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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

1. Zoning

2. Corporate housing that you need to move out of as soon as you leave your job sounds pretty dystopian.

The zoning is what I'm wondering about. In most of the rest of the country large corporations make the rules. It seems the taxpayers in Silicon valley are the tech companies, and they want housing. So who is voting against changing the zoning? It seemed like miles and miles of corporate offices out there when I visited. Just build a giant apartment complex on top.

And I wasn't actually talking about corporate housing, just giant residential buildings. But even then, company towns still exist, why haven't Google and Apple built them?

"It seems the taxpayers in Silicon valley are the tech companies" - Most of the taxpayers are also homeowners who don't want to see their property values fall due to an influx of new affordable housing.

>large corporations make the rules

I think you've been reading too much political chatter. It's not that straightforward.

>So who is voting against changing the zoning?

The actual voters.

>company towns still exist

Well, they mostly exist in the sense that some modest-sized cities/towns mostly have a single employer for a fairly large radius. That isn't true in any meaningful way in Silicon Valley.

In everywhere I've lived, the pressure to build has usually won out because the neighboring municipality will let someone build if the first one doesn't. So urbanism slowly creeps in. seems weird that it never has in 20 years out there.

I suspect a lot has to do with what draws many people to California in the first place. (In addition to jobs, which are more recent in many cases.) Those reasons didn't include remolding the Bay Area in the image on New York City and New Jersey.

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