

Is San Francisco The Brooklyn To Silicon Valley's Unbuilt Manhattan? - kryptiskt
http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/is-san-francisco-the-brooklyn-to-silicon-valleys-unbuilt-manhattan

======
rayiner
Awesome 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.

~~~
donretag
I remember my first trip to Silicon Valley in 1999. I have been to San
Francisco before, but never outside the city. I had a job interview in
Sunnyvale (I believe). Was super-excited since I loved San Francisco. As soon
as I started driving in my rental car from SJC, I was shocked at the
surroundings. I simply assumed SV was like SF.

I got the job offer, but rejected it. Never been back to SV until last year
(not counting SJ). I actually live in California, but I will never move to the
Bay Area.

~~~
dasil003
Might want to take a look at north bay just to give yourself a good overall
impression before jumping to that conclusion.

~~~
donretag
What constitutes the north bay? I've been to Marin and Sonoma counties and
like them both. I go to SF every now and then, but I just never stop in SV
although I drive through it.

My priorities are different from 1999. And while I no longer wish to live in
SF, I am still avoiding SV. The primary reason is price.

------
timr
Silicon 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
Or you could just live in Seattle :)

Note: I'm terribly biased.

~~~
timr
Hah. 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.

~~~
rdl
You are saying dating in SF is better than Seattle?

~~~
timr
It depends on what you like and what you're like and how old you are.

If you're a young guy, and you've got the typical grooming and lifestyle
habits that would cause people to label you as a "nerd", you'll have trouble
in both cities. But if you're a little more put together and/or a little
older, SF is massively better. A lot of the single women here are in their
30s, and a bit more established in their lives. They're not the kind of women
who find conversations about code and video games to be desirable traits in a
partner.

Seattle was abysmal in all dating categories. The place has a weird, backwards
social vibe that makes it incredibly difficult to make friends, and every
public space was at _least_ 2-to-1 male. I went to dance classes where men had
to dance with each other because there weren't enough women(!)

That said, there's been a huge shift in the number of well-off, vaguely
stylish, 28-35 year-old single guys living in SF in the last two years. That's
going to make things harder, but I don't know if it will ever get as bad as
Seattle.

~~~
rdl
SF also seems to be Mecca if you're gay, at least a certain kind of 20-35 year
old gay man, too, which has a huge crossover with tech workers. I know it's
been a great way to recruit at previous companies -- find the gay kid who is a
developer or designer stuck in some crappy midwestern/southern town and help
him relocate to _San Francisco_ with a good job. But most of the older gay
people I know later end up becoming boring and move to Walnut Creek or
whatever to have a family, just like other people as they get older.
Presumably NYC has the same thing going on.

I've only ever really been in the dating scene in the bay area for a month or
two a couple times, and ended up with girlfriends rapidly. I guess being
involved in the rave/party/etc. scene, and being interested in
smart/confident/etc. vs. a lot of other things = easy mode for dating? But I
don't really have anything to calibrate against other than MIT.

------
textminer
Silicon 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
_San 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.

~~~
DanBC
Do you live there or just visit there?

Because tourists see the crooked street and the bridge and the hills and the
cable cars. They don't see the high suicide rate or the muni or etc.

~~~
bengl3rt
I have lived there in the past. Now prefer the much-maligned suburbs
(specifically, Mountain View).

Uber and Lyft and self-driving cars will shortly solve drinking and driving
and then my final complaint about the suburbs will be gone.

------
ChuckMcM
I'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
But 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
If 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-
Health...](http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-
Healthier/dp/0143120549)

~~~
mc32
What 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> [PDF]

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mmanfrin
I 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.

~~~
potatolicious
I 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
Just as a factual correction, downtown Oakland is far, far safer than West
Oakland. And has fewer insane homeless people than San Francisco.

~~~
potatolicious
Indeed, you're right. Downtown Oakland is _much_ better than West Oakland, and
better than Civic Center or the war zone/train wreck known as 16th and
Mission. That being said, the crime rate and homeless population is still
substantial enough to be a serious hindrance to development.

See downtown Brooklyn, where a similar situation/vibe exists - not the worst
neighborhood in NYC by far, but also sketchy enough that the monied working
professionals aren't interested. They built anyways, and now that neighborhood
is in a weird limbo where the buildings have trouble attracting tenants, but
at the same time generating enormous class and racial tension due to their
mere presence.

------
anigbrowl
No, 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.

~~~
dllthomas
> SF was, for a time, the capital of California

 _Everywhere_ was, for a time, the capital of California...

~~~
podperson
I'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
Oh, 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).

------
jakozaur
Great 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>

Protests:

[http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-proposed-high-
rise-...](http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-proposed-high-rise-
buildings-at-27-university-avenue)

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.

~~~
ef4
It 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
Agree, 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.

------
balbaugh
There 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
The San Francisco Bay Area is not a major metro area? There are over 7 million
people here.

~~~
greghinch
Though only something like 800,000 actually _live_ in SF.

~~~
Aloisius
San 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).

------
peterhunt
Lots 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.

~~~
rayiner
The "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
Even the white or Asian parts of SF have kind of shitty schools compared to
the peninsula.

~~~
philsnow
Doesn't SF allocate kids to public schools on some kind of hippie lottery
system ? If so, we shouldn't expect correlation between a part of the city
being "white or Asian" and having good or shitty schools.

~~~
rdl
Ah. I just know people with $10mm houses in Pac Heights who sold them (a few
months after buying) for a combination of "ugh, SF weather is shit and I hate
it" and "ugh, we'll have to pay $30-40k/yr for each of our kids to go to
school" -- buying a house in Hillsborough or Palo Alto saves money overall.

------
Apocryphon
"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
I 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
I'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.

------
salem
If 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.

