suntech

One of the largest solar cell manufacturers in the world is relocating their headquarters to San Francisco. While I was interning this summer they were one of the companies I dealt with, so it was exciting for me to read this news. In economic development you get many inquiries but most don’t pan out. It’s great to hear that such a cutting-edge “clean tech” company is moving to SF.

Why does this matter? It matters because this company could have just as easily located in Dallas, San Jose, or Denver. High growth companies like this often “incubate” (get their start) in big cities and then move out to the ‘burbs where costs are lower. This was especially true in the 1990’s tech boom in which many companies started in San Francisco and then as they grew often moved south down the peninsula or across the bay to Oakland. Companies that locate in San Francisco, or New York, or Chicago, or Boston make a conscious decision to put themselves in an environment (albeit a more expensive one) with a highly educated workforce and a political climate that supports the type of business they do.

It is a positive trend, in my opinion, to see young companies like Google, Wikipedia, Suntech, etc. doing the opposite of many older companies and moving some of their operations to San Francisco after they have become well known in their respective industries. This growth in old-line city employment might not seem at all odd to us now, but in light of the trends of the past 60 years, in which major corporations fled from major cities, this could be the beginning of a shift towards once again relocating corporations in certain older cities.

San Francisco, a city which once boasted over 50 Fortune 500 companies now has a paltry 9 remaining. However, as our cultural attitudes about global warming, transportation and housing choice, and economic growth have begun to shift in favor of some older 19th century cities, rather than the sprawling metroplexes of the post-war era, we might begin to see more and more influential companies locating in cities.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/23/BUGOSUAF0.DTL&hw=suntech&sn=001&sc=1000

park(ing) day

This is such a great idea.

http://parkingday.org/

much ado about nothing

If you haven’t already heard, a portion of a freeway interchange in the East Bay was destroyed when an oil tanker truck took a tumble and exploded last weekend. The accident was followed by paranoid fervor, by the press, about how transportation in the Bay Area would come to a complete standstill come Monday morning.

Well, it didn’t happen. Although time could prove a different outcome, it seems that people were able to figure out alternate freeway routes – or took transit – to get to San Francisco and to San Jose from Oakland, and the predicted multi-mile traffic jams just didn’t happen.

The fears associated with this episode occur quite often in transportation practice. It is assumed that people will always make an irrational decision and pile onto the same roadways. However, as has been shown when the Embarcadero and the Central Freeways were torn down in San Francisco, more congestion does not occur – but rather disperses – due to the lack of the centralized congestion nodes that freeways create.

The best way to think about traffic is to think about how water flows. This is why we call it ‘traffic flows’. If you run water through a pipe at high pressure (or cars on a freeway at high speeds) you can move heavy volumes efficiently through a small space. Furthermore, as water after a rain runs through networks of storm drain systems, cars can move through a surface road network or onto other freeways, and achieve the same time efficiencies (as they would on one freeway) if there is enough connectivity within the surface road network.

One interchange in repair for a few months, life goes on…

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/01/MNGQUPIKGM1.DTL

next american cities

Denver, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas, Raliegh, and Charlotte are the regions where the largest growth in industry is occuring in America today. As much as I love the concept of the “creative class”which touts the idea that culturally liberal/high population-density/19th century American cities will prosper the most in the future – because of their ability to attract the most innovative people – on the whole, the numbers don’t seem to show that.

In my humble opinion, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago, are all either growing at a very slow rate or are losing jobs because of high taxes to provide social services – for those who suburban communities refuse to care for – and because of the lack of affordable housing due to zoning regulations and anti-development interests within older cities.

In addition, these cities only attract a small demographic group of people who actually want to live there (meaning that I am not speaking of the inner-city poor, recent immigrants, or the elderly). This small demographic group consists of young singles, gays, artists, and a small contingent of baby boomers choosing to downsize and enjoy the amenities of urban life. This group comprises only 10-15% of the American population. Older American cities do not attract married people with children, single mothers, and most baby boomers. This group is the 85-90% of the population – that polls show – do not want to live in 19th century cities. Part of that is based upon American cultural ideas that old cities are violent, inhumane, inconvenient, and that children, ideally, should not be living in cities. But even more importantly, it is based on the lack of affordable housing.

Let’s do the math. Suppose a family of four is willing to live in a city in a home that is 1,000 square feet, rather than live in a suburban home of 2,000 square feet. Assume that the house in the city sells at $800 a square foot (as they do in San Francisco and Boston) they will be paying $800,00. In contrast, if this family of four bought a 2,000 square foot home in Portland or Charlotte at $250 a square foot they are only paying $500,000! And that number is still a couple of hundred thousand dollars above the national median home price.

Now you may reply that land is more scarce, and is therefore more desirable, in cities, and is therefore worth more. Four to five times more? That’s a question that none of us can truly answer, because we have lived all of our lives in a world of exclusionary zoning practices and NIMBYism that distorts market prices. Will this change as the environmental impetus seeks to enable more growth to occur in already urbanized areas? Only time will tell.

http://www.citiesonahill.org/columns/2006/11/the_creative_class_canard.html

women and walking

“Do women prefer walkable communities? Based on this National Geographic map outlining concentrations of single women and single men, I’d venture to say yes.

It’s apparent on the map that men prefer to locate in cities built in the post-1940s auto-oriented era, while women prefer the more walkable, pre-1940s neighborhoods. It should be no surprise, given the studies that document what women prefer in their neighborhoods and what attributes make for a safe city (see findings at links). So, while the evidence isn’t new, presenting it on a single infographic is.

What does it all mean? It’s not so much that single men prefer auto-oriented development (there is no evidence supporting such, only the opposite), it’s just that women really prefer walkability, safety and convenience. Thankfully, we’re evolving toward the latter. As they say, the easiest way to attract single men is with single women, not vice versa.”

http://creativeclass.typepad.com/thecreativityexchange/2007/04/the_singles_map.html

(I don’t necessarily accept the conclusion here, but the data is very interesting. There may be a lot of other historical and demographic reasons for this disproportionate allocation of single men to the West and women to the Eastern U.S.)…

transit on the rise

After a 50 year decline, public transportation has returned to the levels of ridership of the 1940’s. The causes of this are debatable, but it seems to be a combination of the slow renaissance of American downtowns, rising gas prices, and the expansion of light rail and commuter rail throughout the country.

Incentives to improve upon this trend can only enhance this shift towards transit that we are seeing. There is a law already on the books, which enables employers to subsidize their employees transit commute cost and then deduct that amount from their gross earnings, helping employers to lessen their tax burden. To take things a step further, there is some very progressive legislation, recently introduced, that would financially reward employees for utilizing public transportation. This new incentive is based on the idea that employees that use transit are lessening the need for parking (a hidden cost that everyone pays for even if they don’t drive). Some sanity may be once again returning to our national government…

http://www.planning.org/apaadvocate/2007/march28.htm

family values

The fam is in town for the weekend. Pops is off bicycling in Marin, Stasie and mom are doing Union Square, and I’m going to class in a bit.

 Tonight we are having dinner with Robert Sabbatini the chief planner of the development dream for Bakersfield that was not destined to be…South City Villages. However, he has done some amazing work in his day, which you can view on his website.

 http://www.sabbatini-loyd.com/ps-bakersfield.html