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from the should-really-be-in-space-or-undersea dept.
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 But few are aware that Apple's monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:03PM
People WANT to live in the suburbs. The horror! Not just the wealthy, but especially the MIDDLE CLASS.
Creating suburban office parks -is- putting jobs where the people are. You talk about how much money you save by living in the city and not having a car, but that is a a bullshit reason to not live in the burbs. If you really want to cheap out on transportation, you can buy an older car. If the jobs are located close to your house in the burbs, gas bills are not that much. And finally, housing is much cheaper in the burbs than it is in the city for equivalent housing. The burbs are just CHEAPER. Oh, and workers in the burbs with their higher paying jobs pay more in tax money than the poor in the city. Nobody is stealing a damn thing from the cities. Cities: get over yourselves. You are not irreplaceable, as history has shown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @09:07PM
>Cities: get over yourselves. You are not irreplaceable, as history has shown.
Heck, Atlanta GA started as not a city... was actually multiple small neighborhoods the eventually connected together, rather than a center growing out. It grew together with other like areas. (Explains the poor transportation infrastructure though, doesn't it).