The Inception of Silicon Valley

In the second-half of the twentieth century, there was an ongoing trend of a new community emerging as new and quintessentially American type of community in the United States. Cities of knowledge were considerably regarded the engines of scientific production, with the high congregation of high-tech industries, homes for scientific workers and their families, with research universities in their hearts. They were the birthplaces of many great technological innovations that have transformed the way we work and live, homes for entrepreneurship and, at times, astounding wealth. Cities of knowledge, nevertheless, made the metropolitan areas in which they were located more economically successful during the twentieth century, and they promise to continue to do so in the twenty-first century with continuous development for boundlessly remarkable growth in prosperity. They are magnets for high skilled workers and highly productive industries, cities of knowledge are, in fact, the ultimate post-industrial city.
There should be a rudimentary understanding how advanced scientific technology thrived so well in certain places, and why it is difficult to replicate the same successfulness that it possesses which requires us looking at historical and spatial dimension of its development. It becomes very clear that these high-tech regions are not specifically resulted from complicated process of a fortuitous combination of capitalism and entrepreneurialism. Cities of knowledge are in fact the visible demonstration of something far greatly tremendous than simple communities invested by bourgeois and intellectual groups, they are consciously planned communities with such physical manifestation of particular political and cultural movement that happened back in the Cold War era. This type of community is surreptitiously created by the implosion of fear and anxiety triggered by the Cold War, which initially had the idea of issuing policies and spending priorities to transform universities by establishing a vibrant scientific research industry where all scientists and intellectuals were celebrities. It was the suburban age, when economic realignment, demographic changes and public subsidies utterly modified patterns of living, working and prospect of economic opportunities dramatically. The American research university was at the central focus of this process, as a newly introduced economic development engine, urban planner, and political actor. Universities and their administrators were central to the design and implementation of cities of knowledge, and successful scientific communities often depended upon the presence of an educational institution that not only had extensive research capacity, but was also an active participant in state and local political power structures. The government-university relationship that emerged was deliberately resulted by Cold War politics that did not simply affect the “inside game” — the internal workings and research priorities of universities but transformed the “outside game” of land management and economic development in the communities in which these institutions were located. This relationship was a two-way street in which federal programs influenced university choices, and academic institutions and traditions had an important effect upon the design and implementation of public policy. Cold War was relentlessly changing the whole concept of institutionalizing research facilities that were meant to serve in indisputable and unapologetic race of arms against the Soviet Union by relocating it uninhabited lands.

Over the second half of the twentieth century, California’s San Francisco Bay evolved from a primarily agricultural landscape far away from the centers of industry and capital into “Silicon Valley,” a sprawling new industrial landscape that was the undisputed global capital of high technology. Stanford, on the other hand, stood at the center of this economic growth, not only because it was extraordinarily successful in attracting major federal scientific R&D (Research and Development) monies, but also because it was an important and influential land developer. Enriched and empowered by Cold War grant money, located near some of the largest concentrations of military spending in the nation, and en- joying the unique asset of owning vast amounts of desirable and undeveloped land, Stanford entered into a highly successful land development and planning business. The focal of Stanford’s real estate development work was a research park whose architecture and design standards became models for countless other industrial developments. Stanford’s was not the first research park, but it was the first to be so closely associated with, and physically proximate to, a major research university. This connection between university and industrial development set an important precedent, as did the way that Stanford incorporated a particularly Californian architectural vernacular into the design principles of the industrial park. Other universities and local institutions embraced Stanford as a model city of knowledge, often overlooking the many unique regional and institutional assets that allowed Stanford’s economic development efforts to be so successful. With generous modesty and offerings from the founders of Stanford University, Palo Alto eventually became a model of a new community with such rich fertile lands that were available for extensive expansion and new suburbanization. This region now houses the most wealthy individuals and large number of white collar workers that emigrated from every corner of the United States and the world to work and reside in the most advanced technological industry in the world with high concentration of research facilities. Flourished by congregation of high-tech companies, Silicon Valley transformed itself from agricultural land to the disputable area with such immensely high cost of living and skyrocketing
Federal policies of the Cold War and its adopted patterns in economic development were the central ground in implementing sufficient effects in the relative interaction between public and private institutions in high-tech production of the U.S. Private universities, or more precisely to be called, elite universities were fuelled by tremendous amount of investment, created institutional structures and physical spaces that served as incubators and melting pot for privatized scientific industry. Research parks which consists elite university and other research facilities were immeasurably enriched by Cold War defense programs. Elements that contributed to the unique specialty and peculiarity of Silicon Valley on the basis of the geographic, intellectual, cultural, and spatial context in which Stanford University was founded, have had an immense effect upon its development as an institution, its emergence as one of the preeminent Cold War research universities, and its role in the development of Silicon Valley. Stanford was founded by a industrialist and tycoon, Leland Stanford, who believed in training young people for the modern world of corporate capitalism. It was an institution that, from the beginning, was designed for teaching and research, and it was assumed that the fruits of these endeavors would benefit commercial enterprise and further the technological development of California and the West. At the same time, Stanford was removed from the urban environment, an environment where business was conducted but also where social turbulence and disorder would disturb the process of learning and prevent the creation of a controlled, secured community.
It was never occurred to be a coincidence or accidental selection, choosing the San Francisco Bay area to be a new site for the relocation of research facilities and high-tech industry that significantly propelled the economic development of the region. San Francisco, while much smaller than New York or Chicago, was the largest urban settlement west of the Mississippi, and it shared many of their urban woes. The vast wealth generated by extractive industries of the Western states, the exploitation of gold, silver, then lumber, had made made San Francisco the “Queen City of the West” but also a crowded, turbulent place. In the minds of Victorian-era industrial capitalists like the Stanfords, San Francisco was hardly an appropriate place to start a university focused on educating and uplifting young people. Just as city residents needed to breathe fresh air and enjoy pleasing vistas in city parks, college students needed a peaceful, natural setting in which to learn. The Palo Alto Farm was part of the burgeoning agricultural area of the Santa Clara Valley, called the “Valley of Heart’s Delight” for its rich soil and pleasant climate. While its agricultural activity made the valley far from “natural,” the lightly settled area was a dramatic contrast to the crowded city to the north. The Valley’s already established role as an upper-class retreat further distinguished it from San Francisco; while plenty of working-class residents toiled in its mines and on its farms, the area was notable for the number of significant estates owned by Western capitalists. It is assumed to be resulted by Cold War politics and military strategy to relocate research facilities in less populated ares where it should have been disintegrated and disassociated from well-known metropolitan cities in East Coast and Midwest states. Not to mention the dense population and limited spaces obstructed the installation of scientific research facilities that was aimed to foster a new growingly dynamic, versatile and clandestinely invigorating vision of constructing war machine military industry designed to serve Cold War politics. The relocation and invention of research parks in San Francisco Bay was additionally meant to avoid any physical contact with any form of imminent attack imposed by either Cuba nor the Soviet Union, as most of main economic powerhouses, at that time, were centrally located in the East Coast and Midwest.
The Second World War had such a profound and lasting impact on the San Francisco Bay region. Being transformed into a military hub, the Bay Area became a center of wartime production and a naval base for military fleet in the West coast. War labors were poured into San Francisco, Oakland, and the surrounding counties. Richmond, an industrial suburb of the East Bay, became known as the hometown of “Rosie the Riveter,” the iconic figure representing the millions of women who came to work in the factories. With the increasingly growing population boom and rapid residential suburbanization, military spendings stimulated by Cold War politics constantly prioritized the region as the primarily concentrated efforts to flourish the region with implementation of military bases, production facilities, and wartime housing projects located outside the city limits. However, another important factor spurring decentralization in the Bay Area was the fact that industrial activity had long established what one observer has termed a “centrifugal” pattern of development. Since the nineteenth century, factories had located not only in the industrial part of San Francisco’s downtown, but had moved further south on the San Francisco Peninsula or across the Bay to industrial suburbs like Alameda and Richmond. Compounding the scattering of industrial districts was the multinodal quality of the metropolitan area from the late nineteenth century forward, as Oakland grew steadily that challenged San Francisco in size and economic supremacy. Eventually, wartime growth incentives reinforced industrial, infrastructural and residential patterns of the region, and additionally created supports for mass suburbanization of people and jobs in postwar eras. Driven by the political philosophy, “business associationalism”, which was conceptualized by groups of politicians, industrial tycoons, and intellectuals, the incredulity of such phenomenal growth of region astonished many urban cities on how to consistently structuring and organizing the impeccable amount of influential investments transforming the region. The public and private dynamic of states and regional politics that manifested this political philosophy was conceptually inspired by the U.S President, Herbert Hoover, who was also a lifelong friend of Stanford University. He saw the necessity of close relations and interconnectedness between Federal and private business groups, and therefore, it should be continually strengthened and developed further. The political philosophy of the men who ran the San Francisco Bay region in the mid–twentieth century men who often had professional and personal connections to Stanford, was one that simultaneously respected the right of capitalist enterprise to operate freely with a minimum of government regulation and rationally understood the value of public-sector investment for regional economic development in the Cold War world.
Throughout the whole course of venturing historical background of Silicon Valley, the geography of high technology was no accident. Nor was it a simple process, but the result of a complex combination of fundamental economic shifts, changing geopolitics, demographic transformations, and individual and institutional actions were flourished and strengthened by Cold War politics. The second half of the twentieth century in the United States was a time when cities and regions, including institutions and industries, that had once been at the top of the economic heap lost ground to new places, people, and industries in the hierarchy of wealth and influence. Stanford University went from luxurious cocoon for future scientific intellectuals and visionary industrialist, to being the perfected institutionalized research park that receive enormously tremendous amount of benefits of largely extensive postwar suburbanization and Cold War military spending. Silicon Valley is perhaps best described to be perfected vision of futuristic manifestation of economic powerhouse that is indestructible and nearly immune from economic recession. It illustrates strikingly visible and powerful message of what sort of qualification and requirements are needed to construct this type of community. A humongous amount of money is definitely required as the Cold War had a decisive effect on economic development and the shape of urban space because it provided a significant influx of capital. The city of knowledge came to be because of massive federal defense investments during the first two decades of the Cold War. This money enriched elite research universities, allowing them to vastly enlarge their academic scope and physical size, and it prompted an explosion of industrial research and high-tech production. It also came clear to us that a powerful university playing a central role in coordinating and monitoring the structure of the city of knowledge, with resources, and willingness and determination to embrace corporate partnership in any given economic and social conditions, therefore, it should be leading pioneer with institutional abilities in local economic development.