Apple

Feudal Future Podcast — How COVID is Shifting Corporate Location Strategy with Jay Garner

Charlie Stephens — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 12:23:28 -0400

On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky welcome Jay Garner. Jay is CEO of Garner Economics as well as the Chair of the Site Selectors Guild. This episode explores the topic of site selection and how companies are choosing sites for their expansions. The group talks about how these types of decisions have been affected by the pandemic. Jay explains to listeners that the Site Selectors Guild are peer-selected location advisors that help facilitate location decisions of companies all over the world.

Joel asks Jay how site selection has changed during the pandemic. Jay explains that there was a pivot - He says, “...what we did pre-pandemic and what companies seem to be doing differently, with respect to different industry sectors - is changing significantly.” Jay explains information found in a survey or their membership that happened in April of 2020. About 49% of corporations surveyed said they were not continuing projects at that time. In June 2020, when the membership was surveyed again, there was an increase of global activity with companies moving forward with their projects. Another survey will be done in September.

Marshall talks about how he and Joel have researched future housing trends. He describes the trend of people moving out of expensive, big cities to more affordable and smaller cities. Marshall asks if Jay has seen a trend in projects in these areas. Jay explains that these were actually trends before the pandemic! Other than the price, another reason for this is that millennials are getting to the age where they want more space. He also says that public safety is very important to people.

The group talks about how remote work is affecting large companies. Jay talks specifically about remote work and productivity, cost, and how it is affecting employees’ creativity. Teamwork and creativity could be negatively affected by remote work. Jay says that long term, he thinks we will get back to working socially (depending on the status of therapeutics and a vaccine). The group talks about the potential changes in people after the pandemic.

Jay explains that most of his comments are his opinions, not necessarily that of the Site Selectors Guild.

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Rich Keep Getting Richer in Tech as Apple Picks Austin for $1 Billion Campus

Aaron M. Renn — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 19:48:46 -0500

Apple has picked Austin as the site of its new $1 billion campus, one that will ultimately have 15,000 employees. The Verge has the initial details:

Along with the 6,200 employees that Apple already has in the city, its new 133-acre development is expected to make it the largest private employer in Austin. Apple expects the new campus to accommodate 5,000 employees at first, though it will ultimately have a total capacity of 15,000. The new Austin campus will handle tasks ranging from engineering to customer support for the company. Like all Apple’s other facilities worldwide, the facility will run on 100 percent renewable energy.
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Along with its new Austin campus, Apple has also announced expansions across a number of other US cities. Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City will each grow to have over 1,000 employees apiece, and Apple also plans to expand its operations in Pittsburgh, New York, and Boulder, Colorado, over the next three years. In total, Apple employs 90,000 people across the US, and has over 1,000 employees per state across 16 states.

Once again we see a major tech company going with the “usual suspects.” Austin is not a superstar city, but is a booming Sunbelt city with a longstanding tech cluster. Apple picking Austin may help explain how Amazon ended up in Nashville over Austin.

The other places Amazon is going to are all already on the list so to speak. This map from Verge says it all about how things are playing out in American tech:

Click through to read the full piece over at the Verge.

This piece originally appeared on Urbanophile.

Architecture Critic Paul Goldberger on Silicon Valley, San Jose, and Apple

Adam Mayer — Sun, 27 May 2012 13:16:38 -0400

Last week Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, sat down with Allison Arief of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) in downtown San Jose to discuss the state of 21st Century urbanism with a focus on Silicon Valley. Though admired the world over as the preeminent center for technological innovation, Silicon Valley has never been known for its great architecture. Goldberger suggested that this reputation could’ve improved had Apple not missed the mark with the design of their proposed Apple Campus 2 building in Cupertino.

While acknowledging that Apple is probably the best design company at the moment, Goldberger asserted that the company’s design abilities end with small consumer gadgets and fail spectacularly at the urban level. Calling the Norman Foster designed building for the new Apple Campus a ‘beautifully designed donut or spaceship’, he lamented the lack of context and connection to anything around it. Speaking to an audience that included members of San Jose’s city government, Goldberger suggested that Apple missed the opportunity to take the reins to help transform San Jose by relocating at least some of its operations to help its long struggling (and subsidized) downtown.

The reality is that most of the big tech companies in the Valley, not just Apple, have an extreme indifference to place-choosing to locate operations in suburban office parks. This has much to do with the history of Silicon Valley planning as it does with the nature of tech companies, which tend to employ legions of introverted computer engineering types and go to great lengths to remain insular and secretive (Apple taking this to the extreme). Perhaps it also makes perfect sense that rather than even acknowledging the true urban environment, companies whose primary business is creating the virtual world in which we increasingly experience public life take an active stance on turning their backs on the city.

Yet for those still interested in experiencing the delights of pre-Information Era, pre-21 Century urbanism, there is always San Francisco not far up the road. Goldberger made the point that the handful of tech companies who do choose to locate their operations in the city probably have a different mindset than those that stay in the Valley. Twitter being the prime example of the moment- the micro blogging site just leased 400,000 square feet of space on a long-maligned section of Market Street. Up in Seattle, Amazon recently announced its plan to build three new 37-story towers in the downtown area, which the proposal’s architect said is “not about building a corporate campus, it’s about building a neighborhood.”

So even though not every tech company is averse to the city, the Richard Florida argument that high urban density is a prerequisite for innovation and creativity is a bit of a stretch, as the economic success of suburban Silicon Valley continually disproves. Near the end of the discussion, Goldberger suggested that deliberately designing space for innovation might be a bit too self-conscious. This implies that rather than design, factors such as human resources, access to capital and a culture with openness to trial-and-error matter more than the traditional urban hardware of cities.

Adam Nathaniel Mayer is an American architectural design professional currently based in China and California. In addition to his job designing buildings he writes the China Urban Development Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @AdamNMayer.

Apple

Feudal Future Podcast — How COVID is Shifting Corporate Location Strategy with Jay Garner

Related:

Rich Keep Getting Richer in Tech as Apple Picks Austin for $1 Billion Campus

Architecture Critic Paul Goldberger on Silicon Valley, San Jose, and Apple