more dense than Nassau
County, which isn't anything like a city. Manhattan is more than four times as
dense as San Francisco. Although there are a bunch of geographical barriers
preventing super-high population density in the Bay Area, there's still a lot
of room for more people.

~~~
bitops
Interestingly, San Francisco is the second most densely populated large city
in the US after New York. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco>

~~~
usaar333
Quite true, but density ratings can always be a bit tricky as they vary a lot
by how much extra land cities have.

San Jose's 5,000 per square mile underestimates what it feels like to live
there.

See the borders:
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=San+Jose,+CA&hl=en&sl...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=San+Jose,+CA&hl=en&sll=34.052234,-118.243685&sspn=1.141199,2.113495&oq=san+&hnear=San+Jose,+Santa+Clara,+California&t=m&z=11)

All that area in the southeast are farms and mountains. A The entire northern
part are marshes. Its "effective" density is really much closer to 7-8,000 per
square mile.

Los Angeles is also one where the density numbers underestimate the feeling of
it.
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+Angeles,+CA&hl=en&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+Angeles,+CA&hl=en&sll=37.339592,-121.784821&sspn=0.547556,1.056747&oq=los+a&hnear=Los+Angeles,+California&t=m&z=10)

A lot of that land is mountains. Indeed, south-central and central parts of LA
have about the same population as SF and pretty much the same density:
[http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-
la/neighborhoods/populat...](http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-
la/neighborhoods/population/density/neighborhood/list/)

------
pbreit
This is so stupid. Do the proponents of these positions ever acknowledge that
maybe the Bay Area likes the current density trajection and maybe part of the
Bay Area's charm is that it's not New York?

~~~
krschultz
What the heck do you mean by 'the Bay Area likes ...'

Some people living in the Bay Area like the current density. Some people
living there would like it more dense.

There are probably also people wishing these youngsters would move out and the
whole area would turn into farmland again.

To me, denser is better. Denser means shorter commutes. Denser means lower
rents. Denser means more energy efficient. Denser means more hospitalable to
public transportation. Denser means more vibrate neighborhoods.

------
davidw
This book is a worthwhile read:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0078XGJXO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0078XGJXO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0078XGJXO)

He's a generally left-leaning guy arguing for fewer regulations and more
markets in housing. I found it quite convincing.

------
jakozaur
Upgrading Caltrain is probably the most cost effective solution on
infrastructure. There are several great ideas out there: <http://caltrain-
hsr.blogspot.com/>

Also allowing higher buildings along Caltrain corridor would be the easiest
solution. That way population can grow without putting much stress on
interstates. Moreover, It will be a boost vibrant places (e.g. think Castro
St. in Mountain View).

------
steve8918
There are plenty of houses in Tracy, CA, about 50 mins east of SF. You can get
a 4 br 3 ba house for around $250k. It was also one of the "ground zeroes" for
the housing bust, because those $250k homes were going for $650k in 2005.

You can drive 20 mins west to the Dublin BART and be in SF within 30 mins. My
commute was 50 mins every day without traffic, so it ends up being comparable.

~~~
jamesfrank
I think your numbers are a bit off. I live in Livermore (25 minutes West of
Tracy), and it takes me at least 45 mins to drive to SF (if there's no
traffic). It's nice that BART comes as far as it does, but it's a 45 minute
ride to SF, and that doesn't even include the 15 mins (30-40 from Tracy) drive
to get to the station.

I get your point that Tracy has available housing, but I think a 1.5+ hour
commute makes it a much less appealing solution than the 50 mins you
mentioned.

------
zeroonetwothree
I think automobiles work fine in most of the Bay Area (obviously excepting
SF).

------
sabat
I wonder if the author understands the distinction between San Francisco,
Silicon Valley, and the Bay Area.

------
Roboprog
I don't think NYC has the same earth quake risks as San Jose. Still, it's hard
to look at moving to the valley given the current housing and commute
situation. Earth-quake proof caves of steel???

~~~
mahyarm
That excuse is fairly invalid, since there are many highrises in SF, and
Vancouver Canada seems to not have much of a problem making their entire
downtown core largely high rise.

