Remote work rises and Caltrain ridership plummets: How Silicon Valley has changed three years since COVID

Each year, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional nonprofit think tank, publishes its Silicon Valley Index, a report chock-full of data points attempting to paint a point-in-time portrait of the region. This year's data points confirmed a lot of what I'd observed anecdotally in my own circles: Essentials like housing, transportation, food and child care feel more expensive than ever.

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Palo Alto’s outgoing mayor has some choice words for the city’s elected officials. “Build” is one of them.

Housing crusader Adrian Fine sounds off on lip service liberalism and how Palo Alto became “part of the problem” “I am trying to ensure that Palo Alto is a successful and vibrant community for the next ten, 20 and 50 years. And I think that means we do a lot more on transportation and housing.”—Palo Alto Mayor Adrian Fine. (Above) Fine during his “State of the City” address at Mitchell Park ...

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Un-forgetting the segregationist history of Palo Alto (and Daly City, and San Francisco, and…)

Richard Rothstein’s book The Color of Law documents how American communities—including much of the Bay Area—were purposefully segregated along racial lines. In 1954, one Peninsula real estate agent seized upon the sale of a single home on the east side of Palo Alto. (Book cover image via Liveright/W.W. Norton Publishing) Floyd Lowe, President of the California Real Estate Association at the time, quickly began amplifying racial tensions by warning residents that the one black family ...

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