Here's a smart idea : Build homes and offices elsewhere in the U.S. I never understood the constant swimming against the tide in the Valley. Expand elsewhere... It's becoming uncomfortable and unreasonable for a great deal of people. On a grand scale this is bad for the U.S :
> More expensive to hire people here
> More concentration of wealth
... > Wealth gets pissed away into the inflated shoebox called Silicon Valley.
Think outside the box .. but the nature of the valley is that everyone thinks inside it .. Go figure.
After some observations, A visiting friend commented : You have some of the highest paid/intelligent people in the U.S located here yet they live no better than the garbage man in other states... I don't know if this is incredibly stupid or smart.
Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.
I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy. Manhattan's finance, creative and ad industries do, as with other financial and creative centers. Hollywood is Hollywood for similar reasons as well.
Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements. This is fairly unique in the United States, and is the very first thing any region needs to address in trying to become "another Silicon Valley" but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.
> I expect that in its heyday, Detroit's auto industry had a similar synergy.
It certainly did. Unfortunately, the most innovative idea to come out of the autombile industry - the assembly line - had the subsequent effect of destroying innovative learning and thinking on a vast scale. Detroit became a one-industry city and that industry demanded a large, mostly unskilled workforce inimical to the kind of entrepreneurial activity that might otherwise have diversified Detroit's economy.
Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is the synergy that results from a very high concentration of technical professionals in a small region.
Yes, and it's not physical density but time-to-get-there that matters. That said, it's impossible to provide the latter without either (a) making living arrangements more dense, or (b) providing an efficient rapid-transit infrastructure, which usually leads to urbanization.
Silicon Valley is also helped enormously by California's extremely strong protection against exploitative non-compete agreements.
Bingo.
but none do, typically in an attempt to be employer-friendly.
I agree. That's bizarre but quite interesting, because kowtowing to employers on microgripes means they miss out on something far more important (to their long-term interest) than whether they can enforce noncompetes: whether they can find talent at all.
They tried that - North Dallas was a rising star as a tech magnet. Nortel/Enron/Worldcom ( and dare I say Cisco? ) killed it dead. There's a modest smattering of tech left there, but it's all very weak and thready in pulse. Perhaps also ditto Atlanta. I don't know what is holding Dallas up now.
I won't go to the Valley, and it's been worth it. I'm north of Houston right now. Had a chance at a really compelling Valley gig last year, with an awesome boss and turned it down purely because of location.
We as a culture have traded "making a comfortable living" for "making a killing".
Its very interesting to see people in each region perceives the other regions. I'm a brazilian, and wouldn't imagine that US has so few good places to live.
All of the good places to live in the USA are balls-expensive, because there aren't very many of them.
The Upper Midwest (Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor) is great if you can get an interesting job there. The weather isn't as bad as it sounds and the cities themselves are beautiful (although I wouldn't recommend most of the suburbs).
Ann Arbor has absolutely no nightlife that doesn't involve young kids and drinking too much. Chicago's bar and club scene is full of the hyper-douches that (for the most part) weren't smart enough to make it to the coasts. And almost every major urban center in the US requires a car to live.
I grew up in Detroit and spent a lot of time traveling and working around the midwest, and those kinds of places are exactly what I envision when I think of unlivable American cities. They simply don't have the density to support the kind of scenes that make living in a city fun. Chicago is borderline, but the car thing and the snow thing totally ruin it. The parts of the city that are close to anything fun are expensive to live in.
Fact is, any state with a default 2AM bar/club time is at a severe disadvantage.
I think the list for the US at the moment is NYC, SF, and perhaps maybe Seattle or Portland - but I haven't been to the northwest so I can't comment directly.
Chicago's bar and club scene is full of the hyper-douches that (for the most part) weren't smart enough to make it to the coasts.
There's a lot more to Chicago, and if that's your take on it you obviously haven't spent much time here. It has an incredibly diverse and vibrant nightlife.
Also, the notion that if you live in Chicago it's because you weren't "smart enough to make it to the coasts" is incredibly insulting and narrow-minded.
I'm with you on "the snow thing" but every other critique makes it sound like your definition of a livable city is one in which you and your friends can reliably get hammered every night.
The rest of the bay area is car land. Especially the peninsula where most of silicon valley is concentrated. I tried living in the peninsula on a bike for 5 months, wasn't so nice.
You have a funny definition of "isn't as bad as it sounds." I live in Indianapolis and that's about as close to Chicago and all points north as I wish to go during the winter.
Think outside the box .. but the nature of the valley is that everyone thinks inside it .. Go figure.
After some observations, A visiting friend commented : You have some of the highest paid/intelligent people in the U.S located here yet they live no better than the garbage man in other states... I don't know if this is incredibly stupid or smart.