Is San Jose creating a national model for a metropolis?
San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the country with more than 1 million residents, has been described as America's “most forgettable” major city. That caricature has persisted even though it sits at the heart of one of the world's most mythologized subcultures, Silicon Valley. The city is home to the headquarters of Adobe, Zoom, eBay and, in the future, Google's largest campus.
Soon, San Jose may shed its forgettable image. In a region that is the poster child for NIMBYism, San Jose is one of the only cities with the politics necessary to build dense, sustainable housing, providing a model for progressive urban development.
In 1920, San Jose was 17 square miles. By 1970, it was 120 square miles, its expansion fueled by highways and developers covering farmland with a sea of single-family homes linking San Jose to nearby towns such as Cupertino and Sunnyvale. This growth model has resulted in a statewide housing shortage of 2.5 million units.
The state Legislature enacted a series of housing laws, including laws to fast-track affordable housing (SB 35) and to allow four units on singlefamily lots (SB 9). While many California cities have resisted implementing the laws, San Jose has embraced them.
San Jose is moving toward densification in part because sprawl is not only bad for the environment, it is also expensive. As cities face austerity budgets coming out of the pandemic, attracting new residents to downtown is key to balancing the budget.
San Jose's policy environment is primed for building. While cities in the rest of the Bay Area tend to be zoned for low-rise development, San Jose's downtown is zoned for high-rise buildings. San Jose has adopted an “urban villages” strategy, rezoning the sprawl that extends from downtown with the intent of fostering a network of additional, mini urban centers.
While permitting in most major cities is notoriously labyrinthine, San Jose has expedited the process. If you want to build an accessory dwelling unit in your backyard, the city has preapproved vendors and will issue you a same-day permit.
San Jose has said it will also launch a streamlined approval process for infill housing. For larger stand-alone projects, the city has conducted a blanket environmental impact review that pre-approves over 14,000 new homes. Practically, that means large projects in San Jose can be permitted in as little as six months.
In 2022, San Jose became the largest U.S. city to drop minimum parking space requirements for new housing developments, a priority for transit advocates nationally. In 2021, the city approved revised plans for Diridon station — where Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, high-speed rail and other forms of transit are slated to meet — a project that local leaders describe as the West Coast's Grand Central.
Last month, Nabr, a housing company I helped start, received approval from San Jose to construct two sustainable apartment buildings in the heart of the city. Designed by the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, these Scandinavian-inspired timber towers will be accompanied by a plaza with public programming and improvements to the adjacent bike lanes.
Much of the development is planned in and around SoFA (South of First Area), San Jose's main retail corridor during its agrarian boom years. SoFA has preserved its Spanish-era streets, with treelined sidewalks and a vintage streetcar. Known as “Silicon Valley's Creative District,” SoFA is now home to the types of small businesses that were pushed out of San Francisco. In 2016, they formed the SoFA Partnership, which sponsors public art and South First Fridays, when galleries stay open at night.
There has been a lot of talk in the Bay Area that it's time to build. Although there is still work to be done to translate policy into funded projects, San Jose is getting started. Perhaps it will one day outshine San Francisco, its smaller yet more illustrious cousin. You may leave your heart in San Francisco, but if you care about the future, you should know the way to San Jose.