I’m excited to announce that I will be speaking at the Urban History Association Conference in Los Angeles this October. The panel is co-organized by Matthew Lasner, editor of Platform Journal, and Margaret Crawford, urban design professor at University California Berkeley. For conference information — https://www.urbanhistory.org/uha2025
ABSTRACT: Since Bell Laboratory’s move from Manhattan to New Jersey in 1941, tech has clustered in dispersed, segregated, autocentric suburban campuses. This paper analyzes their evolving spatial logic in tech’s primary home since the 1970s: Silicon Valley. Some of the determinative factors are well understood. To build their brands and prevent employee drift, companies shifted from inexpensive leased offices to purpose-built billion-dollar campuses, such as Google’s Gradient Canopy. But other forces remain in play. As ambitious engineers leave established corporations to create start-ups, they continue to choose inexpensive, dispersed office parks; thereby reinstating the cycle of low-density suburban spatial production.