closer to our backyard," says a resident. (Nick Hoff)
Sunnyvale (population 131,000) calls itself the "Heart of Silicon Valley"--a reference to its geographic location along the Palo Alto-San Jose corridor and to the hundreds of technology companies that make Sunnyvale their home. No longer merely a suburb, Sunnyvale is part of what urban planners call an "edge city"--a suburb in a dispersed region that has all the jobs and retail its residents require, making a traditional urban core unnecessary.
Critics of sprawl hold that edge cities suffocate cultural and communal life with their low building densities and automobile-centric designs. Another oft-cited problemis "unifunctional zoning"--regulations that allow only one kind of building, like single family houses, to be built in a given area. "Before unifunctional or negative zoning dictated land use," writes sociologist Ray Oldenburg in Celebrating the Third Place, "little stores, taverns, offices, and eateries were located within walking distance of most town and city dwellers, and those places constituted 'the stuff of community.'"
Today, most suburbanites have nothing within walking distance but a 7-Eleven--if they're lucky. They have no public spaces that are a pleasure to be in, no places where they can walk and want to walk, no places where they can meet people and feel comfortable talking to them. In today's anonymous suburban landscape, there are no places with nooks and crannies and walls that create and define spaces, that make you feel like you are somewhere--not lost in a sea of lawns or undefined streets or whizzing thruways.
Sunnyvale bears the telltale signs of suburban isolation. Its bleak downtown mall, rambling subdivisions, countless strip malls, and lack of a street grid have destroyed whatever pedestrian-friendly prospects the town might have had. Sunnyvale has instead become a broad, monotonous blanket of one- and two-story single-family homes, sliced by major traffic arteries and their attendant Safeways, Wells Fargos, and Blockbusters. In the new Cherry Orchard strip mall (named in honor of the trees it supplanted several years ago), residents sip lattes in the faux authenticity of Starbucks, where the "graffiti" on the milk and sugar stations and the dark (cherry?) wood tables attempt to create precisely the sense of authentic place that Starbucks and Sunnyvale don't have.
According to locals, the only pleasant part of downtown is a block-long section of Murphy Avenue. Constructed at the turn of the century, the street was built for humans, not automobiles. The street's width is approximately the same as the height of its buildings--a rule of thumb for well-proportioned thoroughfares. The buildings come right up to the sidewalk, and there are no garages to break up the flow of shops. From this pedestrian-friendly design arises a sense of enclosed space--a sense of place--that makes people feel comfortable being there. It is therefore the hottest spot to go in Sunnyvale for a beer, a cup of coffee, or a plate of pad thai.
| The rest of the downtown, approximately thirty square blocks, is made up of small homes, a couple streets with one-story Town and Country shops, and the gargantuan eyesore that is Sunnyvale's mall. Originally dubbed the Sunnyvale Town Center, the mall nowadays is officially known as the WAVE (Walking and Village Entertainment), though some residents prefer to call it other names--"the manure pile," for instance. |  The WAVE--Walking and Village Entertainment--mall, built in 1976. |
Sunnyvale's new plan calls for removing the mall's roof and opening it to pedestrian traffic from adjacent Murphy Avenue. But the mall itself will not be razed: city planners and consultants argue that its anchor stores are great assets. "If you wanted these department stores today, we'd have to spend millions of dollars to get them here," says Paternoster (even though, he concedes, "you wish you could start from scratch."). Besides improving the general aesthetics, the mall remodeling effort is aimed at attracting higher-end stores like Barnes & Noble and the Gap, as well as a large multiplex.
Renovating the mall is only one part of the much broader downtown redevelopment plan. The plan also calls for increased density in the surrounding thirty-block area by zoning for over 2,000 units of apartment buildings and five blocks of six-story office buildings. A public plaza, now under construction, will greet train riders returning from work (and, planners hope, arriving to work) in the new downtown. The plaza will also open onto the courtyard of a planned eight-story apartment complex, which will also house retail stores on its ground-level floors--only a stone's throw from three office buildings already nearing completion. (So far the only elements of the plan under construction are the office buildings, the plaza, and the two-story parking garages on the mall's corner lots, all of which were already zoned under Sunnyvale's current general plan. The other elements are proposed zoning changes that will await a developer if the plan is approved.)
For a city that until recently had no building more than three stories in height, the redevelopment plan promises a radical transformation. And not surprisingly, many Sunnyvaleans--especially residents who live near downtown--are concerned about the proposed changes. Even though some of them profess their preference for more traditional, denser downtowns like those in nearby Palo Alto or Los Gatos, they fear that any modifications to Sunnyvale's center might spell the end of their quiet suburban neighborhoods. In particular, they worry about the increased traffic that a vibrant downtown will inevitably bring.
Sunnyvale resident Mark Matizinger is among those who oppose the plan's dramatic scope. A forty-two-year-old hardware salesman, Matizinger lives within view ofthe three office buildings already under construction. "I bought my house to get the neighborhood flavor and the convenience of downtown," he says. "But the city has got that much closer to our backyard."
Andy Maloney says he is all for a "traditional downtown," but insists that the plan is a disaster. Maloney is co-director of the Friends of Sunnyvale, a citizens group that says it is in favor of "smart growth"--that is, development that avoids sprawl. Maloney argues that the plan's proposals for six- and eight-story buildings will create "stone canyons," rather than the "traditional" downtown that could be achieved with three-story buildings. Further, the proposed high density will bring such increased traffic that few will enjoy going downtown. The plan will not address the downtown's central problem--its lack of a street grid--because it refuses to uproot the mall, whose stores and parking lots have gobbled up the old grid. As a result, claims Maloney, the plan will do little to boost pedestrian traffic or improve the circulation of cars in the downtown area.
Supporters of the plan counter that something has to be done to improve the downtown situation. Among their numbers are a few long-time Sunnyvale residents, likeMonica Davis, of the Charles Street 100 Neighborhood Association, who looks forward to walking to dinner, movies, and concerts in the new plaza. Many of the plan's supporters, however, are newcomers to Sunnyvale--young, educated professionals who work in the hi-tech industry that now dominates the region. "I can't stand sprawl," says Daniel Simms, a twenty-nine-year-old computer programmer. "I hate driving everywhere. It always feels like more urban areas have a tighter sense of community."
City on the edge