Awesome article, delivering harsh stinging truth: "As disappointed visitors and new employees discover, Silicon Valley is a dull and ugly landscape of low-rise stucco office parks and immense traffic-clogged boulevards. The fancy restaurants are in strip malls, like you'd find in Arizona or something."
Perfect description of the Valley. Somewhat better than say Northern Virginia, but by a hair.
I remember my first trip to Silicon Valley in 1999. I have been to San Francisco before, but never outside the city. I had a job interview in Sunnyvale (I believe). Was super-excited since I loved San Francisco. As soon as I started driving in my rental car from SJC, I was shocked at the surroundings. I simply assumed SV was like SF.
I got the job offer, but rejected it. Never been back to SV until last year (not counting SJ). I actually live in California, but I will never move to the Bay Area.
What constitutes the north bay? I've been to Marin and Sonoma counties and like them both. I go to SF every now and then, but I just never stop in SV although I drive through it.
My priorities are different from 1999. And while I no longer wish to live in SF, I am still avoiding SV. The primary reason is price.
Rang so true for me too. Growing up in London, the valley seemed like the centre of the universe and somewhere I'd eventually want to move to, but when I first visited in 1993 for Apple's WWDC and went exploring I was massively disappointed. ISTR I described it to friends back home as "Like Slough but with better weather". On the other hand I totally adored San Francisco.
I've spent a fair bit of time in both places since then and it's not changed my view much.
"Somewhat better than say Northern Virginia, but by a hair."
In my experience of 2011 (visiting Santa Clara), quite a lot better than NoVA (where I lived at the time), but for the opposite reason than I think you'd say: everything in the Valley seemed open and spread out and inviting, rather than crowded and dirty, like NoVA feels. NoVA is just a step above cities I've been in, such as DC and NYC; the Valley is much more relaxing.
Are you talking about Arlington/Alexandria or "real Northern Virginia" (Vienna, Tyson's Corner, etc)? The former are really just part of D.C. They are as densely populated as the city proper, and were legally part of D.C. until Virginia took the land back right before the Civil War. Arlington is where D.C.'s high-rises are (as a result of the stupid building height restriction in the city proper) and is well-integrated into the city's subway network.
Of course, Alexandria and Arlington are also the only tolerable places in Northern Virginia.
It's pretty patronizing, as a Virginian, to hear somebody say that Alexandria is an extension of DC. Alexandria far predates DC and there was strong opposition to its integration (Arlington didn't exist at the time; the entirety of Arlington County was part of Alexandria).
Also, perhaps you find Arlington/Alexandria to be the only "tolerable" places in Northern Virginia because they are the only urban parts of this area. If you care about fishing more than clubbing, there are far more desirable places to be (not to say I don't do some great fishing here in Alexandria myself).
I grew up in Vienna/Mclean, and honestly everyone I know from there says they grew up in D.C. They might admit they grew up in the "D.C. suburbs" if prodded. Regardless of the underlying political divisions, northern virginia is today merely a suburban outgrowth of D.C.
Nobody is denying that northern Virginia is part of the DC Metro area. That doesn't make it magically not Virginian any more than it makes Prince George's county, etc. not part of Maryland. Your friends would say they were from DC, or the DC area, because that is accurate. Also, DC being a notable city, this is more recognizable to folks not from around here.
I say I'm from Virginia because that's accurate and just as recognizable. But some people like to say they're from a big city even if they grew up far outside of it ... to each their own. Growing up in DC is a decidedly different experience from growing up in any part of Virginia and I'd find it disingenuous to claim either inaccurately.
Alexandria and Annandale, specifically. They're similarly crowded. The commute into DC from Vienna is ridiculous; I've never seriously considered living there. I currently commute from Fredericksburg to downtown DC, and while it's long, the vast majority of it can be done relatively cheaply on Amtrak, where there's wifi. Fredericksburg is far nicer to live in than most points closer to DC.
Alexandria and Annandale are not remotely alike ... Annandale is purely suburban and is the Korean cultural center of the east coast ... Alexandria is an old city with grid streets, Metro service, beside a river, etc. etc.
They're very alike. They both have metro service (Annandale has Dunn Loring, which I used all last winter, so I assure you it exists). The parts of Alexandria I've lived in are very similar, both the landmark mall area and the huntington area. There's a tiny portion of Alexandria up against the river with grid streets, but the bulk of it is more like Annandale than not.
The parts you mention are largely in Alexandria, Fairfax County, not The City of Alexandria, and they are quite different too. In any case because of its huge Korean influence, I don't know of any place in the area that is at all like Annandale.
As a native Richmonder, I take umbrage to this comment.
I haven't lived in Richmond for a long time, but every time I go back, the better it seems to get. It's got a burgeoning cultural scene (music,food), and a beautiful river running directly through the city.
Silicon Valley is stucco-corporate ugly. San Francisco is charming, yet now grossly-expensive. The two are linked by decrepit transport systems that are being supplanted only by Google/Yahoo/Facebook's own shuttles (services that do nothing for low-wage Valley workers or entrepreneurs trying to begin new endeavors).
East Bay is charming and inexpensive. There are residents and young people who discuss more than option-pool restructuring and PHP/Rails. As long as I can continue to work in San Francisco, and as long as rents stay as high as they are in that city, I'll choose to live here.
San Francisco is charming, yet now grossly-expensive.
Except it's not charming at all... it's much colder than the rest of California (it honestly feels like a different planet), MUNI absolutely sucks compared to any transit system in the civilized world (NYC/Europe/parts of Asia), and the homeless problem is the worst I've seen in any major urban center.
San Francisco has a long way to go before I'd consider it a world-class city.
I pass a pile of human feces at least once a week on my walk to work, and the street in front of my office smells like urine 24x7. I've caught someone taking the wheels off a car parked on the street once, at about 2 in the afternoon on a completely parallel-parked to the brim street. In the space of a four-block walk, I'm harassed by on average 8 or 9 homeless people who react to your refusal to give them change with hostility. On a recent walk in the neighborhood shortly after sundown I was accosted by someone selling heroin, who reacted to my refusal to purchase with hostility and brandished a weapon.
I agree with him. A lot of people view San Francisco with rose-tinted glasses. While I have passed feces in New York on the stairs up from the subway, I'd contest that every visit I've ever made to New York has left me feeling cleaner than the average commute to SoMa.
I pass a pile of human feces at least once a week on my walk to work, and the street in front of my office smells like urine 24x7.
I'm curious as to why the office building property managers don't hose down the sidewalks in front of their properties every morning. This seems to be a common practice back East.
Dog's poop - maybe.
Overflown garbage cans - always.
But I never saw any human crap for the past 12 yrs I live in NYC. Where do you people go? :D
I feel "NYC sucks so badly" vibe when I come back from a vacation in Austria, Germany or Switzerland. But NYC still rules, not sure if I would change it for San Fran; I would love to try it but good luck changing jobs for me and my spouse "to just try it out" :\
> The two are linked by decrepit transport systems
As a New Yorker, the one thing that kills me every time is the fact that the CalTrain shuts down so early. I was staying in Palo Alto some months back, and I needed to get to the station by 11:59 on a Friday night, because the alternative was an incredibly expensive cab ride back. It really cut into my Friday night plans.
Where in the East Bay do you live? I'm currently in Santa Cruz but thinking of relocating. I haven't spent any time in East Bay, but the view from the 680 is that it's essentially the same as South Bay. I hadn't considered looking there.
But things are always distorted when you view from the highway.
Anything north of berkeley and you run into the same suburbia that exists in the south bay with your applebees and big box stores. Emeryville is like that too, but the North Oakland/Berkeley area is really nice and downtown Oakland is getting better and better.
I just moved to the north west corner of oakland (what realtors like to cal NOBE) and it's a really nice place to live. Close to ashby/macarthur bart, temescal, and the "suburbia" crap in emeryville that can be handy to have close at by even if I don't want to spend any time there.
If you are thinking of buying the competition is stiff. Took my wife and I 7 months and 6 offers to land a place. We love SF, but the cost of rent and not having an outdoor space made the east bay very attractive. I love it.
In Oakland, I'd some nice parts of Lake Merrit, Chinatown and Temescal. Rockridge is nice, if thoroughly yuppified. Richmond's Marina Bay and El Cerrito are both thoroughly nice and BART-adjacent, if a bit too suburban and removed.
Alameda is a fabulously-kept secret. The ferry commute is splendid and with the exception of a rough area on the west side, it's like walking around Mayberry. Shopping isn't terrible.
If you're like me and don't care for a bar-crawl nightlife and would prefer to stay in and read (and own a car, though this isn't as important), you'll love Alameda. Don't tell anybody how good it is to live in Alameda, though, they'll all move here.
Speaking of ferry commutes, I wish there were way more ferries doing service from all points in the East and South bay to/from the peninsula. If they did, it might be feasible to do a bike commute from the East bay to more parts of the peninsula.
I <3 Alameda and wish I could afford to move there.
Lucky 13 + Scolari's is Alameda's Toronado + Rosamund's (though the beer selection isn't up to par)
Ark (on Park St) is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the bay area: hand-pulled noodles, braised egg tofu, and good green onion pancakes.
Park St feels somewhat like a "small down" downtown, similar to San Luis Obispo's but without all the college bars.
There are lots of beautiful Victorian-style houses, and there are some good school districts. Much of the island is on bad liquefaction zones, but there are nice parts that aren't.
As someone looking to move to San Francisco, I was amazed the author said it was ever cheap. Any chances it will return to affordable-to-live as a college grad in the near future?
Doubtful. In the very late 80s early 90s the whole SF Bay area (SF, SJ OAK) was in a severe housing depression. Realtors* were moving out of state because of the stagnation. It's kind of incredible to think that housing was, then, actually, affordable. Doubtful of the return to that due to the new economics and land usage. Unless something drastic in zoning and mass transit were to happen, it's not.
Like you, that also floors me. Moved here in mid-2011, fresh out of grad school. Seems to be cheap when there's not a dotcom bubble, yet then we wouldn't be here. Ain't that a kick in the head.
Silicon Valley is in the waning phase of a hype cycle, but it will come back. The movement of every 20-something tech employee to SF is unsustainable, and eventually prices will rise to levels that even tech salaries can't support (they're basically already there -- $3k a month for a 1 bedroom puts your housing spend at 36% of gross pay, if you're making $100k a year).
Thus, you're living with roommates in a sketchy neighborhood, getting hassled for change/cigarettes/attention every 15 feet, and stepping in poop on your way to the hour-long shuttle ride to Google. Totally worth it, right? Except that you work 10-hour days, and you don't make it back to the city until after 8pm most evenings, anyway. The "lifestyle" you're paying for mostly happens on the weekends (the ones where you're not working), and consists of meeting up with the friends that you didn't have time to find (because you're all busy paying the bills), or dating (which you can't really do, because the city has turned into a tech-fueled sausage party; the gender bias in technology really starts to suck when only nerdy male engineers can afford to live the glamorous city life.)
Meanwhile, there are actually some charming neighborhoods down the peninsula, the weather down there is dramatically better, and you can have a garage (from which to build a startup, or a surfboard, or work on motorcycles, or start a band) and a dog. I predict a reversal of fortune in 3, 2, 1....
(Note that I say this as someone who currently lives in SF. It ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're working all the time.)
Exactly. Which is why I said "goodbye" to my hard-won Dolores Park apartment and set up shop in Silicon Beach. The commutes between the places you'd want to live and want to work are relatively short, there are many members of the opposite sex to carouse with or befriend, people are very friendly (because they aren't exhausted from working/commuting 12 hours a day), and the weather is fantastic. The only advantage San Francisco area has is the Giants and Yamo.
Incidentally we (Factual) are hiring right now, drop me a line if you really want to hear me rant about the advantages of living and working down here.
Offices are cheaper in SF than transit accessible (and thus highly desirable) parts of pa/mv, by a factor of 2x or more.
I'd rather just get a light industrial or detached R&D type building outside the immediate transit areas, though, where rents are more like $1-2 vs. $4-7 on Castro or University or 3 in SF. Parking solves my transit needs.
What transit system serves Palo Alto and/or Mountain View? CalTrain is about it, and it only goes northwest from there (up the peninsula, and housing isn't any cheaper up there).
Unless you were talking about VTA, but nobody takes VTA. There was a bit on (I think) a freakonomics podcast sometime in the last year saying that at current VTA ridership levels, it "costs" the environment less (in terms of carbon emissions) for a person to drive rather than taking the bus, because so few people take the bus.
Yes, I'm specifically talking about Caltrain, specifically to San Francisco. People live in SF for reasons other than cost, and work in MV/PA/MP.
And even at the level of individual stops with baby bullet service being prioritized -- University Ave is more expensive than California Ave, partially for this reason.
Rents go from $5-7 in downtown PA (University) and $3-5 in downtown MV (Castro) to $1-2 in the Hillview Ave/HP/etc. part of PA, or the weird ghettoey area where YC/old Hacker Dojo/etc. are (which is about 8-10 blocks from downtown MV).
There's really no great transit in the Bay Area. BART and Caltrain, if you're going on stops directly on the route, are the best. If you were going solely by transit accessibility at least cost, Millbrae would seem like the natural pick, but it kind of sucks.
Yeah, offices are cheaper in SF for now....or so they say. The rates we were seeing were pretty astronomical in all of the places that startups want to go (i.e. SOMA and the Mission).
But there's no way that situation is sustainable, unless SF has plans to engage in a massive office building project in the next six months.
I'm with you on finding space outside the immediate transit areas, though. Even in SF, moving your office 10 minutes from BART will save you thousands of dollars a month.
SF actually has pretty decent stock of light industrial; they can just keep pushing out "dirty" industries as their leases come up, except that a lot of them actually bought their own real estate during the post-2001 dip.
True, if you count the areas south of Potrero. But I can't see startups ever moving out there, if they're unwilling to move to (say), the Inner Sunset or Richmond.
SOMA seems to be getting pretty full-up. A lot of the light industrial that was here a few years ago is gone, and startups are pushing into the Potrero Hill area, where nobody would even think about going a few years back. I remember how long the Zynga building sat mostly vacant, and how all of those buildings on Townsend had vacancies back in 2008. They're all full now.
Moving to SF from Austin for a bit (before moving back), I have no idea what people see in this place. SF weather is pretty terrible, nightlife sucks and things are overpriced.
There are good parts. But for me the "goodness" of a place trades-off directly with the costs.
In my world, a place that's charming at $1000/month is far less charming at $3000/month. But I also won't wait in line for two hours for Sunday brunch at the hottest new hipster restaurant, so empirically, I'm probably weird.
That said, I'll probably eventually move to somewhere that I can have a dog and a garage.
What timr said. I spent two years in Seattle and aside from a few great people I've befriended there, wouldn't go back for the sweetest, cushiest job in the universe.
And I grew up in the Northwest.
Being in New York now though, I reminisce frequently about the rent that, at the time, I thought was atrocious. Seattle has a lot going for it, very little of it appealing to a single, heterosexual male in his 20s.
It depends on what you like and what you're like and how old you are.
If you're a young guy, and you've got the typical grooming and lifestyle habits that would cause people to label you as a "nerd", you'll have trouble in both cities. But if you're a little more put together and/or a little older, SF is massively better. A lot of the single women here are in their 30s, and a bit more established in their lives. They're not the kind of women who find conversations about code and video games to be desirable traits in a partner.
Seattle was abysmal in all dating categories. The place has a weird, backwards social vibe that makes it incredibly difficult to make friends, and every public space was at least 2-to-1 male. I went to dance classes where men had to dance with each other because there weren't enough women(!)
That said, there's been a huge shift in the number of well-off, vaguely stylish, 28-35 year-old single guys living in SF in the last two years. That's going to make things harder, but I don't know if it will ever get as bad as Seattle.
SF also seems to be Mecca if you're gay, at least a certain kind of 20-35 year old gay man, too, which has a huge crossover with tech workers. I know it's been a great way to recruit at previous companies -- find the gay kid who is a developer or designer stuck in some crappy midwestern/southern town and help him relocate to San Francisco with a good job. But most of the older gay people I know later end up becoming boring and move to Walnut Creek or whatever to have a family, just like other people as they get older. Presumably NYC has the same thing going on.
I've only ever really been in the dating scene in the bay area for a month or two a couple times, and ended up with girlfriends rapidly. I guess being involved in the rave/party/etc. scene, and being interested in smart/confident/etc. vs. a lot of other things = easy mode for dating? But I don't really have anything to calibrate against other than MIT.
I've often wondered what might happen if Apple, Google, and Facebook joined forces, bought a couple of Tunnel boring machines, and bored a pair of tunnels from Cupertino to San Francisco, right underneath El Camino. If you looked at the number of people carried by private busses between San Francisco and the south bay it would get good ridership. If you threw in access to as much dark fiber as you wanted between those two points and added big fiber drops to PAIX, MAE-EAST and SF, you could offset costs by selling this capacity up and down the peninsula.
I also know if Google built the tube they could figure out how to do it for a whole lot less than the $1B/mile that these things command in the public sector.
But why do this for San Francisco, specifically, instead of just developing another area of the bay that has more space and fewer political issues?
The city has a host of infrastructure and political problems that make things like basic housing development extremely difficult. And while it's fun when you're 20-30ish, single, and without kids the vast majority of employees will bail from SF when they get a little older. I know this seems far off, but it happens to almost everyone. Then... where?
If you're very interested in your question, I highly recommend Ed Glaser's Triumph of the City[1]. Short answer: Density is valuable, and developing a new dense area is difficult. No one is going to pay for a skyscraper or a cute, tiny Victorian house in the middle of nowhere because the demand isn't there. You have to build where people are, but neither San Francisco nor the peninsula suburbs want to let that happen.
What about San Jose? They have lots of land and or low density tracts which they could rezone for high density -and the city is amenable to actual renewal and progress, unlike SF.
I know it has a reputation for bland mega-suburb feel (as though it were just a bunch of adjoined and conglomerated suburbs called a city) but it could change. Geology* could be an issue, if going over, say, 20 floors, but anything above 8 to 10 is good for density and could be made a viable alternative to SF hegemony in the region.
As a bonus, SJ, compared to SF has a functional gov't and has lower crime.
I feel like the East Bay gets glossed over a lot in these pieces about the growth of the Bay. The East Bay, unlike the north or south bay, has BART. The East Bay has an easy commute to the city. The East Bay has the lowest housing and land prices close to the city. I could see parts of West Oakland being redeveloped in to high-rise office and residential parks, to match those on the opposite coast of the bay.
I don't think the BART could run past 12 even if they wanted. It's a system that's stretched to its very limits - for example, only a maximum of 3 cars can be out of commission (for repairs, refurbishment, etc) at any one time due to how over-committed their fleet is. The soonest replacements are still years away.
There's also a substantial crime problem to be solved in the East Bay (and SF, to be fair). The West Oakland and downtown Oakland BART stops are in the middle of neighborhoods with very pronounced crime and poverty - similar to Civic Center or the worst areas of the Mission. These places are a fair ways away from becoming places where working professionals want to settle.
Culturally and politically speaking, I do not believe either SF or the East Bay have a realistic chance of effecting a NYC-style crime turnaround, which was based around fundamentally conservative tactics that's very far from the politics of the Bay Area.
Indeed, you're right. Downtown Oakland is much better than West Oakland, and better than Civic Center or the war zone/train wreck known as 16th and Mission. That being said, the crime rate and homeless population is still substantial enough to be a serious hindrance to development.
See downtown Brooklyn, where a similar situation/vibe exists - not the worst neighborhood in NYC by far, but also sketchy enough that the monied working professionals aren't interested. They built anyways, and now that neighborhood is in a weird limbo where the buildings have trouble attracting tenants, but at the same time generating enormous class and racial tension due to their mere presence.
BART reaches farther down the East bay though, all the way down to Fremont. Much lower crime down there, some good school districts. Complete suburbia, though.
This is impossible. Unlike NYC's subway, there is not a third set of rails (in enough places, at least) to keep the system online 24 hours a day, while being able to perform track maintenance.
Washington DC's subway is the same way and will never be a 24 hour system.
It would be a better use of time to invent a teleportation device, than to wish that many of the country's subways ran 24 hours a day.
Well one of the great things about Brooklyn is the fact that the MTA runs 24 hours (yes, it's less frequent in the early morning) and subway stations are widely distributed. Thus, I never had any hesitations about living in random faraway spots in BK to save some money.
No, San Francisco is the Manhattan to Silicon Valley's Atlantic city :-)
Seriously, there's a reason SF is so expensive; that's where the banks and the lawyers are. SF was, for a time, the capital of California and is still the main nexus of political power. And I say that as someone with a love for LA as well as the Bay.
> "there's a reason SF is so expensive; that's where the banks and the lawyers are."
I highly doubt this. Bankers and lawyers have some upwards price pressure on the market certainly, but the rent explosion coincides very well with both dotcom booms. The bulk of the expense of SF is due to people like us.
There aren't any reasonable parallels between Manhattan/Brooklyn and SF/Valley IMO. The author mentions the endless debate about who is San Francisco's Brooklyn. The debate is endless because there isn't a candidate that even approximates a good answer.
I'm not sure the original statement was even true (I can find no evidence for it) but SF was the cultural and financial capital of CA until the 1950s. Walk around some of the palatial buildings in SF and you quickly realize that after WWII it was not only expected to be the premiere city of California, but the seat of power for American Empire in the Pacific.
That said, I think the article's critique of SF (and those I've read in this thread) are pretty much spot on.
Oh, the original statement was true, though apparently it was brief enough that no business was actually conducted... The capital bounced around quite a bit immediately post-statehood. The capitol building in Benicia still exists, and is pretty neat (though the park is slated for closure, if note closed already).
Sounds like they are protesting against highly toxic waste treatment in their yard, but it is only a bit higher building in one of the most suitable place in Palo Alto.
Tech will tend to move to places which are more pro-development like Redwood City.
Oh man, does that petition start by comparing taking someone's life and livelihood to constructing a new building? Honestly now.
The Bay Area feels like a typical tragedy of the common scenario - no one likes the absurd housing prices, or endless traffic, but no one is willing to allow high density housing/construction in their area. So the burden increases on everyone, bit by bit.
It doesn't even take 8 story buildings to reach critical mass for high-density urban living.
You can get high-density, highly-walkable urban neighborhoods at as little as three stories. In fact it's better for walkability to have a whole neighborhood of three or four story buildings than to pack the equivalent housing into a few 8 story buildings with lots of empty space between them.
Not that I expect the homeowners of Palo Alto would go for that, either.
Agree, but cost of rebuilding cities is huge and jumping from 1 to 3 story are much higher than building 4-9 story buildings near the transportation hub.
There must be a better way for the Awl author to title the article. Maybe, "Should San Francisco be Silicon Valley's Brooklyn?". Or maybe, "Why Is Silicon Valley Not A Major Metro Area?".
I've never been to NYC and am only vaguely aware that it is divided into some smallish number of boroughs (including one called "Queens", but I only know that because of Coming to America), so I have no idea what the implication is even supposed to be.
I agree that it is a major metro, but the article is comparing San Fran to Brooklyn and Silicon Valley to Manhattan in that it should be a major metro area with its large industries but that people instead choose to commute to SF.
Lots of mentions of bars and hip restaurants, no mention of school districts; I think this blog is coming from a fairly narrow perspective which reduces its credibility.
A very good point - it would seem that Noe Valley exists for families with pre-school aged families that eventually move south to better schools.
In my hometown of Pittsburgh, the city has enough housing for 700K people (currently 300K) and the county has like 2M+. Pittsburgh is where people go to have fun in many great, vibrant neighborhoods, but the school system is abysmal, so young, professional families have no interest in living there without being able to afford the private schools.
The "quality" of the schools is almost entirely a function of the economic/racial makeup of the district. If you moved all the middle/upper middle class whites and asians from the Valley into San Francisco, boom you'd have "good" schools.
Doesn't SF allocate kids to public schools on some kind of hippie lottery system ? If so, we shouldn't expect correlation between a part of the city being "white or Asian" and having good or shitty schools.
Ah. I just know people with $10mm houses in Pac Heights who sold them (a few months after buying) for a combination of "ugh, SF weather is shit and I hate it" and "ugh, we'll have to pay $30-40k/yr for each of our kids to go to school" -- buying a house in Hillsborough or Palo Alto saves money overall.
Good school districts already exist on the peninsula. The author suggests merely densifying them, which is anathema to the people who currently live in them.
"Building costs money, but the whole planet's technology business is centered in Santa Clara County, down the road from that other Gold Rush town, San Francisco."
It's an outlying concern, and I'm all for transforming Silicon Valley into to a metropolis (so long as it doesn't remove too many of the green preserves of the Peninsula and South Bay), but this sentence made me think of one long-term threat to development in the Bay, especially high-rises: earthquakes. Wouldn't the possibility of the Big One preclude too many skyscrapers from being built? And is it safe for the bulk of the tech industry to be located at such an area?
The counterpoint, of course, is cities such as Tokyo and Taipei, which already have been dealing with this issue on even larger scales.
I don't think the possibility of the Big One precludes too many skyscrapers from being built. Skyscraper building techniques are such that this is of minor concern and the large skyscrapers would most likely fair better than most older, shorter buildings these days.
I'm a horrible person for this, but I love Silicon Valley along 280 -- the hp offices/Stanford/ VMware area of palo alto/Menlo park to work, and atherton, Hillsborough, woodshed, etc to live.
If they want to be able to pay for it, why not buy out the land, build a cut and cover subway extending south from the new central line, and profit from the increased real-estate value around the subway. It worked for Manhattan.
Perfect description of the Valley. Somewhat better than say Northern Virginia, but by a hair.