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I just came across an article from an older issue of San Jose Business Journal that had a short blurb stating that San Jose is the most expensive place to do business in the U.S. The article cites high labor costs as the main factor. Cities with lower costs such as Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Houston have been experiencing greater job growth than San Jose.
It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise since everthing else is expensive, it just serves as a reminder that the stresses it places. I’ve heard repeatedly that (in San Jose) “a masters degree is nothing.” Many cities perhaps would gladly exchange a higher cost of living, for a share of our knowledge-based workers. As long as the area is able to continue to attract the brightest and most creative, our competitive advantage remains intact.
At UC Davis (which I attend) I saw that we will be getting a new LEED Platinum building. So why all the fuss over Platinum? Well here’s what CalPIRG has to say:
A LEED Platinum building reduces environmental impact by around 70% and reduces operational costs by 30-40%, this means that it will save us, the students and the university, 75 dollars per square foot as opposed to a mere 50 dollars per square foot with a Silver building.
There it is, a cost-benefit reason to do what Adobe has already done.
San Jose apparently is “#1 recycler among nation’s largest cities.” This is all well and good, but if products aren’t purchased that are made from recycled materials, it’s all for naught.
The EPA has put together a fantastic list on how you can close the loop. Many products you already purchase may already be made! Even Starbucks cups are largely made up from post-consumer products. (This is in no way an endorsement of Starbucks, if anything it should disgust you that I would invoke such unsavory-ness)
I just stumbled upon an upcoming Green conference in San Jose. West Coast Green will be take place between September 25th to 27th in San Jose Convention Center. The mayor himself will be gracing the conferences attendees as well as his enviro-eminence David Suzuki.
The program is under development, but a few of particular personal interest are the slated tracks for Affordable Single and Multi-Family Housing, Developers Series & Roundtable, as well as Government and Policy.
I feel like San Jose wanted to be LA, but for all the wrong reasons.”
Over the Memorial Day weekend, the gf and I took a trip to LA. I’ve been trying to keep up with what’s going on, and it seems to me that LA has the most going for it as far as a place for progressive planning. They certainly have the need, and now it looks that it’s finally paired with the will.
Did you know that for all the bashing that it endures, LA is still the second densest city in California? For all the ballyhoo it gets for the rail/trolley system San Diego is less than half as dense and arguably maxing out that systems potential. With a relatively new rail system up, along with an increase of riders on the existing subway (who knew there was a subway!), even the ‘Brits’ seem to be taking notice.
On the final day of the trip we made it out to Santa Monica. Strolling down the 3rd St Promenade, I was struck by how absolutely pleasant it was and was quickly reminded of all the failures of Satan Row. Federal Realty Investment Trust, the developer responsible for both properties, certainly was not given enough guidance into how the development would tie in with the surrounding area.
The promenade is a wonderful gathering spot within walking distance of the pier. While the collection of shops could hardly be considered eclectic was well served by the preservation of the pre-existing building stock. It has gone on to spur further adjacent development. Santana Row on the other hand requires patrons to enter a parking lot to reach its faux-main street. There is little variance in architecture, is served only by bus and no other form of transit, and can’t hope to help densify the surrounding area. It’s saving grace may be that it trains suburbanites in to becoming more urbane.
While it might not ever be Portland South, LA’s reputation as the epicenter of sprawl may not be so deserving.
From today’s paper.
It’s been edging towards a million for some time now, perhaps next year as the writer suggests. The poll asking “Would hitting the one million population mark increase San Jose’s national visibility?” is also worth looking at. Showing only a slight edge that it would I had to think about it. We’re the 10th largest city, edging out more well known places like Detroit, Boston, Seattle, DC, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and let’s not forget, ‘the city’.
So why wouldn’t hitting a million heighten our national visibility? Those cities previously listed have far more history than San Jose, something you just can’t make up for in the short-run. But there are things that other places are doing.
Smaller cities such as Austin and Portland seem to have more swagger, and carry more of the spotlight. What they’ve done is create ways to stand out. Austin has SXSW and has asserted itself as the live music capital of the world. Richard Florida would claim that it goes hand-in-hand with a creative economy, as does the local government.
Portland has made good use of cutting edge planning policies to create a more livable and environmentally friendly city. Listing Portland’s merits are beyond the scope of this post, so I’ll let you google it.
San Jose should leverage its position as capital of Silicon Valley to create greater national visibility. It’s already got the tech world, perhaps giving free space to 1,000 artists to work would help. An Urban Design Alliance (as they do in Sac) could help brighten the façade of the downtown.
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| From Walking Tour … |
A view of downtown restaurants and various entertainment venues
Downtown living grows up
From the November/December issue of Eco-structure
http://digimag.rrd.com/spiderweb/ecostructure/200711/
Adobe’s three towers are all rated LEED Platinum. Truly something to get excited about in San Jose!
Santa Clara VTA only accommodates 30,000 riders on the light rail with many trains not at full capacity. Cities like Portland offer free rides on their streetcars within the downtown area. There is an opportunity cost of having free rides which is less maintenance fees. There is also a savings in not having to have staff to even check for tickets and such. San Francisco has considered free rides, but has a transit system that serves a far larger percentage of the population and was unable to implement.
Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Eliminating fares on San Francisco’s Municipal Railway - an idea Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted explored - would worsen delays, overcrowding and financial burdens on the already strained transit system.
That bleak assessment by private consultants who evaluated the free-rides idea has led Newsom to quietly abandon the concept, top administration aides told The Chronicle on Monday.
“It’s not something that we plan to pursue at this time,” said Stuart Sunshine, the mayor’s top transportation aide.
Newsom asked transit officials in March to study a no-fare system, saying at the time, “If it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.” His suggestion was aimed at luring people out of their cars to reduce air pollution and traffic.
The consulting team hired by the city, led by Sharon Greene & Associates, looked at what happened when other jurisdictions adopted free transit programs. In larger cities, such as Austin, Texas, Trenton, N.J., and Denver, ridership increased by nearly 50 percent.
If that happened to Muni, which now provides nearly 700,000 trips on an average day, the annual operating and maintenance costs would rise by nearly $69 million. Muni’s annual budget is about $670 million.
Article is truncated for pertinent material, ie all reference to Las Vegas has been taken out. Original article found at Economist.com
Mar 1st 2007 | LAS VEGAS AND SAN JOSE
“You do not have to spend long in the company of a San Jose official before the old photographs come out. Chuck Reed, the mayor, has an aerial view of the city centre from the late 1970s on a wall in his office. Tom McEnery, who held the same post in the 1980s, has a bigger one showing several acres of empty lots. The point is to show how far the city has come in the past few decades. If downtown San Jose had really been transformed into the throbbing heart of Silicon Valley, though, it would not need old pictures to prove it.”
“San Jose has attempted to create a commercial heart by selling city-owned land or even giving it away to developers. The city offers tax breaks and uses a portion of the property tax to pay for improvement projects. Since the late 1970s the redevelopment agency has shelled out $2 billion, almost two-thirds of it on downtown. It has built museums and theatres to lure people to the centre. Trams have been supplied to entice them out of their cars.”
“Such largesse has indisputably made the middle of San Jose more appealing than it used to be. By any measure other than an historical one, though, the campaign has been a failure. The office vacancy rate in downtown stands at 21%—higher than it was four years ago, during the dotcom slump, and almost twice as high as the Silicon Valley average. The theatres, which were supposed to lift downtown, now depend on the council to bail them out of trouble. In a city of 912,000 people, just 30,000 passengers ride trams each day. All this in a wealthy metropolis that has higher house prices than anywhere else in America, according to the National Association of Realtors.”
“One of San Jose’s obvious problems is that it must compete against San Francisco, which lies 48 miles (77km) to the north. Yet the strongest competition is local. Suburban shops exert such a strong allure that it is hard to persuade retailers to open downtown… San Jose has (sic) tried to jump-start redevelopment by building shopping malls in the urban core; both attempts failed utterly.”
“Not so long ago, downtown shops could at least claim to offer an urban alternative to the strip malls and boxy stores dotted about the suburbs. No longer. Santana Row in San Jose is a shopping street with distinctive, French-accented architecture, art galleries, shops and pavement cafés, with some apartments mixed in. It is exactly the kind of urban environment that the downtown boosters say they want, but for two details. Santana Row is three miles from the city centre, and was built in 2002. This fake downtown, with ample parking and no homeless people, is doing so well that similar schemes are mooted elsewhere.”
“‘San Jose needs to be more than just a nice, suburban community,’ says Mr Reed, the mayor. But perhaps it does not. An unconvincing downtown has not held down home-prices in San Jose (sic). All it has done is give officials a sense of inferiority.”
It seems to me that at these conferences, it’s much more of a social reunion. Even I saw a few people I’ve come across. Most of the seminars have been decent, but certainly not groundbreaking. Lots of CEQA, a little form-based code, and not so much else. The speakers were also a little less than inspiring, they had planners from Anaheim (no less) discussing how they’ve made density a reality. Anaheim!
There was a walking tour that focused on shopping and the requisite visit of Santana Row, Valley Fair, and San Jose Market Center. Valley Fair and planning are kinda diametrically opposed, or at least malls and good planning that is. Santana Row, while it has many downsides to it, may offer a training opportunity for suburbanites to be more “urban.”
San Jose Market Center however piqued an interest. I asked the concierge whereabouts it is. She informed me that it used to be the old rail yards off Taylor St. I started thinking of the Sacramento rail yards project, and quickly started imagining an urban mixed-use development that had light rail connection and many inviting sidewalks. I soon became disheartened to find yet another strip mall. The only unique aspect I could see was that it used a fair amount of brick. Perhaps the brick will confuse everyone into thinking they’re in one of those east-coast towns. Not only was it another strip mall, it was a veritable who’s who of chain stores and such: Target, Office Depot, Cost Plus, and the like. This was to be highlighted? Absolutely pathetic.
And as far as getting in, I snuck in for free. It was a pretty easy process, just walk around like I belong there. Unfortunately I didn’t get a nifty bag, a lanyard & tag with my name on it, or a bunch of other handouts. I did however get a program that someone left behind.
All in all, the conference reinforced for me the old notion that it’s “not what you know, but who you know.”
They are charging $275 for onsite registration for students! If you were to have registered by July 31st, the rate would have been $225. This is a terribly egregious amount. I emailed Lynne Bynder, a coordinator for the evnt, and shared my thoughts on the price - especially in comparison to the national conference I had previously attended in Philadelphia. Her lame response was that the event is catered, whereas the national was not. There seems to be a great disconnect in the logic here. The chief motivations of a typical college student is to learn a thing or two and meet some people who can help get them a job. Not for mediocre hotel food. And why is at the Fairmont? To me, it would seem that since planning isn’t the highest paid profession, that having the conference there seems a bit indulgent.
I find it highly hypocritical that the APA which touts itself as an educational institution would setup such a huge financial obstacle to those who are at institutes of higher education. There also has been absolutely no outreach to UC Davis, a registered APA Planning Student Organization (PSO)
Out of my own personal interests I want to go desperately. Out of spite, I’ll be sure not to pay and crash the event. My original intent was to go Sunday, but I’ve been feeling under the weather, we’ll see how things turn out today.
TED, a veritable genius-fest that takes place in Monterrey, Ca has many speakers, none as hilarious and sobering as Kunstler. This is well worth watching.
Read: craft fair = Tapestry in Talent
TURNING INDUSTRIAL LAND INTO HOUSING CAN HURT TAX BASE
