[Excerpt From Chapter Three ]

Urbanism and Underwear

Anne (not her real name) had worked at the small used bookstore in Menlo Park since 1967. During this time, she watched the downtown change around her. It used to be a place where the city’s politicians came to meet, a place where the average person came to buy a television, some furniture, or some shampoo. Downtown was the area’s commercial, political, and economic center. Then, hard times hit. The furniture and appliance stores closed or moved out to the malls. McDonald’s out on the highway replaced the everyday restaurants on Main Street.

Then, about a decade ago, things picked up again. New restaurants began to move in. Lots of them. The local supermarket, Draeger’s, opened an enormous upscale supermarket. Fancy boutiques blossomed. Menlo Park had come back. Only, things were different. Downtown had once been a place where you went to have your daily needs met. It was as comfortable as an old shoe. Now, it was fancy. Although she liked the downtown’s success, she wished-.-.-. that there was a place to buy something more ordinary. A smattering of older stores remained–a hardware store, a pet store, a dry cleaner–but their days seemed numbered. And all these restaurants! You could have too much of a good thing. So one day, Anne went and counted all the restaurants in this roughly two-block-long downtown.

There were thirty-seven.

“I just wish there was someplace to buy a bra or some underwear,” she said. “I’d trade a half-dozen of these coffee shops for one place to buy something practical.”

The trajectory of Menlo Park, from up to down to up again, is similar to that of the other downtowns of the Silicon Valley. They include Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and small shopping streets like California Avenue in Palo Alto. They have gone from ordinary building blocks of an economy, to outmoded appendages, to luxury ornaments. These old-fashioned downtown streets, many of them once centers of farming communities, are very alive now. They are also unnecessary. Their luck is that they exist in a suburban territory that can afford to keep them alive. They play a role for their areas, similar to what San Francisco does for the region, as beautiful antiques.

What role do these old downtowns play in this new city? They are the depository of place in the region. They are where you go to experience it. It is their franchise. As such, they punctuate the suburban monotony of the region. Every few miles, you come across another old downtown where you know you can get out, walk around–and of course find something to eat.

Eating out seems to be the main function of these new centers. They are one long dining table. In Palo Alto, the downtown is lacquered over with high-priced Italian restaurants, and more open all the time. On a Thursday night, lines stretch out of every other restaurant. In a world where people are young and work long hours, eating out is one of the main forms of recreation. For some reason, Italian restaurants threaten to suffocate you. Every other doorway offers aruguled this and balsamiced that. San Francisco is known for its French restaurants. In Silicon Valley, they love Italian.

What has happened is not simply the upscaling of an area. Something more structural has happened. The downtown of Menlo Park is now an appendage. Its businesses are able to survive precisely because they are unnecessary. You don’t go to Menlo Park to buy a pack of Fruit of the Loom, a computer, a television, or some shoelaces. You go to the mall down the road, or the warehouse-style power centers. Nor do you go to Menlo Park to see your attorney or take out a loan; those functions have moved to corporate office parks behind well-bermed lawns. The older downtowns instead have become like an art museum, a luxury that gives you a taste of a different time, and a welcome respite from your usual hectic surroundings. And as with an art museum, only the wealthiest and most upscale areas can afford one. They are luxury items, dispensable but nice to have around. They give young people a place to court with more atmosphere than the mall. But they carry no significant economic freight. If they were blown off the map, people’s palates would suffer but not much else. These old downtowns no longer function as cities, under my definition, because they no longer create wealth. Sure, their restaurants and pricey supermarkets have value, but they exist by taking the dollars that have been created elsewhere, and cycling them through. They are a secondary tier of an economy, not the primary one. If the chip plants and computer labs closed tomorrow, the pricey boutiques would go dark in a week.

It is true that some people can meet their daily needs in Menlo Park, but this is an example of the bifurcation of our society. The wealthy can afford to shop at Draeger’s. They can pay for the privilege of a supermarket within walking distance, and for an older, more personalized form of service. They can order steak for $30 a portion at Dal Boffo instead of a hamburger at a mom-and-pop cafe. It’s urbanism for the rich. The masses are left to the car and the Wal-Mart and the Food Lion. Anne may eventually get a place to buy underwear. But it would likely be a boutique lingerie store, with Aubade bras for $100 a pop. Not Hanes.

It’s significant that one place that does not have a downtown is East Palo Alto, home to the poor, who are the people most in need of an environment that functions without cars.