Facebook is testing the proposition: Do people love tech companies so much they will live inside of them? When the project was announced last summer, critics dubbed it Facebookville or, in tribute to company co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zucktown. [...] If Facebook’s image is permanently sullied by the furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Zucktown will falter before it is finished. — The New York Times
Like Google's Sidewalk Labs for Toronto and Bill Gates' proposed smart city in Arizona, Facebook is working to make their own housing development, Willow Village, a living reality in Silicon Valley. Nicknamed “Zucktown” and “Facebookville” by critics, the project will occupy a 59-acre site in between the gentrified Menlo Park neighborhood and East Palo Alto. The New York Times reports that Willow Village will offer 1,500 apartments, and Facebook made an agreement with Menlo Park to offer 225 of the units at below-market rates.
“It is a project with many precedents in American history, quite a few of them cautionary tales about what happens when a powerful corporation takes control of civic life,” The New York Times article states.
7 Comments
For every IBM, there's an Endicott...
Rumors that all residents' bodily fluids will be collected, analyzed, and their data shared with anyone who asks have not been confirmed.
220 cheap units out of 1500. Nice.
how many units are being funded by the gov't?
My guess is there will be a lot of glass, in honor of their penchant for sharing everyone's privacy, and cause they're cutting edge.
I don't hate MZ for being smarter nor richer than I am. I also think he did a great job last week showing the congress how out-of-touch they really are :(
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