Not directly related to the topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen renders of this new campus and it surprises me that it’s so car-dependent and suburban. It kind of disappoints me especially from a company publicly emphasizing environmental responsibility.
That same aspect really surprised me about Apple Park: how the building is so futuristic, but then getting there requires you hop in your regressive oil-burning couch on wheels.
Personally, I would never again work for a company that made me drive down a highway to a giant parking garage complex. I want transit-oriented development and I want to live and work near transit lines, in walkable areas with mixed-use amenities.
If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option.
My parents told me an anecdote of how they recently drove to the center of town (the old part built for walking) just to get out and walk around, as if this is a normal and not-insane byproduct of our misguided city planning. Their home is so isolated and pedestrian-hostile that they have to drive a vehicle just to find somewhere pleasant to exist. (The same story goes for getting to a park or outdoor recreation area)
Suburbs have all the downsides of a city with none of the upsides of rural life.
Obviously, it’s not Apple’s fault that most American cities happened to make massive city planning mistakes after World War II. But it seems like so many of those mistakes continue to be perpetuated by all parties involved.
>If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option.
It depends where you live. If I drive into my company's suburban office (which I have rarely done for the past few years), I'm about a 25-30 minute drive. If I take the commuter rail into the city to go to another office, I'm about 90 minutes door-to-door between drive to train/train/subway/walk. I don't mind doing the latter now and then, but if I had to make the choice most days, that wouldn't be my pick.
I did commute into the city semi-regularly for about a year once. It really wasn't sustainable over a long period even though I didn't need to do it every day most weeks.
If you didn’t live in the suburbs, it wouldn’t take you 90 minutes to get into the city.
If your suburban office didn’t have a huge parking lot in front of it, adjacent to a grass knoll, adjacent to a four lane highway, which also has a grass strip in between it, with your house set back from your street with a lawn and driveway, with your street hidden in curvy cul-de-sac roads from the main road to alleviate thru traffic, you might have an actual chance at walking, biking, or taking a bus to your suburban office. But it’s all been designed around the car so now you must own your very own car to go anywhere.
I actually live in the country (maybe technically exurbs). No amount of sidewalks or bike paths or reasonable density bus routes is going to get me to either of my offices. This isn't a new thing. My house was built in 1823 well before things were designed for cars.
This is completely fair and is absolutely a very real thing for many people. But only about 19% of the US population lives in rural areas, for some definition [1] of rural.
Unlike rural areas, cities are dense enough that we could certainly choose to build them in a different way, so that we are not all completely dependent on our cars to go anywhere. For a lot of folks, I think it's definitely a discussion worth having.
I'm actually not rural by the US Census definition. And probably not especially close even though I and a couple neighbors are on 100 acres between us. I live in a 7K person town and it's not even remotely rural by US Census definitions.
That same aspect really surprised me about Apple Park: how the building is so futuristic, but then getting there requires you hop in your regressive oil-burning couch on wheels. Personally, I would never again work for a company that made me drive down a highway to a giant parking garage complex. I want transit-oriented development and I want to live and work near transit lines, in walkable areas with mixed-use amenities.
If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option.
My parents told me an anecdote of how they recently drove to the center of town (the old part built for walking) just to get out and walk around, as if this is a normal and not-insane byproduct of our misguided city planning. Their home is so isolated and pedestrian-hostile that they have to drive a vehicle just to find somewhere pleasant to exist. (The same story goes for getting to a park or outdoor recreation area)
Suburbs have all the downsides of a city with none of the upsides of rural life.
Obviously, it’s not Apple’s fault that most American cities happened to make massive city planning mistakes after World War II. But it seems like so many of those mistakes continue to be perpetuated by all parties involved.