8 ms·

San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt

43 points by wybo 13y ago

wybo 13y ago
Is this really happening? If it is, it brings up an interesting issue. Private public transport can out compete public transport. But then school buses already do this as well (compared to Europe). Though I did commute using SF buses, and I fully understand why one would not prefer ones kids to travel on them, and even why one would prefer company buses. As for rents, true, but can that not mostly be blamed on restrictive building regulations? Not so much with regards to standards as well with regards to limits to flats and highrise buildings. As there is an undisputed market demand for more housing in the bay-area. Imho protesters are a tad misguided in who they are targeting.
- paul_f 13y ago
  Let me fix that for you: protesters are misguided.
  - datphp 13y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with that. There is a legion of people making six figures, who together have a lot of power if they were to try to do something. I know disruption or even violence won't help at first, but it raises awareness. Maybe then people can start talking about intelligent measures to help those who need it. I know if I was making 200k I'd be glad to be taxed an extra %, if that money was going towards help for people who've seen the place they lived their whole life slowly push them out, even though they're still needed there. That's an important point. The big fishes need the small ones to survive, so there's demand, demand for people to do lesser paid activities and being in a constant struggle. Then again I'm Swiss, and we have a history of voting ourselves tax raises, most of which goes to to the lower classes in some way. We live in a pretty happy and safe society though, infrastructures are great and affordable (mostly free if you don't make much). Seems to me like a good tradeoff for passing on a new TV or some designer clothes once a year.
    - alimoeeny 13y ago
      Any Swiss company hiring? :)
      - datphp 13y ago
        Can you write neutral Java? :P
    - bermanoid 13y ago
      Unfortunately this is mostly a zero-sum game: there's a very limited supply of housing in San Francisco, and it's always going to go to the highest bidder, which is the eternal gentrification struggle. Rich people deciding they're willing to pay more taxes won't help here, because it won't create more housing supply. Even a direct redistribution scheme wouldn't do much, because the rich will still be able to outbid the poor for the scarce apartments. Short of rich people deciding they don't want to take that job in the Bay Area or government straight up banning them from moving there, I don't think there's much anyone can do to help prevent the poor from being displaced. Getting SF to allow new construction would help a lot (there are probably thousands of developers that would love to build 100+ unit luxury complexes in the Mission), but at this point it seems that's something of a losing battle. Weirdly, it's the very people that are protesting the current influx of tech workers and rising rents that most viciously oppose new high-occupancy construction in the "true" SF neighborhoods because it would destroy their character, so it's a tough nut to crack.
      - rtpg 13y ago
        >Weirdly, it's the very people that are protesting the current influx of tech workers and rising rents that most viciously oppose new high-occupancy construction in the "true" SF neighborhoods because it would destroy their character, so it's a tough nut to crack. That's really unfortunate, I'd hope that people would realize that you can have good-quality high-occupancy construction(see loads of places in Europe, Japan). I don't necessarily know if it's a zero-sum game though. If higher quality mass transit were in place, the cost of living out of the city would be lessened (both in cost and stress). I think it would be really cool if San Francisco built a subway line that went down south. It would convince people to not live exactly in the city center (because you'd have relatively easy access by subway), so could ease real estate preasures downtown, and would generally encourage a better spread of the population. It's not that people want to live downtown, but that they want to easily get downtown.
- brudgers 13y ago
  Let's get terms straight. Google is providing private mass transport. It's no more public transport than a charter liquor and gambling bus to Atlantic City. If it was public transport non-Googlers would ride for similar tariffs - ok that's probably inaccurate since poor riders would have their transport subsidized rather than Google's subsidy to those more affluent. Google's buses are solving more traffic problems in MountainView than San Francisco and relieving the congestion that most impacts commuters from San Francisco to their campus. If the service had to meet the requirements for public transportation i.e. meeting public needs, Google would shut it down.
  - wybo 13y ago
    If you take the terms technically, it is private mass-transit. However, considering its function, it does cut directly into the market for public transport (that already is difficult in many US cities due to lower density and more car-use). The terms don't matter that much (except for politically perhaps). As for solving traffic problems, they don't necessarily do this more so than public transport would, if Googlers took that. I think the issue is more that MUNI might have to think about introducing first-class busses, or first-class sections, or something like that. Because many people don't like sharing a bus bench with smelly (homeless) people.
  - alangpierce 13y ago
    It isn't necessarily the case that Google would shut down their bus service if it had to meet the requirements of public transportation. It looks like Google already funds a free shuttle from the Mountain View Caltrain station to Google HQ and the surrounding area, which actually is public transit. http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Shuttles/Shoreline_Shuttle.html http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Shuttles/Shoreline_Shuttle... (See the fine print at the bottom for details.) It's potentially possible that a similar approach could be done for the SF to Mountain View commute, where Google subsidizes the creation of specific public bus lines in exchange for Google employees riding for free, or something like that. That would probably make the community happier about the bus issue, although it wouldn't fix the rent/displacement issue at all.
  - macspoofing 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
joeblau 13y ago
There is one thing that I've really come to love and respect about the city of San Francisco. They fight for what they want. I've seen protests for everything ranging from wars, to working conditions, to America's Cup worker wages. Most other places would just get rolled over by whomever has the money. Underneath this issue, there are some serious socioeconomic issues at hand that need to be addressed. One thing I've done to try and give back is during the holiday season, create some care packages and hand them out to the homeless. Put together basic stuff like dental floss, razors, deodorant, hard candy, socks, pop-corn, etc in a zip-lock bag. As I walked around the city and saw homeless people, I would give them a bag. It was about $400 bucks and about 4 hours of time between two people to make 20 bags. All you have to do is hand them out as you're doing your daily things around the city. You would be surprised at how eloquent, smart, and appreciative some of the people on the street actually are. If you live in San Francisco, you _know_ you're going to run into someone homeless on any given day. That being said, I realize that I'm not the regular San Francisco transplant and most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  >>most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them. You're not the only engineer who feels this way. Thanks for your story and a great suggestion on how to help ourselves become better people through service to others. Solving a technical problem gives me an ephemeral and fleeting feeling of elation, which I admit is nice. The positive feelings I get from assisting someone, however, persist throughout my lifetime.
- nirnira 13y ago
  Nice. But if you think it's so worthwhile to help homeless people, why don't you help them full-time, instead of just dabbling? And if you're going to help them, are goodie bags really the best way, or can you think of more powerful, uplifting ways to help them improve their station in life? That's the economically rational course of action, after all - devote the maximum amount of your time to the activity you consider most valuable (whether to yourself or others - wherever your priorities lie), and try and be as effective in that activity as possible - otherwise you're just splitting your time, jack of all trades, master of none.
1010011010 13y ago
Why people think California is awesome (other than the weather) is a mystery.
- joeblau 13y ago
  I love the food and the the fact that the Bay Area has a high concentration of brilliant minds in a very small area. Attending Meetups and talks from some of the leading thinkers in technology has been something that isn't as accessible elsewhere. edit: Rent prices are crazy though.
- choult 13y ago
  Having just gotten back to the UK after my first trip to SF I can see why people like it - it's got a great buzz, and the culture is varied and attractive. My biggest concern - though it might just be because I was downtown, or that I've not spent much time in US cities - was the large number of homeless. Maybe the Googles and SalesForces in the area could help those guys out?
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    I just got back to the UK after my first trip to SF and was disconcerted at the lack of culture shock. Evidently I moved into a J. G. Ballard short story some time ago.
rtpg 13y ago
I'm extremely biased because I think any effort to "normalize" a 40-mile commute is poison to any environment, but I still don't get why, if everyone working at places like Google want to live in SF, why can't Google and co. just have offices in the city? I get that they wouldn't be able to build their own little disneyworlds that way, but instead of having Google build an entire ecosystem, they could just have offices and people could just go downtown to eat, or not need laundry services because they don't lose 2 hours a day in a bus. If offices were built closer to the city, they could be smaller but I'm fairly convinced most people would consider it an upgrade to quality of life in general. When I did some work in Tokyo, going outside at lunch and just breathing some fresh air during the 10 minutes spent transiting really helped to refresh the mind. I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. It's basically the business equivalent of gated communities with their own services, to the detriment of services shared with everyone. I can get why people can get mad.
- myko 13y ago
  > I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. Where is this prison like Google environment you're talking about?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - fallinghawks 13y ago
    Agree, that's a most ridiculous statement.
- btian 13y ago
  Have you even visited Google's campus in Mountain View? There is no such thing as closed-off prison-like campus...
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Contrasting your typical office-park space, in which if you plan on eating off-campus you'll almost certainly have to drive someplace (typically several miles, often in choking noontime traffic), a city office space often offers a highly diverse environment within easy walking distance -- a few blocks. To say nothing of the vastly greater transit service (though this is often overwhelmed and/or unreliable), and option to commute by other means (often bicycles).
icebraining 13y ago
Guardian, what about a link to the study? Or to the protestors' pages? It's called hypertext for a reason. The study is here: http://www.danielledai.com/academic/dai-weinzimmer-shuttles.pdf http://www.danielledai.com/academic/dai-weinzimmer-shuttles....
copx 13y ago
That is what you get if you're going to San Francisco. The city has been a left/liberal activist stronghold since long before Google even existed. And yeah, things like gentrification and private luxury buses do tend to provoke that crowd. Maybe Google should consider relocating to a military town in Texas. It seems there is a great convergence between Google's massive (and permanently growing) data collection and the total surveillance efforts of the government.
- Claudus 13y ago
  I'm sure Texas would be more than happy to have Google offices in any of the major cities, and there's plenty of space.
stigi 13y ago
"Well organised protesters have blocked buses[...]" Bet they've been using Google Drive to organise.
tehwalrus 13y ago
The underlying problem, as with all property bubbles including the UK's, is planning restrictions. In the past, people would move to areas of high employment from areas of low employment, and new housing was built for the economic migrants - this is how cities expanded. Now, restrictions on building new accommodation entrench expensive neighbourhoods, and mean economic migrants can't move nearer to the employment. This leads to both a property bubble market and lower employment overall in the nation. This was all proposed/explained in this article a few months ago: "Stay Put, Young Man", http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_2013/features/stay_put_young_man047332.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_... (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6563854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6563854 )
macspoofing 13y ago
This is a quintessential embarrassment of riches. San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? What's the solution here? Not have tech companies that employ thousands of people (for upper-middle class wages) in the area?! Not have thousands of young educated people from all over the country and the world, want to move to, work and live in the city? Not have those employees wanting to live in the city, but instead go down the route of the 1950-1980s generations and settle suburbia, and leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden? Even in this specific case, what's wrong with a corporation providing a mass transit option to their workers so they don't have to drive in and needlessly congest the roads and pollute the environment.
- rtpg 13y ago
  >leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden The companies aren't in downtown, they're out 40 miles away instead, so not paying local taxes or helping the local economy. Instead you just have the workers who basically just sleep in SF, paying property taxes but not even opting to using the public transportation to make it better. > San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness, really shitty public transportation, and dysfunctional regulations that end up causing rent to be even higher. If you told anybody of a city where most of the world's innovation happen, you'd at least imagine a city with a functional system of mass transportation, but we can't seem to even get that right. San Fran should be the best city in the world. The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. People spend a lot of money where they end up working.
  - macspoofing 13y ago
    >The companies aren't in downtown The employees live in the city. >Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness None of that is caused by having Google in the area. This is a cultural and a government regulatory problem (municipal, and state and federal to lesser extent). >The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. If you're an employee you spend money where you live, not where you work. It would be nice for San Fran if all engineers worked in San Fran as well, but you can't have everything. Plus it wouldn't be so nice for Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc. In fact, those municipalities have more to complain about since they can argue they are nothing more than commuter cities. San Fran should count their blessings.
BjoernKW 13y ago
"Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation," they wrote on flyers left near his house. "He is also your neighbour." What were those people thinking? They're subtly but very clearly trying to intimidate that guy. This is like saying "We don't want the likes of you around here." If those protesters really wanted to do something against surveillance and control they should hold those accountable who are responsible for the NSA disaster and things like Guantanamo. Instead, they chose to pick on an individual who isn't any more responsible for those issues than a factory worker producing weapons is for the war crimes committed with these weapons. If they want to start a revolution they should be heading to Washington, D.C. instead of starting a petty revolt by bullying some guy who's neither responsible for the issues at hand nor for their own failures in life. If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  "If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it." Yes, let's remove every current resident of SF by charging outrageous rent rates and only have rich Google engineers there. Because, that's why. There's no other place they can live, of course, right? But don't complain then when they don't have anywhere to go for laundry, or the only coffee place is an overpriced Starbucks, or groceries are double what you pay somewhere else.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Its supposed to be a free country. Sad when your rent goes up, but a free market allows that. I'm a little offended each time the self-styled old-guard want to 'protect the neighborhood' by which they mean 'keep my cheap rent'. How about you live where you can afford, like everybody else?
    - raverbashing 13y ago
      " want to 'protect the neighborhood' by which they mean 'keep my cheap rent'. How about you live where you can afford, like everybody else?" So, there are no rent-controlled places in the USA? How about NYC? Sure, let's raise your rent disproportionately and drive you to a bigger commute, how about that. What if everything near - let's say a 1h30 commute - is expensive? Of course there are two sides to raising rents, but usually what happens is that it drives away the people that made the place in high demand in the first place. There's no lack of space in the USA, or even in SF, but apparently people decide to go for the already dense areas. Google could build their Google Dorm in a cheaper area and have buses come and go from there, how about it? Not everybody is a high-payed SW engineer, so sure, their rent can be raised and people that can't afford it move away, causing more traffic (either the Google people moving there - MV is far from SF) and the people that moves out and now have to commute), more social issues, etc
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
It smacks of 'protest chic'. Cool to wave signs somebody else made and get in the new for being all liberal. If those guys were going to a factory job, they'd be ok neighbors. But because they're going to a better job, it's cool to make trouble for them.
nirnira 13y ago
Christ, it's painful to read about these people with such stupid, lazy attitudes and opinions - yet somehow still able to muster the energy to go out and throw a huge tantrum and make a huge mess for other people. Instead of thinking constructively about how to make themselves genuinely more valuable to other humans, they just bitch and moan about what they believe themselves entitled to - conditions which were never contractually promised to them. Yeesh. Admirable in a way, I suppose, but still. Still, this is a really interesting clash of interests - between the infrastructural needs of potentially the great city of the 21st century, and its cultural roots. You need a mix of both - you can't just turn SF into a grid of mega-skyscrapers, although that'd open the gates for great companies, and real progress - you need something of the old sense of city and style - but you can't just pretend the city can still function and thrive as a museum of genteel Victorians and arts and craft co-ops, while the future brews down in San Jose... You need capacity and character to build the launchpad of the future.

43 points by wybo 13y ago

wybo 13y ago

Is this really happening? If it is, it brings up an interesting issue. Private public transport can out compete public transport. But then school buses already do this as well (compared to Europe). Though I did commute using SF buses, and I fully understand why one would not prefer ones kids to travel on them, and even why one would prefer company buses. As for rents, true, but can that not mostly be blamed on restrictive building regulations? Not so much with regards to standards as well with regards to limits to flats and highrise buildings. As there is an undisputed market demand for more housing in the bay-area. Imho protesters are a tad misguided in who they are targeting.

paul_f 13y ago
Let me fix that for you: protesters are misguided.
- datphp 13y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with that. There is a legion of people making six figures, who together have a lot of power if they were to try to do something. I know disruption or even violence won't help at first, but it raises awareness. Maybe then people can start talking about intelligent measures to help those who need it. I know if I was making 200k I'd be glad to be taxed an extra %, if that money was going towards help for people who've seen the place they lived their whole life slowly push them out, even though they're still needed there. That's an important point. The big fishes need the small ones to survive, so there's demand, demand for people to do lesser paid activities and being in a constant struggle. Then again I'm Swiss, and we have a history of voting ourselves tax raises, most of which goes to to the lower classes in some way. We live in a pretty happy and safe society though, infrastructures are great and affordable (mostly free if you don't make much). Seems to me like a good tradeoff for passing on a new TV or some designer clothes once a year.
  - alimoeeny 13y ago
    Any Swiss company hiring? :)
    - datphp 13y ago
      Can you write neutral Java? :P
  - bermanoid 13y ago
    Unfortunately this is mostly a zero-sum game: there's a very limited supply of housing in San Francisco, and it's always going to go to the highest bidder, which is the eternal gentrification struggle. Rich people deciding they're willing to pay more taxes won't help here, because it won't create more housing supply. Even a direct redistribution scheme wouldn't do much, because the rich will still be able to outbid the poor for the scarce apartments. Short of rich people deciding they don't want to take that job in the Bay Area or government straight up banning them from moving there, I don't think there's much anyone can do to help prevent the poor from being displaced. Getting SF to allow new construction would help a lot (there are probably thousands of developers that would love to build 100+ unit luxury complexes in the Mission), but at this point it seems that's something of a losing battle. Weirdly, it's the very people that are protesting the current influx of tech workers and rising rents that most viciously oppose new high-occupancy construction in the "true" SF neighborhoods because it would destroy their character, so it's a tough nut to crack.
    - rtpg 13y ago
      >Weirdly, it's the very people that are protesting the current influx of tech workers and rising rents that most viciously oppose new high-occupancy construction in the "true" SF neighborhoods because it would destroy their character, so it's a tough nut to crack. That's really unfortunate, I'd hope that people would realize that you can have good-quality high-occupancy construction(see loads of places in Europe, Japan). I don't necessarily know if it's a zero-sum game though. If higher quality mass transit were in place, the cost of living out of the city would be lessened (both in cost and stress). I think it would be really cool if San Francisco built a subway line that went down south. It would convince people to not live exactly in the city center (because you'd have relatively easy access by subway), so could ease real estate preasures downtown, and would generally encourage a better spread of the population. It's not that people want to live downtown, but that they want to easily get downtown.
brudgers 13y ago
Let's get terms straight. Google is providing private mass transport. It's no more public transport than a charter liquor and gambling bus to Atlantic City. If it was public transport non-Googlers would ride for similar tariffs - ok that's probably inaccurate since poor riders would have their transport subsidized rather than Google's subsidy to those more affluent. Google's buses are solving more traffic problems in MountainView than San Francisco and relieving the congestion that most impacts commuters from San Francisco to their campus. If the service had to meet the requirements for public transportation i.e. meeting public needs, Google would shut it down.
- wybo 13y ago
  If you take the terms technically, it is private mass-transit. However, considering its function, it does cut directly into the market for public transport (that already is difficult in many US cities due to lower density and more car-use). The terms don't matter that much (except for politically perhaps). As for solving traffic problems, they don't necessarily do this more so than public transport would, if Googlers took that. I think the issue is more that MUNI might have to think about introducing first-class busses, or first-class sections, or something like that. Because many people don't like sharing a bus bench with smelly (homeless) people.
- alangpierce 13y ago
  It isn't necessarily the case that Google would shut down their bus service if it had to meet the requirements of public transportation. It looks like Google already funds a free shuttle from the Mountain View Caltrain station to Google HQ and the surrounding area, which actually is public transit. http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Shuttles/Shoreline_Shuttle.html http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Shuttles/Shoreline_Shuttle... (See the fine print at the bottom for details.) It's potentially possible that a similar approach could be done for the SF to Mountain View commute, where Google subsidizes the creation of specific public bus lines in exchange for Google employees riding for free, or something like that. That would probably make the community happier about the bus issue, although it wouldn't fix the rent/displacement issue at all.
- macspoofing 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

joeblau 13y ago

There is one thing that I've really come to love and respect about the city of San Francisco. They fight for what they want. I've seen protests for everything ranging from wars, to working conditions, to America's Cup worker wages. Most other places would just get rolled over by whomever has the money. Underneath this issue, there are some serious socioeconomic issues at hand that need to be addressed. One thing I've done to try and give back is during the holiday season, create some care packages and hand them out to the homeless. Put together basic stuff like dental floss, razors, deodorant, hard candy, socks, pop-corn, etc in a zip-lock bag. As I walked around the city and saw homeless people, I would give them a bag. It was about $400 bucks and about 4 hours of time between two people to make 20 bags. All you have to do is hand them out as you're doing your daily things around the city. You would be surprised at how eloquent, smart, and appreciative some of the people on the street actually are. If you live in San Francisco, you _know_ you're going to run into someone homeless on any given day. That being said, I realize that I'm not the regular San Francisco transplant and most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them.

wavefunction 13y ago
>>most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them. You're not the only engineer who feels this way. Thanks for your story and a great suggestion on how to help ourselves become better people through service to others. Solving a technical problem gives me an ephemeral and fleeting feeling of elation, which I admit is nice. The positive feelings I get from assisting someone, however, persist throughout my lifetime.
nirnira 13y ago
Nice. But if you think it's so worthwhile to help homeless people, why don't you help them full-time, instead of just dabbling? And if you're going to help them, are goodie bags really the best way, or can you think of more powerful, uplifting ways to help them improve their station in life? That's the economically rational course of action, after all - devote the maximum amount of your time to the activity you consider most valuable (whether to yourself or others - wherever your priorities lie), and try and be as effective in that activity as possible - otherwise you're just splitting your time, jack of all trades, master of none.

1010011010 13y ago

Why people think California is awesome (other than the weather) is a mystery.

joeblau 13y ago
I love the food and the the fact that the Bay Area has a high concentration of brilliant minds in a very small area. Attending Meetups and talks from some of the leading thinkers in technology has been something that isn't as accessible elsewhere. edit: Rent prices are crazy though.
choult 13y ago
Having just gotten back to the UK after my first trip to SF I can see why people like it - it's got a great buzz, and the culture is varied and attractive. My biggest concern - though it might just be because I was downtown, or that I've not spent much time in US cities - was the large number of homeless. Maybe the Googles and SalesForces in the area could help those guys out?
- davidgerard 13y ago
  I just got back to the UK after my first trip to SF and was disconcerted at the lack of culture shock. Evidently I moved into a J. G. Ballard short story some time ago.

rtpg 13y ago

I'm extremely biased because I think any effort to "normalize" a 40-mile commute is poison to any environment, but I still don't get why, if everyone working at places like Google want to live in SF, why can't Google and co. just have offices in the city? I get that they wouldn't be able to build their own little disneyworlds that way, but instead of having Google build an entire ecosystem, they could just have offices and people could just go downtown to eat, or not need laundry services because they don't lose 2 hours a day in a bus. If offices were built closer to the city, they could be smaller but I'm fairly convinced most people would consider it an upgrade to quality of life in general. When I did some work in Tokyo, going outside at lunch and just breathing some fresh air during the 10 minutes spent transiting really helped to refresh the mind. I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. It's basically the business equivalent of gated communities with their own services, to the detriment of services shared with everyone. I can get why people can get mad.

myko 13y ago
> I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. Where is this prison like Google environment you're talking about?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- fallinghawks 13y ago
  Agree, that's a most ridiculous statement.
btian 13y ago
Have you even visited Google's campus in Mountain View? There is no such thing as closed-off prison-like campus...
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Contrasting your typical office-park space, in which if you plan on eating off-campus you'll almost certainly have to drive someplace (typically several miles, often in choking noontime traffic), a city office space often offers a highly diverse environment within easy walking distance -- a few blocks. To say nothing of the vastly greater transit service (though this is often overwhelmed and/or unreliable), and option to commute by other means (often bicycles).

icebraining 13y ago

Guardian, what about a link to the study? Or to the protestors' pages? It's called hypertext for a reason. The study is here: http://www.danielledai.com/academic/dai-weinzimmer-shuttles.pdf http://www.danielledai.com/academic/dai-weinzimmer-shuttles....

copx 13y ago

That is what you get if you're going to San Francisco. The city has been a left/liberal activist stronghold since long before Google even existed. And yeah, things like gentrification and private luxury buses do tend to provoke that crowd. Maybe Google should consider relocating to a military town in Texas. It seems there is a great convergence between Google's massive (and permanently growing) data collection and the total surveillance efforts of the government.

Claudus 13y ago
I'm sure Texas would be more than happy to have Google offices in any of the major cities, and there's plenty of space.

stigi 13y ago

"Well organised protesters have blocked buses[...]" Bet they've been using Google Drive to organise.

tehwalrus 13y ago

The underlying problem, as with all property bubbles including the UK's, is planning restrictions. In the past, people would move to areas of high employment from areas of low employment, and new housing was built for the economic migrants - this is how cities expanded. Now, restrictions on building new accommodation entrench expensive neighbourhoods, and mean economic migrants can't move nearer to the employment. This leads to both a property bubble market and lower employment overall in the nation. This was all proposed/explained in this article a few months ago: "Stay Put, Young Man", http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_2013/features/stay_put_young_man047332.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_... (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6563854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6563854 )

macspoofing 13y ago

This is a quintessential embarrassment of riches. San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? What's the solution here? Not have tech companies that employ thousands of people (for upper-middle class wages) in the area?! Not have thousands of young educated people from all over the country and the world, want to move to, work and live in the city? Not have those employees wanting to live in the city, but instead go down the route of the 1950-1980s generations and settle suburbia, and leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden? Even in this specific case, what's wrong with a corporation providing a mass transit option to their workers so they don't have to drive in and needlessly congest the roads and pollute the environment.

rtpg 13y ago
>leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden The companies aren't in downtown, they're out 40 miles away instead, so not paying local taxes or helping the local economy. Instead you just have the workers who basically just sleep in SF, paying property taxes but not even opting to using the public transportation to make it better. > San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness, really shitty public transportation, and dysfunctional regulations that end up causing rent to be even higher. If you told anybody of a city where most of the world's innovation happen, you'd at least imagine a city with a functional system of mass transportation, but we can't seem to even get that right. San Fran should be the best city in the world. The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. People spend a lot of money where they end up working.
- macspoofing 13y ago
  >The companies aren't in downtown The employees live in the city. >Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness None of that is caused by having Google in the area. This is a cultural and a government regulatory problem (municipal, and state and federal to lesser extent). >The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. If you're an employee you spend money where you live, not where you work. It would be nice for San Fran if all engineers worked in San Fran as well, but you can't have everything. Plus it wouldn't be so nice for Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc. In fact, those municipalities have more to complain about since they can argue they are nothing more than commuter cities. San Fran should count their blessings.

BjoernKW 13y ago

"Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation," they wrote on flyers left near his house. "He is also your neighbour." What were those people thinking? They're subtly but very clearly trying to intimidate that guy. This is like saying "We don't want the likes of you around here." If those protesters really wanted to do something against surveillance and control they should hold those accountable who are responsible for the NSA disaster and things like Guantanamo. Instead, they chose to pick on an individual who isn't any more responsible for those issues than a factory worker producing weapons is for the war crimes committed with these weapons. If they want to start a revolution they should be heading to Washington, D.C. instead of starting a petty revolt by bullying some guy who's neither responsible for the issues at hand nor for their own failures in life. If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it.

raverbashing 13y ago
"If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it." Yes, let's remove every current resident of SF by charging outrageous rent rates and only have rich Google engineers there. Because, that's why. There's no other place they can live, of course, right? But don't complain then when they don't have anywhere to go for laundry, or the only coffee place is an overpriced Starbucks, or groceries are double what you pay somewhere else.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Its supposed to be a free country. Sad when your rent goes up, but a free market allows that. I'm a little offended each time the self-styled old-guard want to 'protect the neighborhood' by which they mean 'keep my cheap rent'. How about you live where you can afford, like everybody else?
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    " want to 'protect the neighborhood' by which they mean 'keep my cheap rent'. How about you live where you can afford, like everybody else?" So, there are no rent-controlled places in the USA? How about NYC? Sure, let's raise your rent disproportionately and drive you to a bigger commute, how about that. What if everything near - let's say a 1h30 commute - is expensive? Of course there are two sides to raising rents, but usually what happens is that it drives away the people that made the place in high demand in the first place. There's no lack of space in the USA, or even in SF, but apparently people decide to go for the already dense areas. Google could build their Google Dorm in a cheaper area and have buses come and go from there, how about it? Not everybody is a high-payed SW engineer, so sure, their rent can be raised and people that can't afford it move away, causing more traffic (either the Google people moving there - MV is far from SF) and the people that moves out and now have to commute), more social issues, etc

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

It smacks of 'protest chic'. Cool to wave signs somebody else made and get in the new for being all liberal. If those guys were going to a factory job, they'd be ok neighbors. But because they're going to a better job, it's cool to make trouble for them.

nirnira 13y ago

Christ, it's painful to read about these people with such stupid, lazy attitudes and opinions - yet somehow still able to muster the energy to go out and throw a huge tantrum and make a huge mess for other people. Instead of thinking constructively about how to make themselves genuinely more valuable to other humans, they just bitch and moan about what they believe themselves entitled to - conditions which were never contractually promised to them. Yeesh. Admirable in a way, I suppose, but still. Still, this is a really interesting clash of interests - between the infrastructural needs of potentially the great city of the 21st century, and its cultural roots. You need a mix of both - you can't just turn SF into a grid of mega-skyscrapers, although that'd open the gates for great companies, and real progress - you need something of the old sense of city and style - but you can't just pretend the city can still function and thrive as a museum of genteel Victorians and arts and craft co-ops, while the future brews down in San Jose... You need capacity and character to build the launchpad of the future.