Quote:
Originally Posted by curnhalio
So naturally, NS would be behind the curve and propose a Silicon Valley type project right as it's losing favour worldwide.
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Yup. I work in the tech industry and know lots of people who work in a variety of companies here in Vancouver and in the Bay Area. The location of companies like Google in Mountain View is frequently (generally?) seen as a kind of drawback you have to put up with if you want to work for them. They ended up having to set up their infamous shuttles to the city to mitigate this. The urban offices of companies like Twitter are more desirable even when they are not in the nicest neighbourhoods and are becoming more common. Even Microsoft ended up locating their office in downtown Vancouver because they found that few employees wanted to commute to the suburbs.
This shift isn't something just happening now, it's been going on for about 10 years and it has been in full swing for about 5 years. When you look at the location of startups and even larger tech companies like Amazon here in Vancouver they are all downtown, in Gastown, Yaletown, etc. EA is an exception way out in Burnaby (which is maybe analogous to being in Clayton Park in Halifax); they are there because the current campus was built maybe a decade ago or longer.
It's not like you can't have a suburban tech company office, but on balance it's a negative whereas being located somewhere like downtown Halifax or even the North End would potentially be seen as an advantage by a lot of potential employees. The relatively affordable urban setting is probably Halifax's #1 advantage compared to other North American cities.
Another more general planning problem with these suburban office campuses in that there is no realistic plan for people to get to them in any way other than driving, and traffic around Bedford is already pretty bad. That's another potential advantage of Halifax that is being squandered; it could be the land of 10 minute commutes, but it isn't because of terrible planning.