Closed Circuit Commons: SF v NYC
(Mailboxes for 20 at a downtown Hacker House. Thanks for the warm welcome Adrienne.)
At 8:30am on Market Street or Mission, you’ll see a number of people hurrying into buildings but no coffee carts selling $2 steaming cups or donuts on display. No line around the block for Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. The commuters are on their way, unencumbered with hot coffee or an almond croissant. Why would they stop outside when there are baristas brewing Blue Bottle 30 feet from their desk, and at no cost to them? How could a cart or a deli survive when competing with free food and drinks within reach of these hard working (and well paid) Internet workers?
Lots of community in SF is locked inside. Twitter HQ is contained within a tall building in the middle of Market Street. Facebook has a campus accessible only by car or bus. Even smaller companies are holed up in offices away from street view. From the outside, you would never know there were so many builders inside.
Visiting from New York City, a place that often requires dodging people on sidewalks or hurrying to nab the last empty bench in the park, it feels desolate. Even the neighborhoods at 7pm have stillness about them. This is not a city without people, it’s just they convene out of view.
Campus living
On Tuesday night, I attended an event at one of the Campus houses, a hacker townhouse with 20 bedrooms, two kitchens and a sizable patio. Walking up, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was a nondescript townhouse on a quiet street. No signs from the outside. No open windows with talk wafting into the streets. I was buzzed in and immediately immersed in a bustling community of people talking, eating, and sharing inside. There were 30+ pairs of shoes by the door and numbered mailboxes in the entryway. Behind one front door was an entire neighborhood of creatives, builders and entrepreneurs.
As rent increases and demand outpaces supply for rentals, community living makes sense. The campus rent is around $1000 per room month, reasonable for a place downtown.
Cheap rent isn’t the only upside. A drone entrepreneur, living in a different hacker house, told me about the freedom community living gave him. He lived in SF for over a year but never in a permanent place. He floated from hacker houses to Airbnbs for weeks at a time. He said he kept few possessions, expect for a motorcycle. It enabled him to move on quickly and to commute from anywhere without the concern of available public transpiration. If he decided he wanted to move across town or to another city, he could decide on a whim. Own nothing, just float.
I could relate this this. I’ve done this myself as a sublet in NYC, Chicago and LA for a few months at a time, just brought a suitcase and found a sublet with furniture included. It helped me decide whether I wanted to choose that neighborhood or another. The difference was, the maximum number of roommates I’ve had at one time is 3 people, not 23. I had acquaintances at each place, not a built in community.
New York City Commons
In New York City, if I wanted to spend time with 23 friends at one time, we’d have to meet at a park, a bar or an office space that had the luxury of all of that room. Small common spaces within NYC apartments (or at least the ones $1000/per month could buy you) limit the amount of community that can be contained behind closed doors. Our personal communities spill onto the streets and public places.
Even office culture can be seen buzzing outside throughout the day. Few companies offer free cafeterias, so entrepreneurs have taken it upon themselves to develop in the commons. More restaurants, food trucks and pop-up street food vendors arrive around business districts. Even small shops that survive on delivery are apparent with delivery bikes momentarily chained up outside office high rises. More demand, more supply is created that benefits everyone who lives in that area.
Businesses are building behind computer screens but their people are fueled by the buzzing city outside their company walls. The ecosystem is easy to see from any street corner.
High Quantity Collisions
Zappos’ CEO Tony Hseih believes “the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing ideas.” That’s where the ideas live, in people living within the same space. So much so that he’s built all of the Downtown Project on this vision, maximize collisions and accelerate serendipity. More creativity happens between diverse perspectives than in unified ones. To get involved, just start spending time in Downtown Las Vegas, the community is visible in desert daylight.
There is more of a closed commons culture in SF. The mechanism for people being together is there but it’s in protected communities. Like Twitter’s cafeterias, coffee bars and common work spaces or Apple’s mandate of only one set of bathrooms in the center, in order to encouraged people to make eye-contact and make things happen – these are taking the idea of the commons into private networks. Only Twitter employees or Apple employees will be part of that commons. Everything outside of those walls, stays outside.
Open Circuit v Closed Circuit Collisions
Collisions are a good thing, but should they happen in a closed circuit? If you take a private car or bus to your office, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner inside, and only walk from your office door to your private transportation out, are you part of that city? You may spend more time with colleagues but is that enough to create more meaningful creative collisions? Should only company employees collide or should there be more invested in the commons like in Las Vegas & NYC? I think the former may be great in the short term, but the latter is a way to help develop great cities in the long term.
Maybe we should have more hacker houses in New York City to help new creatives float in, even just for a little while. In San Francisco, maybe there should be more public, street-level coffee shops supported by big company employees (even if employees drink free). Giving back to city commons helps the whole city rise.
