Google’s major campus development in San Jose, California has been unanimously approved by city officials. “Downtown West” will see the delivery of 7.3 million square feet of office space for 20,000 workers, as well as thousands of housing units, spread across an 80-acre site. The scheme involves a number of prominent architecture and urban design firms, including Kohn Pedersen Fox, Heatherwick Studio, Grimshaw Architects, SHoP Architects, Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), SITELAB urban studio, and West 8 (landscape design).
The project is the largest single project ever proposed for San Jose and is reported to cost more than $1 billion. The campus will include 4000 housing units, 1000 of which are allocated as affordable units in a state that needs 3.5 million housing units for all income levels over the next four years to meet demands. The scheme will also include 300 hotel rooms and 800 residences as short-term accommodation for corporate guests, as well as parks, restaurants, retail space, entertainment space, and ecological viewing stations.
While the campus has been broadly welcomed by officials and community groups, others have expressed concerns that the project will raise property prices in the area, and contribute to higher rents and forced displacement of current residents. Speaking to CBS local affiliate KPIX5, homelessness campaigner Pastor Scott Wagers said “Homelessness keeps increasing. It shows the giant wealth and income gaps. We need money for the unhoused. We need property for the unhoused. We need new ideas for the unhoused.” Meanwhile, another local resident told the station “So many people who could afford this area to live here have already been pushed out. And I think it’s been more of a detriment to have a big tech hub in this area.”
Google has responded by committing $200 million in community initiatives, including $154 million dedicated to mitigating rising rents, and providing job training for area residents. In addition, $250 million will be committed to affordable housing, parks, and transportation upgrades.
Site preparations are expected to begin next year, with construction beginning in 2023. The development may between 10 and 30 years to achieve full completion.
10 Comments
Gin Fizz Urbanism anyone?
Do all the developers hire the same renderers? From Chicago to Shanghai, most urban development images look alike. Gin Fizz Urbanism or Airspace, you've got the same tropes - warm wood texture, picnic lawns sandwiched between generic shopping, urban benches, very high but carefully downplayed density, swings, trusses as sculpture, hip urban families ...
I guess the goal is always to win over as broad a coalition as possible in the often contentious planning process. Keep the presentation generic and friendly. Once you stick a deliberate design element into the picture, the overall scheme would suffer from debates over that element ala Heatherwick and his billionaire follies.
i was assuming these are just stock images...
This kind of urbanism is a merging of Jane Jacobs and Disneyland, but through a gin fizz lens where there is no substance — not even an Epcot or magic kingdom or west village. There’s no cultural identity or design plan — like Hudson Yards, its the idea that cities grow “organically” from the market tree when that is never true—you end up with this McUrbanist faux urban village
"Campus" implies educational facility, not monopolistic corporate megadevelopment via tax abatements and subsidies.
this usage changed decades ago though, to include hospitals and office parks
also i'm not sure higher education is as entirely opposite to corporate monopolies as your comment implies
campus (n.) "college grounds," 1774, from Latin campus "flat land, field," from Proto-Italic *kampo- "field," of uncertain origin. De Vaan finds cognates in Greek kampe "a bending, bow, curvature;" Lithuanian kampas "corner," kumpti "to bend," kumpas "curved;" Gothic hamfs "mutilated, lame," Old High German hamf, and concludes the source "could well be a European substratum word from agricultural terminology." First used in college sense at Princeton.
Perhaps a return to the medieval university 'campus' design where a totalitarian religious authority would dictate all urban, educational and programatic values -- though we see here those values amount to a random wikipedia search
Pretty much what we have except that it's a totalitarian corporate authority.
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