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Silicon Valley is what it is because most of the companies spun off other success stories which spun off other success stories and so on. And those companies all created new jobs, new neighborhoods, new schools, new offices, new restaurants, new malls, new this and that and so on.
Silicon Valley is what it is because the land (was) flat, abundant, and cheap, which may be hard to believe today. Silicon Valley used to be mostly orchards and farms, and some of the world's finest agrarian land to boot, but that place no longer exists. Instead what we have today is massive suburban sprawl devoid of any real center (San Jose has tried desperately to be urban), which is the byproduct of rapid expansion and development.
Sound familiar? San Diego suffers from this same problem in more ways than one. It's just that the Silicon Valley as we know it was closer geographically to San Francisco, which one could argue is the financial hub of the West Coast. I *highly* recommend watching a video entitled "Silicon Valley" from PBS: WGBH American Experience . Silicon Valley | PBS It is actually VERY interesting and gripped me from the first few minutes.
Well we don't have any of these as it currently stands.
As a native, I truly believe that San Diego is an amazing place to live. The problem with San Diegans (i.e. transplants) is that they come here and treat the city like a holy land simply because it has nice weather and good mexican food.
When are people going to wake up and realize that there is more to quality of living than sunny skies? We need to improve urban infrastructure and the built environment!!
- World class waterfront
- Actual transit (and transit oriented development patterns)
- Improved regional planning
- Integration with the Tijuana metro
- Alternative transport: bike & sidewalk infrastructure improvements
- Upzoning for increased density
- Locally sourced food/ urban agriculture
- Affordable housing
- Lower parking requirements
- Dedicated bus lanes
- Road/street diets & pocket parks
- Road maintenance
- Improve Balboa Park (and quality of other city parks)
This city has so much potential, but everyone is preoccupied with the awesome weather and carne asada fries.
LOL, I sometimes feel the same way. The good news is, there have been efforts to urbanize the city's core neighborhoods, with mixed results. The hardest part in my opinion is changing the car-centered culture we have. With a city that is meant to be enjoyed outdoors, we sure seem to spend a lot of time in our cars...
It will happen though, if perhaps slowly. There are a lot of deep, entrenched attitudes we need to overcome first. Suburbs are non-sustainable entities that would not exist without the constant sprawl to generate more tax revenue. I have nothing against developers per se, but I'm all about infill and creating quality spaces to live, work, and play.
Silicon Valley is what it is because the land (was) flat, abundant, and cheap, which may be hard to believe today. Silicon Valley used to be mostly orchards and farms, and some of the world's finest agrarian land to boot, but that place no longer exists. Instead what we have today is massive suburban sprawl devoid of any real center (San Jose has tried desperately to be urban), which is the byproduct of rapid expansion and development.
Sound familiar? San Diego suffers from this same problem in more ways than one. It's just that the Silicon Valley as we know it was closer geographically to San Francisco, which one could argue is the financial hub of the West Coast. I *highly* recommend watching a video entitled "Silicon Valley" from PBS: WGBH American Experience . Silicon Valley | PBS It is actually VERY interesting and gripped me from the first few minutes.
I've spent a lot of time up in SV and it is a big mess of sprawl and a lot of new startups want to open in San Fran because young people don't want to live in suburbia. But Silicon Valley also went from orchards and farms to what it is today because of the Defense industry, HP, Apple and so on. It changed the entire culture of that area.
San Fran is changing these days as well, but then again, it seems every city in the US is going through some kind of gentrification or adding expensive Condos and apartments, tech offices, incubators and so on. Many of these places I really don't see sustaining the "high cost of living" because they really don't add a ton of high paying jobs, at least ones that will stick around for awhile.
I've spent a lot of time up in SV and it is a big mess of sprawl and a lot of new startups want to open in San Fran because young people don't want to live in suburbia. But Silicon Valley also went from orchards and farms to what it is today because of the Defense industry, HP, Apple and so on. It changed the entire culture of that area.
San Fran is changing these days as well, but then again, it seems every city in the US is going through some kind of gentrification or adding expensive Condos and apartments, tech offices, incubators and so on. Many of these places I really don't see sustaining the "high cost of living" because they really don't add a ton of high paying jobs, at least ones that will stick around for awhile.
Yes, good points. I think someone else posted about developers being required to include a certain amount of affordable housing in every development, but it's also important to note they are allowed to pay a fee to avoid these requirements. This is how those luxury developments you speak of avoid low-income tenants. So in that sense, I could see how you might think this kind of lifestyle is unsustainable. Especially when you consider some people are paying close to $5,000 a month to live in these rentals, and they are commuting elsewhere to work a la Google.
The "high cost of living" that you mentioned in SF is basically an insane real estate spectacle that is also occurring in L.A., but the end-game reality is that cities are becoming more desirable places to live and suburbs less so.
Gentrification is a whole can of worms in its own right so I won't even go there. LOL.
When are people going to wake up and realize that there is more to quality of living than sunny skies? We need to improve urban infrastructure and the built environment!!
- World class waterfront
- Actual transit (and transit oriented development patterns)
- Improved regional planning
- Integration with the Tijuana metro
- Alternative transport: bike & sidewalk infrastructure improvements
- Upzoning for increased density
- Locally sourced food/ urban agriculture
- Affordable housing
- Lower parking requirements
- Dedicated bus lanes
- Road/street diets & pocket parks
- Road maintenance
- Improve Balboa Park (and quality of other city parks)
Great list. City leaders definitely need to stop catering to the tourist and start making it better for the residents. And for crying out loud, San Diegans need to stop living in the past and have a vision into the future.
Great list. City leaders definitely need to stop catering to the tourist and start making it better for the residents. And for crying out loud, San Diegans need to stop living in the past and have a vision into the future.
Haha thank you!
The pitfalls and promises of San Diego's built environment and urban narrative are actually what inspired me to pursue the urban planning field as a career. I stayed local for undergrad & moved to the east coast for grad school, with stints in NYC, DC, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Not to sound too naive or idealistic (or like a politician), but I'm excited for a career oriented towards making the SD region a better place to live. I love San Diego, but we still have a lot of work to do!
Drop the condescending tone. Most of us are educated enough to understand that nothing is free. However, there are ways of providing affordable housing without making it affordable for everyone else. One being FAR, height or # of units bonuses for projects that include affordable housing. You could also lessen parking requirements w/ the condition that more affordable units are built. Or maybe just take advantage of federal/state tax incentives.
I find it VERY ironic that you have a problem with subsidizing affordable housing when the largest subsidy in our country is home mortgages, with the very purpose of creating access to affordable housing *purchases* for everyone. Seems pretty hypocritical, but I guess subsidies are only okay if you as an individual benefit.
Sorry, but I prefer San Diego not become a city of slums & mansions like those in Central/South America (or closer to home...LA).
Stop finding great irony in a position or viewpoint I never held or stated. I never said I didn't favor very slowly eliminating the income tax deduction for home loans.
As for your other other revenue streams, you need to realize that the so-called Federal/state tax incentives are our money too. Some of us object to their use in this way especially when we have a crippling deficit. It might be surprising to you, but some of us disagree with the very concept of subsidizing the housing of others.
First, we object to it since there is plenty of cheaper albeit less desirable places for folks to live in. And it inadvertently punishes those who commute to areas with more affordable housing with a decent QOL, such as Temecula.
Second, subsidies turn people ambition-less (or turns them towards the grey economy) so that they can continue to be eligible for the subsidies, and qualify as lower income.
Third, it creates inequity in that some people have to pay full price whereas others pay far less or nothing to live in the same place. Fourth, subsidies will keep people (and likely their kids too) living in the same place so that they can continue to enjoy the subsidy forever thus harming our economy's dynamic ability to move labor around as needed in the economy, a trait we had when we had a thriving economy.
Next, it sets a bad precedent and expectation that exists nowhere in the Constitution, that someone else should pay for the housing expenses of another.
In addition, people who receive these housing subsidies, and their children, are far less likely to value the property they are living in, much less maintain it, thus leading to the hastened deterioration of the properties. The reason for this is simple: when residents have little or no pecuniary interest in a property, they have less desire to maintain it let alone guard it carefully as most homeowners do. This leads to a related problem, high maintenance costs that may have to be paid by others if funds are lacking in the community
Last, subsidized housing draws people to A-list cities/locales like NYC/NJ/CT, SF/SJ, LA/OC, HI, with San Diego perhaps in that same category, when in fact the recipients of subsidized housing could not otherwise afford to live in those areas. These policies unnaturally increase the populations of highly desirable areas with people who can ill afford to live there, thereby negatively impacting other social services. In the case of California, these policies also harm the fragile environment of this area by unnaturally adding to overpopulation.
With regard to your desire to build giant tall affordable housing filled buildings, they have a term for such buildings on the eastern seaboard. And your desire to build tall buildings will run into trouble with the Coastal Commission if you want them to be along the coast.
And your comparison to Central America and similar places is a false equivocation. I never said I favored that model nor is it a fair comparison especially given the fact that most of those areas are very poor, or in the case of LA, is inhabited by many poor often recent immigrants.
Just curious, are you opposed to all subsidies as a rule? (e.g. farmers' subsidies) Subsidies as I'm sure you know are negative taxes and from an economic point of view, a means of encouraging growth and/or setting public policy.
Just curious, are you opposed to all subsidies as a rule? (e.g. farmers' subsidies) Subsidies as I'm sure you know are negative taxes and from an economic point of view, a means of encouraging growth and/or setting public policy.
Like the tax subsidies big oil gets. The subsidies I oppose are the ones given to those who least need them. In reference to the other poster's comment, I'd like to see data that lower income people become less ambitious when means are provided to help them afford a decent home. People who have to bust their behinds all the time, working multiple jobs, just to get by wind up with less time and resources to do what they really need to do to truly get ahead, which is to go to school. Here's someone with firsthand experience that can speak to that: http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Mouth-Liv.../dp/0399171983
Just curious, are you opposed to all subsidies as a rule? (e.g. farmers' subsidies) Subsidies as I'm sure you know are negative taxes and from an economic point of view, a means of encouraging growth and/or setting public policy.
If you work in analytics, you start to discover that most of these subsidies are just abused and misused. There are plenty of huge corporations that wind up getting subsidies, but they are a sub company of another sub company of another sub company so it was hard to connect the dots. These days with "big data" and better tools, cheaper storage options, distributed options, better algorithms, etc the dots can be connected and sometimes are connected. '
I've seen subsidies, bank fraud, insurance fraud that was going on for like 20-30 or more years. And millions of dollars every year. But again, you never find any of that if you aren't looking for outliers or if you just don't have the bandwidth or space to actually find them. Now you do, but many times companies don't do anything about it. You find that info and they just hold it, never actually stopping the gravy train.
And it is quite amazing how big corporations and banks seem to get subsidies, but since the company getting it are so far down the chain, it doesn't even look like it's them. On another note, there are many "minority" or "disabled" or what not companies out there that are not that at all. But since they have an ex-wife or a spouse or a friend or somebody else who really has nothing to do with a business, they use them and qualify.
In the end though, if big corporations and companies like Monsanto can get away with whatever the hell they want at times and get money and tax breaks and subsidies to do so, why should people be pissed off about affordable housing? I mean Tesla is a great company and all, but it's a company who makes cars for about 1 percent of the population. And yet they were getting over a Billion dollars in tax breaks to build their gigafactory in Nevada. And the state needed to make exceptions and take money from other organizations. Tesla did agree to give money back to Education and all, but my point is, if a company who really only sells cars to 1 percent of the population can get over a Billion dollars in tax breaks and who knows what else they won't tell you, why shouldn't something like 30 percent of the population get some kind of subsidy for affordable housing?
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