That kind of thing is a personal preference. It will attract some, dissuade others. I dislike the commute involved in going to a city centre, and like greenery on a lunchtime break. Nice looking building, you'd never get that in a city centre where you have to build up rather than out because of land cost.
Commuting to a city center can be a pain; I feel ya. But if Apple were to locate in a city center, many of its employees would choose to live within a walkable or bike-able distance. In the end, they'd have basically no commute, and Apple's campus would prevent a lot more CO
2 emissions. Planting 2,000 trees is fine and dandy -- but it's 'green' only in the most superficial sense.
Apple's plans do call for solid transit connectivity. I'm all for urban development, but as long as the plans connect the building to the larger community at large, I'm fine with it. If they wanted to build an suburban or exurban office park which demanded a car to reach, I'd completely agree with you. But if you look at the plans, they are actually calling for a bus station on site, which presumably will be served with shuttles to Caltran and provide connections to the regional bus system.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a suburban design. Much of the suburban development in this country is auto-centric to the exclusion of everything else and just piss poor planning and design, but that's not what you're seeing here. If you live in a nearby urban center with good connectivity, you'll have no problem reaching the Apple campus on transit. And that's what counts.
Well at least they're linking up to transit.
Apple has always been a secretive company, and a suburban campus does offer a sort of buffer zone to keep the prying eyes of competition away. I get that. But Apple has such a large stockpile of cash that they could have done something truly extraordinary and ground-breaking with their new campus. Instead we get... the spaceship...
The cost of acquiring the necessary real-estate in an urban center and transforming it into an acceptable workspace for a company like Apple would be astronomical.
The best talent will go where they're paid the best and have the opportunity to work on things that interest them. I don't think a company as big as Apple needs to appeal to the urban hipster crowd in order to attract a top-flight workforce.
The cost would be astronomical, but like I said above -- Apple had cash available to do something truly extraordinary. They didn't.
Apple can attract the best talent now because Apple is at the top of the tech world. People want to work for Apple. But every company ebbs and flows, and when Apple is on the other side of the cycle, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's suburban campus dissuades top talent from signing on.
You're kidding, right? Aside from the masochists who flock to New York ******, why would "talent" prefer to squeeze into a raucous soul-killing concrete jungle (where the land isn't available) over a visually-pleasing setting buffered by stuff that's actually alive?
What you see as a 'racous soul-killing concrete jungle' just so happens to be where generation y increasingly wants to live. Instead of a concrete jungle, they see an aggregation of culture, entertainment, and nightlife where fellow highly educated, open minded people live. And they want to live there too. Read 'Rise of the Creative Class' by Richard Florida if you're interested in learning more.
Downvote me to oblivion, people. But I speak the truth.
