I made quite a few trips to San Francisco during the late 90s into the early 2000s, but hadn't been back in a very long time - probably close to 15 years. Last week I was there for a conference and a long weekend and got to spend some time exploring the city. I won't claim a comprehensive review, but I did have a few takeaways to share. 1. Fewer homeless than expected. Based on the rhetoric you read in the papers, I expected SF to be overrun with aggressive homeless people. This wasn't the case. There were visible homeless to be sure, but … [Read more...]
Using Placemaking to Serve the Needs of Industry
[ Quality of place improvements tend to be targeted at high end demographics downtown and such. In this piece Rod Stevens and Gregory Tung talk about how the needs of industry for better quality places should not be overlooked - Aaron. ] In a recent posting on “The Promise and Peril of Rust Belt Chic” Aaron Renn contrasts the goals of self-affirmation with the Richard Florida approach of hipster havens. There is a division here between creating jobs and place-making, a gulf that has never been bridged between economic gardening and New … [Read more...]
The Importance of Social Structures to Urban Success
There seems to be a popular belief that what it takes to create an industry cluster in bioscience or whatever is to pair research with commerce. That is, to find an academic institution doing cutting edge research, and connect it with venture capital and entrepreneurs to start companies to commercialize it. Soon enough, you have a "cluster" of businesses that takes off like a rocket. This is the perceived Silicon Valley model, and no company epitomizes it more than Google, which was started by two Stanford students to commercialize their … [Read more...]