San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the country with more than 1 million residents, has long been described as America’s “most forgettable” major city. That caricature has persisted even though it sits at the heart of one of the world’s most mythologized subcultures, Silicon Valley. The city is home to the headquarters of Adobe, Zoom, EBay and, in the future, Google’s largest campus.
Soon, San Jose may shed its forgettable image. In a region that is the poster child for NIMBYism, San Jose is one of the only cities with the politics necessary to build dense, sustainable housing, providing a model for progressive urban development policy.
Sprawl has been the dominant development pattern across California for decades. In 1920, San Jose was 17 square miles. By 1970, it was 120 square miles, its expansion fueled by highways and developers covering farmland with a sea of single-family homes linking San Jose to nearby towns such as Cupertino and Sunnyvale. This growth model has resulted in a statewide housing shortage of 2.5 million units and exorbitant home prices.
