URBAN ANEMOIA IN SILICON VALLEY

URBAN ANEMOIA IN SILICON VALLEY:
On Google’s Architectural, Urban, and Real Estate Strategies in Mountain View and their Impacts on Socio-Spatial Inequalities and Planning Policies in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1998–2025

Jury:

DISSERTATION SUPERVISOR:

BOCQUET Denis : Professeur des ENSA - École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Strasbourg

RAPPORTEURS:

ROSEAU Nathalie : Professeur - École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
ALEXANDRE Olivier : Chargé de Recherches - CNRS

OTHER MEMBERS OF THE JURY:

COUTARD Olivier : Directeur de recherche - CNRS
CRAWFORD Margaret Professor Emerita - UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
FRICKER Pia : Professor - Aalto University
MERCURIALI Mathieu : Professeur des ENSA - École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris Val de Seine
PICON Antoine : Professor - Graduate School of Design Harvard University

Résumé:

     Since its creation in 1998, Google’s dazzling success on the Internet has been closely followed by a brick and mortar expansion throughout the world with offices and data centers on six continents and in more than 200 cities. 
     This dissertation precisely questions how Google’s architectural, urban, and real estate strategies in Mountain View – where the company is headquartered – from 1998 to 2025 have impacted local and regional urban policies. By meticulously examining Google’s architectural and urban expansion mainly through the archives of one particular City, this dissertation ambitions to provide a very fine-grained analysis of the evolving relationships between a digital behemoth, a suburban community, and urbanization. 
     While the focus is on Mountain View, the dissertation examines the impacts of Google’s growth on a city-scale and on a regional scale in terms of housing, transportation, socio-economic disparities, and racial inequalities. 
     Finally, Google’s growth and impacts are placed in a broader context of tech-led urbanization in the Valley, the Seattle’s Puget Sound Region, Washington, and New York, New York.

Keywords: Google, Mountain View, Silicon Valley, Tech-Led Urbanization, Local and Regional Planning, Office Park, Anemoia.