Let’s face it; it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and now we can make it Facebook official by moving in to the social networking giant’s custom-built city.
“It’s a good thing, right?” John Tenanes pondered to the New York Times. Tenanes is the vice president of real estate for Facebook and has been overseeing the development of the mixed-use community that includes offices, housing (225 of which will be offered at below-market rates), cultural centers, retail and all the other amenities essential to city living.
The plan went public last summer, and several other tech companies, like Google and its 10,000 new housing units close to its Mountain View campus, have similar plans for workers’ housing nearby their sprawling tech companies, as the Times reports.
But outsiders remain skeptical. For them, this is just another encroachment into surrounding neighborhoods, which has seen prices soar—the median cost of a home in Silicon Valley now $968,000, and could living in Willow Valley feel like constantly being at work?
“Facebook has the attitude that if you are really a good employee you will live, eat and sleep Facebook. That creates insularity, which is a big problem in Silicon Valley already,” author David Kirkpatrick said to the Times. There’s also the issue of the social network’s ongoing privacy scandal that, in one week, has cost Zuckerberg $10 billion, according to Time. [NYT] — Erin Hudson