Silicon Valley isn't just an industry. It's also a place. Actually, a series of places. The dozen or so cities that make up the valley are increasingly wary of the corporate behemoths that are constantly expanding within their city limits.

While Google has surely increased real estate values in its home city of Mountain View, Calif., and made the city more vibrant, local residents and public officials are becoming increasingly less accommodating, especially now that the company has plans to expand and radically redevelop its campus. Tension between the cities of Silicon Valley—which include Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and Cupertino, among others—and the tech giants that call them home have been on the rise.

Increasingly, cities have been forcing companies to provide community benefits, codified in community benefits agreements (CBA's), in order to win approval of their respective city councils. Community benefits can include everything from parks to road-widening to schools to just about anything else a city might want from a deep-pocketed neighbor. Apple's new 2.8-million-square-foot headquarters was approved in 2013 only with major strings attached, to the tune of $100 million. The Mountain View City Council recently rejected an agreement with Google. Google offered the small city $240 million in community benefits; the council balked, approving a project one-quarter the size that Google wanted.

Meanwhile, smaller companies, such as LinkedIn, seem to be having more success as cities try to diversify and not get overwhelmed by their major employer.1

  • 1. http://www.planetizen.com/node/76928

... The city council voted four to three to allow less than one-quarter of the construction Google had hoped for, in favor of an expansion proposal by LinkedIn, which came with far fewer community benefits. David Radcliffe, Google’s vice president of real estate, was visibly upset by the vote, characterizing it as a “significant blow” to the company, which has grown to expect getting what it wants from Mountain View.

City bureaucrats often characterize themselves as victims of large tech corporations that threaten to “overrun” their towns. But the reality is far more complex. The relationship between a giant, global corporation and a tiny municipality is a strange one, unbalanced and yet in many ways symbiotic. Tech companies are not colonizing cities against their will. Cities need tech money; and tech needs city support — especially as more companies buy more property all over Silicon Valley, planning for greater growth. The result is a redefining of local public-private partnership. Where cities once ran on tax dollars, selective corporate philanthropy has emerged as a significant driving force of urban policy. Tech companies are reengineering city streets, building city police stations and parks, and even helping cities cover the salaries of the public servants they rely on.

It’s not clear whether these community benefits are an expression of heartfelt corporate responsibility, or an effort to control local planning and policy. Is this much-needed civic philanthropy, or a new spin on the old company town?1

  • 1. http://nextcity.org/features/view/why-one-silicon-valley-city-said-no-to-google