Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Not sure if this is the thread for "gig economy" startups, but I've been seeing a lot of analysis like this lately, and it sounds about right:

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/27/good_riddance_gig_economy_uber_ayn_rand_and_the_awesome_collapse_of_silicon_valleys_dream_of_destroying_your_job/

haha, this is very encouraging. love the litany of failed business i've never heard of but all of which i hate on principle: "Companies like Cherry (car washes), Prim (laundry), SnapGoods (gear rental), Rewinery (wine), HomeJoy (home cleaning)" ---- fuuuuuuck you all

Totally would have used SnapGoods.

http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

What would it take to make Pittsburgh into a startup hub, like Silicon Valley? I feel like I understand Pittsburgh pretty well, because I grew up here, in Monroeville. And I understand Silicon Valley pretty well because that's where I live now. Could you get that kind of startup ecosystem going here?

When I agreed to speak here, I didn't think I'd be able to give a very optimistic talk. I thought I'd be talking about what Pittsburgh could do to become a startup hub, very much in the subjunctive. Instead I'm going to talk about what Pittsburgh can do.

What changed my mind was an article I read in of all places the New York Times food section. The title was "Pittsburgh's Youth-Driven Food Boom." To most people that might not even sound interesting, let alone something related to startups. But it was electrifying to me to read that title. I don't think I could pick a more promising one if I tried. And when I read the article I got even more excited. It said "people ages 25 to 29 now make up 7.6 percent of all residents, up from 7 percent about a decade ago." Wow, I thought, Pittsburgh could be the next Portland. It could become the cool place all the people in their twenties want to go live.

It's true that people aged 25 to 29 tend to be open to trying new things and to accepting risks, which is generally necessary for prompting rapid change. They are also drawn to living in places where they can meet other people aged 25 to 29.

"youth-driven food boom" is very corny and this dude basing his talk & his excitement on a nytimes food article is especially corny but i do think the range of "cool places all the people in their twenties want to go live" could change overtime as places like austin, portland, bay area, nyc increasingly become completely unaffordable. idk though. people in their twenties are okay w/ living in shitty conditions if the location is cool. i think maybe more "cool places all the young people in their 30s with families want to settle down" is more what i am thinking of

It's p ridiculous to think that "cool place where people in their 20s want to move" = enough to fuel becoming the "next silicon valley."

Also I assume every ex-industrial city in America is trying to do the same thing right now, and I don't see what most of them have to offer other than competing with each other to lowball tax incentives or w/e.

you don't think cost of living + stable cultural institutions is an incentive?

low cost of living that is

idk i am very much speaking from my own personal experience especially since i grew up in an ex-industrial city trying to revitalize itself and i am considering moving back there. but i currently live in an expensive city w/ a thriving tech industry and i have a decent job at a major research university but we are effectively priced out of this city. i love it here but we really have no sustainable future here, it is not even that expensive here compared w/ bay area or nyc. being able to buy a sweet house in a smaller city that may be suffering but has stable cultural + higher ed institutions is a huge draw. i mean we can't even really afford a 1br condo here.

pittsburgh rules

I visited 4-5 years ago and it was a fuckin' blast. weird to get around tho, coming from LA.

fwiw i too have heard that pittsburgh rules

must be that extra 0.6% of people age 25-29 over the last decade

i've never really been to pittsburgh! drove near it a million times since i grew up in cleveland but i've never really spent time there. fwiw i have also heard great things about it. from what i understand they have been much more successful in seeking a post-industrialization cultural renaissance

*than cleveland that is

I went to a gastro pub type place that was in a renovated cathedral. p legit even if I dont even remember if the food was good.

its also kind of like sf in that it's very hill-ey

surely all the new youngs have bernified it a little

i know this is kind of sudden but should we all form a startup there? it all seems so...undisrupted

disrupt pittsburgh by making a sandwich without french fries on it

omg that is such bullshit, cleveland has the same thing, there is a sandwich chain called "PANINI'S" but their sandwiches are ...not actual paninis? they are filled w/ fries and served on thick cut untoasted white bread, fuck that

saw that PG piece linked as "very clever satire" which makes it great

lots of cheap bars in 'tsburgh, too. played a crusthole basement show there 2 winters ago and then one of the bands brought us to several bars that had like, 2$ drinks

When I lived in Baltimore there was a restaurant that served what they called "Pittsburgh-style sandwiches" with french fries on them and it always made me feel Pittsburgh must be a glorious place

http://www.clickhole.com/article/pittsburgh-new-austin-austin-we-hoped-and-dreamed--1227

“What of Portland,” indeed. For years, tales of old claimed the Pacific Northwest city was the promised land—a new Eden upon this earth, where men and women would be free to think, and live, and love. A blossoming Eden teeming with hope and food trucks.

But the old tales are clear reminders that the devil himself could not craft a trap so beautiful in its deceitfulness.

quality lol, was reminded of robert caro

looooooooooool

20 years ago my mom worked for a pittsburgh-area local-government consortium, and their foremost long-term concern was 'how do we keep young adults from leaving?'

it seems like a worthwhile endeavor -- whether you want to create a silicon valley or not -- having decent jobs in a place where people might want and could afford to live. it's a virtuous circle, and making the place seem 'cool' is a low-cost input.

(my real father, who lives in houston, periodically wonders aloud why so many companies have headquarters in nyc where it's so expensive -- why not just put everyone in a cheap office park in topeka or albany? whatever dude.)

tbh i had much the same reaction to that nyt foodie article that the silicon valley guy did -- that would *never* have happened when i grew up. and yeah, gentrification kind of sucks, but being the kind of place where ppl reminisce about how kraft american slices used to be so much better is both worse and a dead end.

btw the fries-on-sandwich thing is just good marketing; no one ate that when i was a kid, because it's stupid

Pittsburgh's probably going to "happen" if it isn't already, hope they're ready to upzone.

I'm sure it can be the next Portland or a regional sort of Portland, I just think the jump from there to being an international tech capital is a long one.

Probably a lot of these cities can become like local portlands if the trend continues toward young people wanting to be in cities into their 30s and even beyond.

I was friends with some musicians and artists who lived in Pittsburgh and they were pretty chill. Definitely left a good mark on my mind about the place ... seemed a lot better than the cut-throat hipsterism of NYC. Honestly, I'm sick of New York, it's like all the things I think make it worth it just keeps shrinking, and rents keep ascending into the stratosphere, and obnoxious rich shits are multiplying by unthinkable numbers, which I didn't think was even possible. It seems like all the traditional "good cities" are going that way, so maybe it's time to look at the "b-list" cities.

Portland is a nice town and I like it here, but hearing people talk about it as if it were some sort of ideal paradise feels kind of strange to someone who grew up here. We need Mt. St. Helens to blow up again and dump a couple cubic miles worth of volcanic ash on our heads to bring those expectations back down to earth. But if the only remedy is that 9.0 earthquake we're due for, I think I'd rather live with all the starry-eyed newcomers and take a pass on the universal ruin and devastation for a while longer.

Xp I think it's been true for at least a decade that NYC is not really a good place to live the bohemian life - too expensive, too competitive.

It seems like all the traditional "good cities" are going that way, so maybe it's time to look at the "b-list" cities.

― larry appleton, Wednesday, April 13, 2016 8:42 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea this feels true to me

Every US city in the top three tiers needs to start upzoning and making inclusive and egalitarian housing plans about five years ago, but, failing that, right now.

I've thought about Philly for years. I think the things that keep me from doing it are (1) closeness to in-laws who help with kids, (2) my job, although I have contacts in Philly for similar kinds of work (3) slightly embarrassed about this one, but just a feeling that Philly is *less safe* compared to what I've gotten used to. Like stuff has happened to friends there that I don't hear about happening to friends in NYC.

But yeah, NYC does suck in certain ways. I've gotten very accustomed to it but it's not the place I'd probably choose if I were starting over.

In my musician days I though it seemed like a much better place to be, but I wound up in Jersey City for various reasons, and didn't really like it much.

philly's the one i think about too

xxxp I'm an office drone, I'm not necessarily talking full bohemian here. Even in the past 10 years things have changed a lot, and they're changing in such a way that it's like, what's the point anymore. Nearly everyone I know who lived here through that time has left, mostly to start families, some because the places where they worked closed down and were replaced by I don't know, BMW dealership/art gallery hybrids with their own on-site artisan micro-brew. Maybe my own priorities have changed. I'm going to soak up the educational and career opportunities while I can, though.

Safety in NYC is definitely a bonus. I moved back to the suburbs in NJ for a while; a nice looking middle class place just outside of the city, but I got to taste some street violence here. 10 years living in NYC and I never once had a problem, and I get to the suburbs and it's like a totally different world, safety wise. Weird how things have shifted.

aw yeah baby https://www.desmoinesmetro.com/en/dsm_metro_info/rankings/

I feel like Milwaukee is filled with very cool young people who live well and don't really care whether Milwaukee is the next Portland. (Milwaukee is not the next Portland.)

there are very nice neighborhoods just outside philadelphia in terms of safety + family friendliness and yr like a 10 minute drive into the city

NYC has a lot to offer, I just don't think I'm the kind of person for whom those things matter enough for it to make it worth my while. I mean we have the "best" in so many cultural and culinary type things. I like museums a lot, for example, and NYC is great for those. But I have two small kids and live out in Queens, which is the only place I can really afford a family-friendly life in (i.e. a reasonable-sized apartment, decent public schools), and it's such a schlep to go to the Manhattan museums as it is -- either drive and pay a lot for parking, or take two small kids on the subway and change trains. All the "high" performing arts stuff is great but expensive, especially with babysitter. I'd actually love to see classical music concerts more often, for example, I just can't realistically do it very often. Same thing with the good restaurants, and honestly I love food but I really don't give too much of a shit about high end restaurants with big deal chefs. I enjoy them, but I could go the rest of my life without eating in one. I find the faddy stuff that excitement gets manufactured about (cronuts) boring, I like nature, and I don't really like convenience culture. I also, weirdly, don't enjoy Central Park all that much when I get to it, I find it too crowded and overwhelming -- it feels more like a destination than a park, if that makes sense. In fact too many parts of the city are like that for me, always feeling surrounded by tourists and strangers.

I live in a nondescript red brick co-op in an area that is many square blocks of near-identical, non-descript red brick co-ops. I sometimes call them bourgeois housing projects. The commercial stuff in my neighborhood is pretty much indistinguishable from a suburb with a walkable downtown, and not an especially nice one (Gap, Banana Republic, Verizon Store, three Starbucks, mediocre overpriced restaurants, TGI Fridays), and I have this butt-ugly quasi-highway called Queens Boulevard in the center of my neighborhood. I have better QOL than a lot of people I know but it's still not great.

I kind of feel for you here, because it seems like you have a setup that's pretty similar to what most people around America have (you're used to it, it works, it's fine, in-laws nearby which is kinda huge when you have kids) but it's embedded in this cultural expectation that living in New York is supposed to be AMAZING and also AN IMPOSSIBLE CRISIS when for you it is neither and I feel like that would create some kind of internal dissonance

Yeah, actually I think it's sort of the feeling that I have to work harder and have a better job than most people just to have an ordinary standard of living, not that there's actually anything wrong with the standard of living. I never actually aimed to live here for all the "AMAZING NYC" stuff, it just sort of worked out that we live here. But that stuff sometimes feels like this fantastical simulacra that exists just beyond the threshold of my actual life.

Like I have more stress for that same standard of living.

My own issue is maybe I'm getting older. When I first moved to NYC I was in my early 20s, and I was a wannabe hipster scumbag. New York was awesome for that. Now that I'm a little more mature, it's like, have a normal life in a more expensive, more stressful environment ... it's worth some thought.

tbh most people, especially parents, tend to live that way -- commute to a job, spend the rest of your time in and around a neighborhood, with the exception of occasional excursions for shopping/entertainment or regular semi-commutes for kid activities (sports, dance class, music lessons)

Silicon Valley is kind of a weird one in that a lot of smaller companies are now in SF, but the larger employers remain in big suburban campuses. Apple, Google, etc have a number of people doing the reverse city-to-suburb commute, but a lot of people who are settled in those businesses live in the outlying suburbs closer to work

afaik Google is still working on a campus in Boulder, Colorado, which is relatively self-contained and would have a minimal commute, at least until housing dries up completely and people are driving from the next town over