Most of the fruit orchards were gone by then, but East San Jose still had acres of greenhouses. All in all, the Peninsula and South Bay, while much less exciting, were more comfortable then. And yet I think that much of the problem has not been growth per se, but our failure to match the Valley's explosive economic growth with an appropriate expansion of housing stock and transportation capacity. You see the same lag in California's energy situation. We're paying through the nose because we let demand get so far ahead of the supply.
Industry blames government.
I know CEOs who argue that local and state governments are dominated by mediocrities who have neither the vision nor the leadership skills to keep up with their corporate counterparts. There's some truth to that. There's another reason why it's hard for infrastructure to catch up even when the economy slows down. We certainly don't want the oppressive central planning with which the Soviet Union tried to coordinate economy and government and ruined both. We won't even try regional government, although our separate cities and counties clearly cannot cope with traffic problems and growth challenges that affect areas far beyond their own boundaries.