Silicon Valley needs audacious civic leadership now
With the new year, civic leaders can refocus on envisioning and implementing new ideas. In Silicon Valley right now, we desperately need audacious civic leadership to tackle our weightiest issues.
A study mission I took last fall to Seattle with Silicon Valley civic and business leaders brought this into sharp perspective.
Seattle is particularly relevant to our region. It faces similar challenges: sky-high housing costs, paralyzing traffic, insufficient public transit, displaced residents, outsized resistance to housing, outdated infrastructure, widespread homelessness, and finally, tension between powerful tech companies and the communities around them.
What we saw was impressive. A city filled with cranes and gleaming new buildings, especially homes. A modern lightrail that Amazon helped fund. The city’s ninth sanctioned homeless village — tiny, easyto-build homes for the neediest. Buses packed with people of all stripes, moving fast on dedicated bus lanes through streets and highways. A thriving tech company integrated into a redeveloped neighborhood with employees frequenting nearby restaurants rather than segregated in company-only cafeterias. Successful, neighborhood-serving retail surrounding four-story buildings. Postcard-worthy icons in the city center that beckon future generations. Altogether, a sense of promise about the city’s future and a willingness to dig deep to address its obstacles.
I’ve been fortunate to live in world-class cities including New York, Los Angeles and London. Like Seattle right now, they’ve all exhibited an audacious vision and the political leadership to fashion it. Let’s learn from these places.
Coming home to San Jose, I reflected on the urgency sometimes lagging when it comes to solving our region’s biggest challenges. At times, our civic culture Silicon Valley’s housing crisis is this generation’s defining issue.
can be cautious and insular.
The musician Amos Lee sings, “Sometimes I feel as if the wheels are put here just to stay in place.” We currently can’t settle for wheels without movement. The crushing weights from housing, transportation and inequality force a heavier lift from us, including tech companies.
The housing crisis is our generation’s defining issue. San Jose’s mayor has a worthy vision for 25,000 new homes in 10 years. And still, our region’s progress on building housing proceeds at a snail’s pace. All while middle- and working-class residents move away daily. Tech companies increasingly talk about starting, expanding or relocating elsewhere. During a crisis, major change and transformation are needed.
Yet on Silicon Valley’s civic playgrounds, folks casually toss back and forth conventional “wisdom” about why we can’t think bigger and make necessary changes. These myths float around, rarely grounded in fact or challenged by a new way.
Instead of continuing to assume we can’t, let’s figure out how we can. Let’s erect 40-story buildings around transit. Let’s have some high-rises without parking. Let’s figure out retail that thrives in this changing century. Let’s help people move around in more efficient, sustainable, healthy ways. Let’s build iconic public spaces and monuments celebrating our valley. Let’s ensure everyone has an affordable home. Let’s engage people more in their government.
Our predecessors imagined a far-reaching vision as we morphed from the Valley of Heart’s Delight to Silicon Valley. That spirit of innovation and possibility created a beacon admired worldwide. It needs to be extended to a vision for our cities.
Every region in America wants what we created. And make no mistake, they’re striving to take it from us. With all this competition, we can’t rest on past laurels to maintain present homeostasis. People won’t come or stay here if we don’t guarantee a better quality of life.
New generations want to live in flexible, dynamic, sustainable, mobile, inspiring cities. Let’s build those places for them here.
This time and place beg for boldness. Silicon Valley has the dreamers, diversity and intelligence for it. Now we need the civic leadership and vision to forge it.