Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/introducing-strelka-press/34588/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-06-21T16:56:56-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/introducing-strelka-press/34588/#comments 2012-06-21T16:56:56-05:00
BTW, that's not disagreeing with anything you said. I do like downtown Palo Alto, though.

So the good news is that we should be building more good urbanism.]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/introducing-strelka-press/34588/#comments 2012-06-15T22:42:11-05:00 http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/introducing-strelka-press/34588/#comments 2012-06-15T20:53:51-05:00
Second, Commenters said, in nice and not-so-nice ways, that you can't accuse a Silicon Valley company of being suburban, because there's no other option. But why then, I wondered, were companies like Facebook importing the coffee shops and bike stores, cafe culture and farmers markets of the city to those suburbs? What did they see in the city and, seeing that, why wouldn't they move there?

I haven't read the Strelka book, but I presume you said there is a fair amount of good urbanism in Silicon Valley. And that so much of Silicon Valley goes home to the San Francisco at night that they are making that urbanism as expensive as Manhattan's.

Steve Jobs lived in a beautiful English cottage in a wonderfully walkable neighborhood not far from downtown Palo Alto, which is a good downtown. The Google guys and lots of other Silicon magnates live a block or two away. Jobs understood the difference between where he chose to live and where he chose to build for work (although he also kept a small office in downtown Palo Alto, I think).

At CNU 20, Richard Florida forcefully and passionately made the point that what he calls the Creative Class (like Google employees) want to live and work in traditional urbanism. He believes the evidence shows they don't want all the shrink-wrapped condo towers for the 1% that we seem to be building on every available site in Manhattan. The way that Silicon Alley edges down Broadway away from the towers of Madison Square might support that, although the Bowery is becoming another example of what Rem calls "an architectural petting zoo."]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/introducing-strelka-press/34588/#comments 2012-06-15T11:48:02-05:00