What's wrong with Apple's new headquarters

如果您关心城市，可步行社区，以郊区蔓延的形式治愈过去的四十年，请恢复糟糕的环境，然后再对该新iPad 3进行退款。也将iPhone带回。因为它的制造商OH-SO-HIP Apple Inc.押注，该公司足够酷，可以摆脱违反其新总部的庞大，依赖汽车依赖设计的智能增长和步行性最基本的宗旨。不要让它收集到那个赌注。

While communities all up and down the Silicon Valley are trying to repair sprawl by replacing it with smart growth, Apple is actually taking a site that is now parking lots and low-rise boxes and making it worse for the community in Cupertino. Yes, it will be iconic, assuming you think a building shaped like a whitewall motorcycle tire is iconic, but it will reduce current street connectivity, seal off potential walking routes and, as I wrote some time back, essentially turn its back on its community. With a parking garage designed to hold more than 10,000 cars, by the way.

这本质上与昨天在这个空间中提出的郊区改造的伟大视野相反。实际上，该站点非常相似。但是，尽管六月·威廉姆森（June Williamson）和安妮·瓦特劳斯（Anne Vaterlaus）提出提高步行性，填充住房和网站的街头网格，但苹果正在拆除街道并进行“外围保护”，以确保任何可能想从点骑自行车或步行的人B点B将不得不绕着巨大的地点走。

The definitive synthesis of land use and travel research found that the degree of street connectivity (frequent intersections and blocks sized for foot travel, creating multiple pathways, are best) is the No. 1 indicator of how much walking takes place in a neighborhood. And it’s the No. 2 indicator of how much driving takes place, bringing emissions with it.

Current site:

Planned future site:

While the area is so car-dependent now that I’m sure few people there do much bicycling or walking, that’s not the point: This will be locked in place for 30, 40, 50 years down the road. A lot of us are hoping current suburbs can be made more sustainable and people-friendly by then, with walkable mixed uses. Everything that Richard Florida and Chris Leinberger have been telling us for the last decade points to a future market that is going to want more, not less, walkable urbanism.

The business community in the currently car-dependent, asphalt-and-low-rise suburb of Dublin, Ohio, believes that the kinds of employees they want to attract are going to demand it. Companies all over the country are abandoning the tired suburban campus model in favor of more urban settings.

Is Apple getting uber-hip?

Apple seems to think it is hip enough to transcend what most of us want for the future from everyone else, and that the city of Cupertino will be so appreciative of the company’s jobs and tax revenue that high-concept design and the corporate equivalent of a gated community will be more important than trying to cut down on automobile dependence.

The company didn’t have to do it this way. It could have built the site with a combination of corporate offices, new housing (the notorious shortage of affordable homes in the Silicon Valley causes much environmental damage), and neighborhood services. It still could have found a way to secure parts of their offices that need to be secure. If it built enough new units of housing, perhaps it could reduce the hefty amount of corporate parking because some employees could choose to live nearby and walk. By facing the street, it could have set itself up nicely for a future transit line.

It could have helped create a real neighborhood by knitting together a district that is currently fractured spatially. It could have made this about the community rather than about itself. But this isn’t really for the people, see; this is for the 1 percent. If the Occupy movement had a clue, there would be tents going up in Cupertino right now.

When the new facility was first proposed, Galina Tachieva, author of the Sprawl Repair Manual, criticized it. So did Lloyd Alter of Treehugger. So did the LA Times. So did I. (But one urbanist whom I like very much, but who apparently worships at the Church of Steve Jobs, actually celebrated Jobs's advocacy for this mistake.) I had some hope that the design would be improved before being formally submitted. Silly me.

I guess I don’t have to like it. But I don’t have to buy Apple's products, either.

This articleoriginally appearedon the NRDC'sSwitchboard blogand is reprinted with permission.Imagescourtesy of Cupertino.