Silicon Valley techies are taking urban redesign into their own hands to transform a slice of San Francisco into a 'multigenerational urban campus'. Dubbed "City Campus," the vision aims to forge a community-centric space where people can meet all their needs within a 15-minute walk. According to fliers spotted in the Lower Haight and Alamo Square, which eventually led to a website housing the manifesto, City Campus seeks to cater to many remote workers' longing for deeper social connections and interaction.
After the tech boom years, which turned the city into a hub for innovation, some workers now find themselves alienated from the city's social fabric. They feel cut off by the very same technologies that supposedly connect us. Longing to find their place, they see City Campus as a solution to this modern urban dilemma—where "seasonal celebrations of collective effervescence" could flourish sans the traditional city bustle, revealed SFist.
"Never before in history has humanity been as resourced to prioritize the pursuit of meaning over survival," states the project's manifesto. It continues to lament the lack of "belonging, emotional resonance, and safety" that historical villages used to provide. The concept might be touching some nerve among locals, who are already inundated by numerous tech-driven changes in their cityscape. The City Campus group, emerging out of the silicon shadows, is not to be mistaken for the Silicon Valley tycoons dreaming up new cities from scratch in Solano County, as this project claims to strive for augmented integration and not isolation.
The founders of this urban renewal project, Jason Benn, Thomas Schulz, Patricia Mou, and Adi Melamed, have set up a GoFundMe with sights on raising $75,000 to kickstart their grand plan. This cash injection will supposedly be doled out to grantees tasked with creating the inaugural gathering hotspots. City Campus Real Estate, comprising Benn and an unnamed partner, stands at the helm of accumulating the real estate needed to make their dream a physical reality. During an interview with SFist, Benn likened the desired vibe to a "Friends" episode where "Chandler bursts into your apartment without having to plan anything."
The proposal has hit a nerve with city veterans, though, with anthropologist Setha Low questioning the implications such tech-driven bubbles might have on the community fabric of San Francisco. It raises the uncomfortable specter of gentrification and societal segregation—albeit in a new, tech-friendly guise. "How are these young professionals who want a new and a different kind of life really going to impact other people? And what does it do to the rest of the fiber of the city?" Low asked in remarks to SFist.
Despite grand aspirations, the City Campus vision draws fire for its seeming inclination to sanitize urban living, creating a sanitized bubble that eschews the city's more complex and grittier realities. Critics point out the dissonance between the developers' drive for communal living and the lack of engagement with the city's pressing issues, such as homelessness and drug addiction.
