Start-ups still don't know the way to San Jose
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
I actually seriously dig downtown San Jose, would live there. It's right next to SJSU (which yeah, is mostly commuter school, but still gives an energy.)
It does have a real downtown, bigger than any other BA city's downtown (except SF), and it's super diverse, which is important to me. (Diverse not just in ethnic makeup, but in terms of what everybody does for a living. SJ is not all computer people as much as other towns up north.)
I like going to DIY/indie-ish music things... I would probably go to SF for that, but SJ has more of a scene than most places in-between. It also has the sort of neighborhoods/housing (not all condos, not all new basement-less ranches) that is conducive people creating when they don't have much money. (I've also just described Portland, hmm...)
Still, the article is fair enough: most young geeks who aren't art nerds would probably rather live in Palo Alto than SJ. But for other types, SJ is better than anywhere in-between except for SF. And depending on other things, it's even better than SF.
I also like how bike friendly SJ is, but PA isn't bad for that.
Actually, I can't even think of the last time I needed to go to San Jose...
San Jose is literally the end-of-the-line on Caltran and has no single "cultural" or "business" identity of its own.
In the bay area, the cream (e.g. money) continues to "rise northward". Given a choice, why would anyone choose to live "so close, yet so far" away from the economic or cultural center of activity?
They don't.
They choose either to pay the "Bay Tax" in terms of congestion and fixed living costs to be "in the center" of things, xor reap the significant cost savings, but relative isolation, of living well outside the region (Portland, Boulder, etc.).
It's not all bad though:
Pros: 10 degrees (F) warmer than SF during the day. Available parking. Cheap(er) housing. Clean. Easy access to Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara. Easy access to mountains and off-road trails. Hockey. Large venues for artists who don't go to Oakland or SF. Usually an older, more established company base to be hired from (though some startups (usually hardware based) have offices littered throughout the area).
Cons: San Jose doesn't have the "culture" vibe of SF and to get to SF is 60 to 90 minutes by train each way (which is the only sensible way to get there during rush hour).
Why aren't there more startups in San Jose? San Jose isn't central to anything. You're an endpoint -- and you aren't the exciting endpoint. Events don't come to you, you go to events. Mountain View? 30 miles round trip. SF? 80 miles round trip. Palo Alto? 35 miles round trip. It's great when you are in the "boring family life" phase of your company, but it's difficult to attract "exciting startup" phase people to the boring end of the peninsula.
From a larger perspective, though, the last laugh is actually on San Francisco. Back in the day, those in the City used to laugh at the whole Peninsula and South Bay culture and used to mock San Jose in particular as "plastic city." All the while, San Francisco stagnated while the Peninsula and South Bay flourished, leaving the City as an also-ran in the development of Silicon Valley (yes, it is thriving in its own way today, but the City used to be the only place where it was really worthwhile to do business and it lost that status long, long ago and has persisted with a fixed population level since the 1970s - no absolute growth at all, while the rest of the area has exploded during the past several decades). In this sense, "boring" really won the day in the end as people moved out more and more to the sticks and set up shop there with their startups throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (only this past decade has SF seen some measure of a tech revival).