
Tech firms may violate Palo Alto zoning: Writing code not allowed downtown - apsec112
https://www.docdroid.net/IohgURu/the-daily-post-search-the-archive.pdf.html
======
jbangert
It always surprises me that a country that supposedly is one of the most
"free-market" economies in the world and has a political rhethoric based on
ridiculing overzealous regulation has zoning regulation that covers minutiae
(which I haven't discovered in that level of detail anywhere).

Sure, you don't want someone to open a chemical factory next to your backyard.
You don't want heave transport moving through your side street. You don't want
the nice house with a mountain view to suddenly have twenty story high rises
obstructing that view, it makes sense that most places have restrictions on
this. However, when did people think it is a good idea to make one office job
different from another office job? In Germany(the ultimate bureaucrat heaven),
there is as far as I'm aware no zoning issue preventing office work in
residential buildings ( residential areas might have limits as to how big
buildings might be, so the apple spaceship probably wouldn't be allowed in a
historic residential area, but opening a doctors office, law firm or software
consulting company in a residential building is fine as far as zoning goes --
and tech/engineering companies routinely trade buildings with insurance
companies and the like).

~~~
DrScump

      It always surprises me that a country...
    

Palo Alto is representative of regulation in the USA at large?

~~~
clock_tower
Probably not, but housing and construction are regulated pretty severely in
general, and seem to attract a pedantic, bureaucratic mindset that has little
to do with being the land of freedom par excellance. Buying a house is a mess
of paperwork dedicated to distorting market realities; owning one can be
similar. The very idea of homeowners' associations, with various bad-tempered
members who have nothing better to do than look for violations, is a
frightening one...

~~~
calbear81
Homeowner's association exist to protect the common shared ownership of
condominiums. If you don't want to deal with an HOA, buy a single family home
instead or a large plot of land and then you're free to do whatever you'd
like. There are definitely more nitpicky HOAs but generally you should do your
research and find a community that shares your values when you invest in a
multi-tenant property with shared common area ownership.

~~~
762236
Neighborhoods of single family homes can also establish HOAs, and they can
become hotbeds of covert aggression. I believe that the parent comment was
referring to this scenario since it is easy to spy on neighborly behavior.

------
abtinf
My initial thought is that the kind of regulation being proposed here is going
to be unconstitutional.

In the United States, source code is protected as free speech. Limitations on
free speech are subject to "strict scrutiny" which means a restriction
"narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest." A compelling state
interest is, per wikipedia, "something necessary or crucial, as opposed to
something merely preferred. Examples include national security, preserving the
lives of a large number of individuals, and not violating explicit
constitutional protections." And the regulation must also be the least
restrictive way of achieving the interest.

It is improper for the government to declare that certain types of speech,
say, journalism, may occur in a geographic area but not other kinds, say,
source code creation.

IANAL

Edit: wow, thats a whole lotta downvotes. I wonder why.

~~~
blazespin
Palo Alto is one of the most desirable areas to live in ... why? It's because
of smart zoning rules.

~~~
mahyarm
It's more because of stanford, the jobs and the schools, which is about people
and not zoning laws. There are plenty of places that are nicer to live and
nicer looking than palo alto. And I've lived there for years.

~~~
blazespin
There's nowhere that is nicer than downtown palo alto.

------
gshulegaard
I guess I don't understand why this is an issue. How is 1,000 software
"coders" as the article quotes different from 1,000 administrative personnel.

I could understand if the goal of zoning wanted to preserve Downtown as a
destination/place for generating foot traffic/visitors...but I don't see a
difference between an office of 1,000 HR people for Amazon and 1,000 software
engineers.

~~~
mathattack
There's a lot of subtext behind zoning in Palo Alto, some of it between people
who still want to live in the 1970s version of the city.

In this case, the issue is what happens to non-tech businesses in downtown.
When there are a large supply of small and medium professional services
business, the bars, restaurants, barbers and small shops do well. The Palantir
employees tend to eat in their own cafeteria, and are perceived to purchase
less from the local businesses. This is why there's an element of the
population that prefers smaller businesses whose employees go downtown during
the lunch hour.

The city does have space though, they just choose not to build on it. Another
research park could be built and zoned for. (As could more housing)

The article also doesn't quote the many Palo Alto residents who like being a
short commute to work, rather than taking Caltrain to SF for tech jobs.

~~~
djrogers
> The Palantir employees tend to eat in their own cafeteria

If that is a problem, then the zoning laws should restrict cafeterias, not job
functions. The more specific and direct that regulations get, the better
things tend to be.

~~~
Sir_Substance
Except that's a very transparent solution to a problem which doesn't belong to
Palantir or their employees, aka the food being served down town either isn't
good enough or isn't served fast enough for Palantir employees to voluntarily
choose it.

Everyone except the businesses would justifiably riot.

~~~
SilasX
There's also an issue of tax distortion. In the tax code as written, it's a
deductible expense to provide an onsite cafeteria, and employees don't have to
count it as income.

But if an employee goes offsite to get lunch, they have to buy it with after-
tax money.

So when the business buys them food, it's effectively at a 1/3 discount to
what they'd have to pay after-tax out-of-pocket -- more when you consider
sales taxes and bulk discounts!

So it's not exactly a level playing field there either.

~~~
mathattack
The employer also generally gets more time from the employees. (Saving $5 on
lunch isn't nearly as valuable as saving an engineer 15 minutes of time)

------
johansch
Let me get this right. The place that got insanely rich because of software is
trying to forbid the creation of software?

~~~
SilasX
Assuming this article isn't satire (I'm still not sure!), their position seems
to be that they wanted the tech companies to stay in a designated "research
park" area, removed from downtown.

So they're not trying to forbid it, just keep (their vision of) "small service
businesses" from being displaced downtown, where they want those services to
locate. (There's probably an inflammatory analogy in there about slaves,
plantations, and mansions that a rabblerouser wants to make...)

~~~
apsec112
I'd be very surprised if this were satire. Here's the original newspaper
headline:

[http://i.imgur.com/PcvRsrA.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PcvRsrA.jpg)

~~~
SilasX
Wow. That's a too-good-to-be-true submission for reddit's /r/nottheonion
forum, except there's no free online version.

------
Steeeve
Palo Alto resident here - I'm fairly new, lived here less than a year.

I think the biggest problem is traffic, and it doesn't matter if it's an
Administrative office or a software development company - more businesses
means more traffic.

The downtown area feels quaint, and I like it. A lot of small businesses with
a few big ones scattered about. It's a good combination IMO - because without
the big businesses, the small ones wouldn't have enough business to stay open.

The only other issue is competition for rent. As rent prices increase the only
way for a small business or a startup to get going in the area is with
external funding. Rezoning things or pushing out businesses might fix that,
but at the cost of moving all the customers away.

City councils universally are short sighted and make dumb decisions. This
shouldn't even be something they are thinking about IMO. They should be
working on actually letting residents use the fiber the city installed. My
only options are xfinity and DSL. Huge tech companies all over the place and
no good broadband options. It makes no sense whatsoever.

This area is pretty awesome though. Great parks, great schools, and a town
full of incredibly interesting people. So they did something right.

~~~
762236
I'm not sure how you found interesting people. Maybe luck? But people that
work all day and then come home and hide in their apartments/homes, avoiding
community contact, can't be interesting. Is it interesting how they express
their individual character, and high brow culture, by buying the blue BMW M3
rather than the black?

~~~
Steeeve
Ha! There are a lot of people working all day and all night to afford to live
here, that's for sure. But there isn't a BMW on my block. I'm sure that part
of PA exists, but I'm not a part of it. (Maybe they have all the good internet
access)

There are so many awesome people here. Yeah, there are the VCs and the
software guys who are interesting in their own ways, but there's so much more
going on if you open your eyes and talk to a few strangers.

------
corndoge
Is content that focuses on the same relatively small area of the United States
over and over relevant to Hacker News at large? To anyone who isn't a
Californian living in one of the SV cities (Palo Alto, San Francisco, Mountain
View, etc) these kinds of stories are pretty irrelevant. Granted, a large
portion of HN readers are probably in these cities, but does that give local
politics a green light?

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

~~~
clock_tower
I'm inclined to say that it's on-topic. I've never been to SF or Silicon
Valley, certainly never worked there, but it's the region that Hacker News and
the startup world in general (the computing world in general?) is centered on;
call it future-historical-interest as much as anything else.

------
2xlbuds
This seems just about as absurd as zoning the computers in those buildings for
Excel and Powerpoint use only.

~~~
johansch
Hey, don't give Redmond, WA any ideas!

------
imgabe
Programming doesn't fall under "general business" uses? It seems like that
would cover just about anything.

------
gumby
Having lived in Palo Alto most of the last 30+ years, and living within
walking distance of downtown, I have an opinion :-).

The problem is the mix. I almost never go downtown because it no longer has
that many businesses that are much use to me. Non-retail / non-service
businesses have taken up a bunch of the space, and many of the restaurants
that did move in are more to service tourists (!). There is still one
bookstore at least. Instead I bike/drive to california ave which caters more
to locals.

The bigger problem is one of literal monoculture. I was worried when Facebook
took so much space downtown; when they moved out there was a glut of
vacancies. That's been soaked up by Palantir, and more -- when _they_ move
away it'll be worse. By and large let the office parks be for offices and the
retail space be for retail services. It's totally reasonable for a town to
want to manage this.

Building more large buildings is a decent way to address this as well, BTW.

~~~
jmspring
> By and large let the office parks be for offices and the retail space be for
> retail services.

This is at the heart of the issue. But beyond "retail services" the ordinance
seems to include services like dentists, doctors, lawyers, etc. that
individuals want to visit in a compact setting rather than driving out to an
industrial park, along the El Camino, etc.

Palantir/FB/etc. taking up large swaths really is creating a mono-culture as
you mention. The same thing, to a point, is seen in downtown Mountain View
(though smaller..)

------
surfmike
Everywhere in the world you have cities wanting to attract startups and tech
companies and be the next Palo Alto.

And in Palo Alto they want to change the zoning code to make it harder for
those companies to stay.

Ironic...

~~~
clock_tower
If Palo Alto is actively trying to shed tech companies, and the rest of the
world is actively trying to attract them, why not move en masse? I'm sure
there are other places with weather that appeals to people who like San
Francisco's.

This sounds more provocative than I meant it to sound. It really does seem
like a mature tech company is better off leaving SF/Silicon Valley and finding
somewhere where they'll be welcome -- maybe even somewhere that wants them
enough to pay their relocation.

------
cjensen
I guess this has been ignored for awhile: Google started downtown. When they
are referring to Amazon, I'm pretty sure that's A9 which was started as
Altavista as a DEC project in the same building.

~~~
rgbrenner
A9 is not related to altavista. Altavista was bought by overture, who was
later bought by yahoo. A9 is completely unrelated... developed some of
amazon's features -- inside the book; product search; q&a.

~~~
DiabloD3
Also to add on this, A9 is their subsidiary that implements search engine
functionality and data analytics at Amazon. "Amazon.com" is a 9 lettered word,
not including the dot; "algorithms" is also a 9 lettered word.

Udi Manber, the guy who invented agrep, has worked at Yahoo, Amazon, and now
Google/YouTube (as a search engine engineer at all these places), and also
wrote "Introduction to Algorithms", and co-invented suffix arrays with Gene
Myers, was A9's first CEO.

A former AltaVista executive and founder of A9, William Stasior, was the
second CEO of A9, where he then wandered off to Apple as Vice President of
Siri.

Brian Pinkerton is now the General Manager of A9, and he is famous for
starting one of the first search engines, WebCrawler, before AOL bought it,
sold it to Excite, which then Blucora bought all those assets along with
Dogpile. Blucora also owns TaxACT, Monoprice, and HowStuffWorks.

A9 is currently located in the building that SurveyMonkey used to occupy,
across from the Palo Alto Transit Center.

So, yeah, the silicon valley culture is very weirdly interconnected.

~~~
dekhn
Udi doesn't work at Google now- he's at NIH.
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-
manbe...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-manber-
leaves-google/)

------
CaliforniaKarl
One thing the article misses--which I expect is because it wasn't mentioned in
the City council meeting--is the difference in transit accessibility between
downtown Palo Alto, the Stanford Research Park, and East Bayshore.

Let's take downtown Palo Alto as the baseline. It's within walking distance of
the Palo Alto Caltrain station, which gives you great connectivity to almost
all Caltrain trains. For bus service, you've got great connectivity North (via
Samtrans ECR) and South (via VTA routes 22, 35, and 522), and good
connectivity East (via Samtrans routes 280 and 281).

I don't know exactly which area is meant by "East Bayshore", but if it's the
area served by Mvgo's East Bayshore shuttle (which goes to the Mountain View
Caltrain station), then you've got inconsistent transit access, centered
around commute times. The trips do go pretty late (until ~8 PM), but there's
no access during lunch or on weekends. There's also coverage by VTA's route
40.

As for the Stanford Research Park, that's got alot more routes covering it,
but again they're almost all commute-focused. For local traffic, VTA's route
89 goes through the area and connects you to El Camino Real and the California
Ave. Caltrain station, but it doesn't run too often. VTA express routes
101-104 run a few commute-time trips to the south and east of the county.
There's also the Dumbarton Express DB1 route (connecting people to the East
Bay), which only runs during commute times (unlike the DB route, which runs at
least hourly during the day). Finally, Marguerite has a connection to the Palo
Alto train station (the RP route, running only during commute times); and
another route (the 1050A route) that was recently adjusted to connect the
Research Park, El Camino Real, and campus. That route I like the best, because
it runs throughout the day.

The summary is: The areas earmarked for tech companies are served almost
exclusively by transit that _only_ runs during commute hours, and rarely runs
outside of those times (or on weekends). That just doesn't work as well any
more, which is why places like downtown are such a big selling point for
companies.

Full disclosure: I work at Stanford, and used to work on-campus, but recently
got moved out to the Research Park area.

~~~
wadetandy
Though it is worth noting that most tech companies solve this problem by
providing private shuttle services on a more convenient schedules.

------
codingdave
I'm not seeing how an office environment for coders would not be included in
"general business offices".

Also, IANAL, but does a single city council member actually have the authority
to make such determinations? The council as a whole can certainly
approve/reject specific development projects, but one members opinion does not
set policy. A vote to clarify things would be required, would it not?

EDIT: I re-read it... it is the mayor, not a council member, but the question
remains -- does he have the authority to make such declarations?

~~~
gumby
In Palo Alto the mayor is one of the council members. There is also a
professional city manager.

And BTW Richard Alexander is a professional agitator who can always be counted
on to call the town government jerks.

------
ng12
Good on you, Mayor Burt. We can no longer allow vibrant young professionals
with expendable income to ruin our dining/nightlife center.

------
temp20160423
This article is missing some key facts. It's important to realize that A9
(Amazon's subsidiary in downtown Palo Alto) has at most 500 people located
there. They have the equivalent of 2-3 buildings, and they're not large
buildings. Amazon's footprint there is really the same as a mid-size startup
(ie, the A9 all-hands fits in one large restaurant). I can understand why a
city would not want a large employer in a downtown area that provides free
food to its employees--this clearly destroys the business for nearby
restaurants. Amazon, famous for its frugality, doesn't provide free meals.
OTOH, you can regularly see Palantir employees walking to their cafeteria.

Excluding the free food issue, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to
encourage big companies to setup small offices in your downtown.

------
rsync
Are there any jobs that don't involve coding ?

Are there small business owners and administrative tasks that don't write
excel rules or procedures ?

Are there auto shops that don't run complex diagnostic tools that (probably ?)
have macro languages (or something like that) ?

I really don't see how any business or administrative personnel of any kind,
working at any business, would not perform "coding" in some way.

This is not to mention the actual _literal_ task of "coding" that all medical
staff and doctors' front office staff perform for each and every patient that
they see ...

~~~
wangchow
I hate the word "coding" you shouldn't use it. Excel rules and procedures are
not "codes" or anything remotely like them. They are high-level constructs.
Codes are enigmas like SHA-256.

~~~
dasil003
Best of luck in your sisyphean quest.

------
moron4hire
How about all the tech companies just take their income and property taxes
elsewhere entirely?

~~~
mistercow
Somewhere with parking, maybe.

------
zaidf
Sensational headline. Alternate: "Palo Alto zoning: large tech firms cause of
concern"

They actually state they would like to keep startups around(rebutting current
sensational headline.)

------
wangchow
They should not allow people to say the word "code" in public places. There is
nothing remotely code-like about writing software that most of you people do.

