Silicon Valley Companies Say They’re Building A Better World. But They Can’t Even Build A Better Silicon Valley

This failure to create places for people—our logical “target user,” in the region’s parlance—is, in part, to blame for the soul-crushing, NIMBY-inducing, place-agnostic sprawl we’ve idly cobbled together here. Planning-wise, the city that’s supposed to be inventing the future remains trapped in the 1950s, as Allison Arieff wrote recently in The New York Times. The Valley of Heart’s Delight’s once fine agricultural complexion is now forever marked with the suburban scars of endless tract homes, bland office parks, and a dogmatic adherence to California’s transportation motto—”Park Free or Die.”