Google wants to put a 21st Century spin on the Manufacturing Age development of the company town.
The search engine giant intends to transform the acres around its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters into a walkable, bikeable community with 5,700 new homes.
“It’s really flipping the paradigm of designing for the car to be designing for people, and designing for people moving around on bike or walking,” says Laura Crescimano, founder of Sitelab Urban Studio, which led creation of the proposed plan.
Google, which owns most of the land in two areas called Shorebird and Joaquin, wanted to use its property to help begin to tackle the local housing shortage. But it also wanted to do that in a way that made people living there less likely to drive. The proposed design expands the “green loop,” a multi-use trail that currently exists between Google offices, to circle the entire district. “It’s hundreds of acres that now, instead of just connecting an office building to an office building, it’s connecting neighborhoods,” says Crescimano.
The plan connects the loop to regional trails and a new bike bridge, being built by the city that crosses a nearby highway so that people can easily walk or ride a bike into downtown Mountain View and reach the train station. Within the new development, a pedestrian-focused “social spine” lined with retail stores and other neighborhood amenities will be a short walk from apartments, so residents don’t have to drive to run most errands.
An elementary school is planned for the district, so kids can also walk to school. The plan also calls for a “pretty aggressive” reduction in parking compared to standard developments in the area, she says, with parking consolidated in garages that can later be converted into other uses.
