Development
Does Silicon Valley need a new city?
Silicon Valley is not so unlike Fairfax and Montgomery Counties: a mostly very wealthy area, many jobs in addition to housing, and suburban sprawl as the main building form. But around Washington DC, both counties have in recent years (more recently in Fairfax's case) been pushing denser, somewhat walkable, often transit-oriented development, including "town center" style developments in Rockville and Reston.
Photo by cloneofsnake on Flickr.
In Silicon Valley, however, there's very little of that. Mainly, I think, this is because the land is just about all developed; the boom in the '80s and '90s generated apartment complex almost everywhere, and geography constrains the developable area. San Jose, which is much bigger and newer, is building some.
But your typical software engineer or Web startup founder doesn't live in San Jose. Yet many of them would like to live in a walkable place. So many do, in fact, that Google has engineers move to New York just to be in a real city. There's San Francisco, which is pretty good. But San Francisco is really far to commute to Mountain View, even if your company provides shuttles, which most don't. There's downtown Palo Alto, which is walkable, but not very big; downtown Mountain View is even smaller.
Is there unsatisfied demand for a "city" here? Maybe the supposed future Google mixed-use campus, if well-designed (which it looks like it isn't so far)? What would you design?
This came from a discussion I had with an entrepreneur who lamented the lack of a real city nearby. In China (and the Middle East), they're building brand-new ones. If suddenly there were a large tract of land in Silicon Valley that needed redeveloping, what would you put there?
How about a dense grid of streets, with some taller apartment buildings on the ends of the blocks and townhouses in the middle. I'd put pods of market-rate parking, and ample Zipcars, in strategic underground spots. It should have regular shuttles (open to the public) to downtown San Francisco, the airports, and Palo Alto and Stanford. If it were located on Caltrain, that could fill some of the need and better utilize the existing transit network.
While we're thinking about something new in a technological place, how about a network of underground tubes that could deliver goods to each home (so that people can walk to buy groceries or furniture but not have to cart everything home) and take away trash? How about a Web-based system for residents to coordinate rides to work or entertainment destinations (with Zipcars available for those who need to go somewhere nobody else is).
What else? For those of you who know the area, should it have an urban section? Naturally, the bigger the urban area is, the greater the network effects of having enough residents to sustain retail and transit. But the bigger it is, the harder it would be to build. And if we could entertain our pie-in-the-sky ideas for just redesigning, say, Sunnyvale, what could it look like?
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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by mfs on Aug 6, 2008 11:37 pm • link • report
by Roy on Aug 7, 2008 5:24 am • link • report
Sunnyvale has been toying with this idea, starting with tearing down the town center mall and replacing it with a supposedly walkable downtown (but still anchored by a JC Penny's and a Target). From what I saw before I left, the whole thing has just been a disaster: the city council seems to have no idea what they're doing and the neighbors are not happy about the new "high rise" office and apartment buildings of 10 or so floors.
That said, there's tons of room for improvement. They could fix the zoning that has endless fields of office parks on one side of Central Expressway and all the homes on the other. It should be easy to allow for some dense housing in the office park area (which is already pretty close to the trolley line, as bad as that is).
On the housing side of Central, there are also lots of opportunities to create dense neighborhoods (ala Cleveland Park) around rebuilt shopping complexes that are currently strip malls. You don't even need to tear the current buildings down, just build more retail space where the parking lots are now.
Of course, there would be massive and coordinated resistance campaigns to all of this (NIMBYism is strong in the 'Vale). But the Bay Area is due for an 8+ earthquake one of these days, and maybe out of the rubble someone with a vision can step in and take over.
And while we're dreaming, I want a pony... and a maserati.
by B on Aug 7, 2008 9:29 am • link • report
I really see the lack of quality and convenient mass transit as the main thing holding back walkable density on the Peninsula.
by dd on Aug 7, 2008 11:07 am • link • report
by Local on Aug 7, 2008 11:11 am • link • report
http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/science/pneumaticmail.html
by Joey on Aug 7, 2008 11:51 am • link • report
I agree with your assessment, there does need to be more mass transit. But as has been discussed, it's a chicken and egg problem. I'm convinced you're not going to be able to get groundswell support for mass transit - or usage enough to make it worth building - until you reach a certain level of density. Thats is why Muni, serving a dense city like SF, works while BART, serving mostly bedroom communities, stinks.
Build the dense housing, and the people will start demanding better mass transit, and the money will follow. Until then, there's just not enough support for the idea.
by B on Aug 7, 2008 11:55 am • link • report
David, I can't help but wonder how this overlaps with yesterday's post about the end of the long commute. It seems like your suggesting there is a demand from employees for the businesses to be sited in denser areas that's not significantly changing the choices of those businesses. Whether the incentive is a love of the city or a desire for a shorter commute, it seems like pretty much the same thing. Do companies just have too many potential employees to be affected by this kind of incentive? Is there just a big delay?
by RyanA on Aug 7, 2008 1:11 pm • link • report
>>"Do companies just have too many potential employees to be affected by this kind of incentive? Is there just a big delay?"
My company has been in Rosslyn for along time. There has always been discussion about moving offices. We never do move. It's such a substantial cost to move. CEOs of midsize companies rarely want to take on that expense unless their growth indicates they need more space. Just to move for a little more favorable lease or to ease commutes often isn't a big enough benefit to justify the short term costs. What we've actually done is just started to let more people telecommute.
I'm glad we haven't moved. Rosslyn is a great location for me. Serviced by two metro lines it's very accessible for those who live in the city. Plus, the dining options are really starting to blossom. I know that if we ever do move the chances are that it would be outside the beltway in VA because 2/3 or more of our staff including nearly all the upper management lives out that way. For me the status quo is far better.
by FourthandEye on Aug 7, 2008 1:29 pm • link • report
When I lived in San Carlos, there was a small downtown area--most of the towns have them, but they're always too small and spread apart from each other.
I could totally see a new, denser city being built on Moffett Field and along the 237 corridor towards Milpitas, that would eventually link up with SJ, and form a more comprehensive, dense metropolitan area.
Expanding Palo Alto upwards is likely off the table. They experimented with it briefly when they built the two Palo Alto Square office highrises at El Camino and Page Mill, but people got so upset about them (and still are), that they now have the law that no new building can be taller than three stories.
by Perplexed on Aug 7, 2008 3:06 pm • link • report
Despite massive job growth, most other jurisdictions see themselves as quiet suburbs. The political structure is largely geared toward older homeowners who don't really understand or even acknowledge what has changed over the past 20 years in the region.
All that said, some sales tax tweaks on car dealership lots could instantly open up a great deal of potential.
by Local on Aug 8, 2008 9:07 pm • link • report
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