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ROUND_PENTAGON
February 17, 2013
I sometimes wonder why Apple and April 11-16, 2013
Company are content to use SF as a August 03, 2013
bedroom district, rather than, say,
fixing Cupertino.
Can't those design geniuses get "New Urbanism"?
But the central insight of Jane Jacobs and followers
is the embrace of multiplicity, of diversity.
Cities are the opposite of the single vision,
the *consistency* that fans of Apple seem to like.
YOU_AND_I_DIFFER
When Apple tries to do Urban Design,
you end up with a round pentagon.
We've got people working at places
like Apple and Google, but living As I understand it, for some
in the Mission district of San time Apple used this as a
Francisco, running back and forth recruiting tool: you don't
on company busses. *have* to live in the Coop,
we'll help find you an
apartment in San Francisco!
Dangerbaby speculates
they may have quietly
bought up property
they control themselves.
What's so magical about San Francisco?
Don't tell me about hills and ocean, the
Mission district doesn't have much to do
with either.
If Cupertino *wanted* to be more
desireable, what would it do?
(1) change it's zoning regs to allow denser
construction,
(2) tell Apple to stop trying to design
a building like a one-button mouse,
and get some architects who've heard
of New Urbanism.
(3) put in an arts college and an "arts
industrial park".
Seed it by offerring cheap deals
to Survival Research Labs and the
Flaming Lotus Girls.
SAN_FRANCISCO_DREAMING
(4) reach out to the existing local
communities (latino, vietnamese).
(5) don't declare war on small music
venues
(6) put the Apple marketing guys to work:
"bold new experiment in living";
"embrace of diversity"; If it's all a matter of
"planned to evolve". branding, you could try calling
this "San Francisco Towne": it's
not like SF holds a trademark.
It's not at all clear to me that "new
metropolitan areas are very hard to
create" (as Krugman has suggested) what
is clear is that no one is trying. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/density/?src=twrhp
Q: why are residents of Cupertino
content to be the armpit of
the valley?
A: if they didn't like it they
would've left already.
So: how shall the 'burbs eventually be
resucitated? It has to be a gradual process:
they won't go, "hey, this sucks" and change Though, I don't know,
it all. maybe they will?
SUBURBAN_HOPE
So what might the
intermediate steps be? But it shouldn't be forgotten that
countervailing forces that threaten
to kill the city still do exist:
One: the continuing e.g the nouveau urban citizen whose
embrace of the smattering slogan is "More Parking!"
of older neighborhoods
with pre-WWII zoning. Cities have to be able to
exist without consensus
Long Island, where I'm from, has about New Urbanism...
many a town with a much realer
vibe than the surrounding
sprawl. Most of them are harbor
towns (mostly along the North
Shore) that got started before On the San Francisco peninsula the
the post-WWII car madness. equivalent neighborhoods tend to
be clustered right around the old
Southern Pacific train stations.
As usual, there's this pattern
where people absolutely love
these "historic" places; they
jam into them every weekend--
and yet they can't see any way
to construct a new one.
Why not, for example, take a dead
shopping mall and treat it's vast One answer: if they
expanse of parking as a "green field" did try this they'd
to attempt to build a Real Town-- find a way to make
or at least, a village full of Shoppes. it suck.
NEW_URBAN_HERESY
Another answer: I've
heard of a few places
that has tried this,
and the results do
indeed suck. All
apparently fail the
punk rock bar test.
NOWHERE_PUNK
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