Mountain View currently has 75,000 residents. It will be interesting to see if all these new voters kick off a pro-housing virtuous cycle.
Something similar happened in Loudoun County, VA circa 2000-2007.
Something similar happened in Loudoun County, VA circa 2000-2007.
I mean, it's not that we aren't facing that problem already, but adding population may make it harder to resolve.
I'm pro-housing but this is a poor comparison. The difference is that apart from a few large employers most people in Loudoun, VA commute to the larger employment centers of Fairfax and DC.
Yes, people there drive too much, but that's true across 99% of the United States.
Edited to add some Wikipedia quotes:
Since 2008 the county has been ranked first in the United States in median household income among jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more ... Having undergone heavy suburbanization since 1990, Loudoun has a full-fledged service economy. It is home to world headquarters for several Internet-related and high tech companies, including Verizon Business, Telos Corporation, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Paxfire. Like Fairfax County's Dulles Corridor, Loudoun County has economically benefited from the existence of Washington Dulles International Airport, the majority of which is located in the county along its border with Fairfax ... [MCI] announced that it would move its headquarters to Ashburn in 2003.
At any rate, I stand by my assertion that it's a really poor comparison between MV and Loudoun.
Amended to reflect the wikipedia post: MCI (now Verizon assume) and Aol are really the only large headquartered technology companies that I've seen in Ashburn. There are smaller firms, but there hasn't been a windfall of companies willing to move further away from DC to setup headquarters here. Loudoun remains largely housing sprawl.
Also amended with this helpful link of the county's largest employers: http://www.biz.loudoun.gov/index.aspx?NID=103
The AOL buildings are mostly rented out at this point; I believe a Raytheon office resides in the majority of them. So looking for headquarters doesn't seem particularly meaningful. What about large offices of global companies? AWS US-East runs out of Ashburn, for example (not sure why Amazon doesn't appear on the list at the link you gave).
Looking for headquarters is meaningful if we're trying to make a comparison between Mountain View and Loudoun County. Google is headquartered in Mountain View. Loudoun has no real equivalent for HQs or even large offices for global companies. The startup scene is pretty dry too.
Apart from voting a board that wants to increase housing there's almost no comparison. If you want to use Dulles and Loudoun as an example you should use it to illustrate that you can't slap in a bunch of housing units without thinking about infrastructure.