I just moved to the Bay Area last year and living in SF was never an option. You can get the same housing (or better) for $1000/month less by living in the East Bay and you'll be right next to the BART. If SF real estate prices continue to climb like they have been, I think there's going to be an even greater trend of folks moving to the East Bay where it's more affordable.<p>I also think the East Bay will be attractive for the same reason the Valley was: once you get older, it's a great place to settle down and think about having children. You can buy a single family house (with a yard!) in Rockridge, Berkeley, or Orinda with great schools that's still accessible to SF. I know plenty of folks getting into their mid-30s or 40s for whom this has become a lot more attractive than a million dollar rowhouse in SF.
If there's one lesson to be drawn from the San Francisco mess, it's this: if a community is going to choose a city to move into, it had better not be a city where political corruption has rendered it illegal to build new housing. How does Oakland fare in that regard?
I lived in the south bay area for 20 years, although I moved away ten years ago. Unless there has been a seismic shift, why is it inevitable that the tech industry must move north? There is an assumption in this article that the ideal place to be is SF, except for the prices there, so the game is to get as close as one can afford.<p>I utterly reject that idea. I loved visiting San Francisco when I was 20, and when I was 30, and when I was 40 with kids, but through those different phases of my life, I never wanted to live there, and not living there was never an impediment to my career. None of the companies I worked for considered moving there.
2025: That's the (%$&!ing ridiculous) year that BART is scheduled to open up in downtown San Jose:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_San_Jose_%28BART_station%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_San_Jose_%28BART_stati...</a><p>In the meantime, downtown Oakland has many of the same problems (and a surprisingly similar crime rate) as downtown Santa Cruz (OK Oakland is more violent by a bit). The former is right next to San Francisco and the latter is right next to UCSC, both technological hotbeds.<p>I wouldn't want to live in either place because they're just not safe(tm) and by that I mean the perception more than the reality.<p>SF dealt with such issues by pushing all the "undesirables" out of the center of the city and into the residential neighborboods. I wonder how Oakland would deal with this. Santa Cruz OTOH continues to stick its head deep into its own digestive endpoint and deny such problems even exist.
Transportation from the valley to Oakland is just too bad. How will all the SV folks who live in... well... SV get to Oakland? There's no BART from Cupertino, Palo Alto or Mountain View. And driving is HELL. Every tried going a few miles on 880 in rush hour? Now try to go thirty, fourty miles or more! Good luck.
Why not Mountain View?<p>It's much easier to move a number of local businesses in and construct high-rise apartments than it is to move a bunch of tech companies with thousands of employees. I predict that we're a lot more likely to see hip restaurants, bars, bubble-tea shops, and cultural venues move into Mountain View than we are to see Google and Facebook move to Oakland.<p>It's already happening to some extent. My girlfriend grew up in Silicon Valley - she says that the Mountain View downtown has changed dramatically since she was in high school. We're seeing high-rise apartment towers going up near San Antonio, along with a number of walkable shops and supermarkets near their base. A number of mid-rise apartment complexes and townhomes have gone up by the Caltrain station and downtown, where it's already walkable. And there's been a longstanding plan to build high-rise apartments with ground-level shops north of 101, within walking distance of the Googleplex. This plan has been blocked a few times by the Mountain View city council, but 3/4 of the voting block opposing it is retiring this year.
Silicon Valley has already moved north. PG has mentioned that at the beginning of YC, they saw startups based in SF as a warning sign, now, they have an office in the city. It started out in Palo Alto, now SF is pretty clearly a part of it. It wasn't always.
I think moving south to Silicon Beach is a better idea.<p><a href="http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/santa-monica-ca/90401/daily-weather-forecast/337241" rel="nofollow">http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/santa-monica-ca/90401/daily...</a>
Another article wondering why City X hasn't attracted more of a tech community given some spelled-out advantages over Silicon Valley.<p>Rather than wondering why markets don't act the way one wants them to, we could learn more by trying to understanding why markets do what they do.
So Oakland = Silicon Valley 2.0? It seems plausible that the new 'up and coming' start-ups would seek territory in unconquered land such as Oakland, but for companies already established in SV to move to Oakland - I don't see it.
I don't imagine it ever replacing SV, but supposing a tech scene did take root in the East Bay, where do you think it would be? Think something analogous to "Silicon Alley", AKA Dumbo/Red Hook in Brooklyn, NY.
I'd actually argue the tech center should leave the bay area and colonize a part of the country where land is cheap and plentiful - it could be an existing metro, like DFW - or something completely greenfield.
What's Oakland like in SF neighbourhood comparisons? I've never been on any of my visits to the Bay Area. I'd heard it was gross & ghetto, but lots of SF is pretty disgusting too…
I like that "moving north" idea, but why not Portland or Seattle?<p>The West Coast itself still has a great appeal to many, and Portland is still affordable, quirky, and frenetic.
I wouldn't choose engineers based on who needs the money, and I wouldn't choose a location based on who needs the tax revenue<p>Berkeley appears more pleasant than Oakland, though further away.<p>As much as I find it unappealing, I notice more things happening in Oakland. For now, it looks like the hippest devs are moving there first, guys like substack who seem like they enjoy a bit of chaos, crime, and dirt. Engineers with kids aren't going to live there, though