The Newspaper of the San Francisco Bay Chapter
March - April 2006
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Silicon Valley tech workers want `a life'
North San Jose responds and may help the wider environment too
I've never understood the appeal of Silicon Valley's sprawling, auto-oriented office parks. They confine you to cafeteria coffee, and when you get promoted to that cubicle by the window you look out over a sea of parked cars. If you want an adventure as tame as a good restaurant lunch or a happy hour you have to drive across town.
Apparently I'm not alone. Andrew Crabtree, city of San Jose planner (speaking last January to the Loma Prieta Chapter's Sustainable Land Use Committee), said that managers of the city's most prestigious corporations find the sprawling low-rise office parks that define Silicon Valley to have become passé. High-tech workers are no longer attracted to them. They want a choice of lunch spots, good coffee, and maybe a gym or shops nearby. Many would like to walk to work and occasionally walk home for lunch. Tech workers spend a lot of time at the office and would like to "get a life" there.
Consequently, San Jose last year adopted a major change in land-use policy to apply to a 600-acre "Core Area" along the North First Street light-rail corridor between Brokaw Road and Montague Expressway. Since 1988 the area has been subject to density caps that largely limit office parks to one- and two-story buildings surrounded by large parking lots. Offices in the area are generally isolated from other uses such as restaurants and housing.
The changes will encourage more intensive industrial development, focusing on high-tech and corporate headquarters, and hopefully luring up to 68,000 new jobs to San Jose. Plans call for higher buildings with complementary uses on the ground, particularly around the light-rail corridor. Blocks within walking distance of the light rail will support urban-scale residential development. Higher-density development will allow a rich and enticing pedestrian environment to grow up around San Jose's new high-tech corridor.
Development will generate funding to construct local and regional transportation improvements. These improvements will be needed, particularly if 68,000 new jobs are attracted to North San Jose.
The tech workers' demand for more than cubicles and cafeterias could not come at a better time. Smokestacks and sewers are no longer the major threat to our environment. Auto use and sprawling development are now the main contributors to global warming and other environmental ills. Happier still, reporters with publications like American Demographics are noting that many consumers, not just high-tech workers, are developing a strong preference for more urban living.
Real-estate expert Denise Conley, in a speech last February, claimed that more and more people are "bored of the `burbs". She says that we've made interesting urban places over the past decade or two, and people want to live and work in places like those they have visited.
Hopefully, North San Jose can transform itself from a land of parking lots and isolated offices to one of Silicon Valley's "interesting places" that can act as an example for the rest the valley. Or as Tom Steinbach, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance, says, "The new vision for North First Street gives us the opportunity to step back and re-evaluate the future of San Jose and the entire Bay Area. We can learn from past mistakes - the original sprawling development of North First Street clearly was one - and choose a better model. Instead of paving hillsides and widening highways, we can re-examine the cities we've already built and make them better places to live. Let's take the first step by fast-tracking plans for smarter growth in North San Jose."
For more information on the plan for North San Jose, see www.sanjoseca.gov/planning/nsj
© 2006 San Francisco Sierra Club Yodeler