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When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, patting themselves on the back for yet another example of "innovation." Countless employees, tech bloggers, and design fanatics are already lauding the "futuristic" building and its many "groundbreaking" features. But few are aware that Apple's monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact.
In the 1940s and '50s, when American corporations first flirted with a move to the 'burbs, CEOs realized that horizontal architecture immersed in a park-like buffer lent big business a sheen of wholesome goodness. The exodus was triggered, in part, by inroads the labor movement was making among blue-collar employees in cities. At the same time, the increasing diversity of urban populations meant it was getting harder and harder to maintain an all-white workforce. One by one, major companies headed out of town for greener pastures, luring desired employees into their gilded cages with the types of office perks familiar to any Googler.
Rockstar coders don't do suburbs?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:35PM
High tech companies require high skilled workforce, and you can't put that downtown because you'll gentrify the area. You'll be shat upon for not providing the "right" kind of jobs. If you try to bus your employees in, you'll get people throwing rocks at your bus because you're driving all the low income people out of the area.
Places like Detroit are rebounding because in some limited cases some employers that can hire low skilled workers have moved in, but there's only so much of that you can do. Unless you can change the atmosphere of the inner cities, there's no incentive to set up there for many companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:16PM
Case in point, Amazon and their Seattle/South Lake Union "campus". There are considerable complaints about the increasing cost of living driving long time residents out of the area. And the building boom removing affordable housing. There's also the problem of homelessness in Seattle. If you haven't heard about it, do some searches. Over the last 5+ years it's become a large issue and a hot topic in the area. Many parts of Seattle are hard to walk through due to the smell of urine, people sleeping on the side walks, open drug dealing, and other crime.
Personally, I opted out of the Seattle area and am working across Lake Washington in Bellevue. The commute from my home in the suburbs (low crime, big yard, comfortable home, and more) is also much better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:28PM
Detroit is indeed a special case... very low population "in the city" and LOTS of high-tech workers, as there is no shortage of engineers here thanks to the automotive industry. Real estate and infrastructure is cheap, but more importantly, the infrastructure is growing and pretty solid.
More importantly, it is benefiting from several companies giving back... whereas companies in Seattle and San Francisco are more likely to "push back"... pouring money and resources into the development of the city.
Honestly, Detroit may be the best choice for startups who want the support structure of Silicon Valley without the insane costs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:15PM
support structure of Silicon Valley
What about VCs? Is there a Sand Hill Road in Detroit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:34PM
One of the attractive things about downtown Detroit right now is that you can buy yourself a big-ass building for pennies on the dollar. That will change once things start humming again, of course, but right now you can get property at great prices.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:16PM
High tech companies require high skilled workforce, and you can't put that downtown because you'll gentrify the area.
This comment struck me, because the threat of "gents" really makes me wonder about the basic assumptions of the article. TFA seems to act like there was only one major trend to move out of the cities in the mid-20th century. But rich people have been doing this forever. Ancient Roman elite had their country estates, as did European aristocrats for the past millennia. The desire from wealthy New Yorkers to flee the city in certain parts of the year is centuries old.
Since the dawn of civilization, cities have almost always been mostly filled with more poor people, filth, and worse living conditions. Wealthier folks often have to spend some time there to deal with their business interests and have their seasons of social engagements, but then they'd retreat away. And then you look at other communities who had the option to "flee the city" for intellectual work in the past, like universities. Most of them historically in the U.S. tended to be built in seclusion too -- Harvard, Columbia, Penn, etc. were all originally built in less populated areas outside the city centers, until the city expanded to surround them. The 19th-century growth of liberal arts colleges around the U.S. led to a lot of them in areas a bit outside the big cities. Even many of the state colleges chose to locate themselves on campuses in more remote parts of the state.
So, the rich and powerful have always sought to "get out of town" when social or political engagements didn't require their presence, and they would send their kids there too in secluded colleges for them to focus on building their knowledge. Is the present trend really related to 1950s suburbia at all, or just an ancient impulse to build isolated communities for intellectual and wealthy endeavors?
And even the history of corporations building towns in the middle of nowhere dates long before the 50s suburbia movement. Does no one recall "company towns" from the 19th century, where corporations had so much control over workers that they could create their own de facto currencies? Originally, these tended to be mining and logging settlements and such, which needed to be "out there" of necessity. But with the growth of railroads and the possibility for rich executives to be able to ship in supplies, even factories could be created in remote locations -- which had advantages for corporate control over workers (as well as potentially being closer to the executive "country estate").
Ironically, the thing that disrupted these old systems like secluded universities and company towns was the same one that would lead to 1950s suburbia -- the automobile. But I really don't think the trend for isolated upper-class, intellectual, or controlled corporate communities is only related to the 50s suburbia movement. Thus, even if that "suburbia" impulse is less strong today (and I'm not sure that's even true), are we really sure that the innovative tech companies would WANT to locate themselves in the middle of a large city?
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:29PM
Oversimplified. It's a pendulum effect. When everything was agrarian, there wasn't much as much benefit to cities. Oh, wait, ports grow because you need services for shipbuilding, and there is a lot of commerce and trans-shipping so a lot of people passing through, which means more opportunity for ancillary services, and then all of the services to support all of the people. Then, the more tech things get (and that means RELATIVE tech, not absolute, so advanced forging and pottery and food preservation counts as "tech" to early agrarian society), the more benefit there is to having specialty shops supporting each other close by in a town or city. But yes, the local lord can still live outside. Then you start depending on mill power (whether air or water) and a collection of things have to be near the mill, which is probably along a river somewhere near a river port for shipping raw material and product, and becomes a whole collection of manufacturing along the river (like the building that later became Digital Equipment). And we'll need to import yet more tech people for maintenance.
When the industrial age happens, the early inventor/owners of machinery would have been AT THEIR COMPANIES keeping watch . . . it's the second generation that goes to their estates out of town. Next level up is when the paperwork starts weighing more than the industry. Office work requires people to be in proximity in offices, and even to have multiple offices in the same industry in the same place because they interact so much. (All before electronic communication of course.) So just as mill power clustered along a river, banking happens in clusters, and insurance happens in clusters, and printing and even entertainment happen in clusters. And again, the original founders have to be RIGHT THERE where things are happening, because they're the ones making it happen.
Suburbs were an attempt to lower the bottom edge of "rich lifestyle". They were *designed* to require individual cars, as a de-facto segregation by income.
Look at all of the tech companies setting up in New York City today. Yes, they want a critical mass of people from which to select the best, and they want an existing support network of food and entertainment and everything else that goes with it, and most important - just like Digital Equipment making computers in an old mill - they can get a lot of cheaper office space by taking over volume emptied by paperwork companies that moved to the suburbs thanks to electronic communication . . . and slowly find themselves out of work because they don't need to push as much paper any more.