We hear the likes of Live Pictures CEO Kate Mitchell extolling the uniqueness of the region's economy. It's all part of an ecosystem which is part of a healthy environment for starting, creating and growing healthy companies. It's a constant struggle. An elderly European American couple notes how they used to spend their evenings on the front porch, interacting with neighbors. Now they seek refuge in their back yard, away from the noise and bustle and crime of the streets.
People are burned out, they're exhausted, they're lonely.
They ought to be happy, but they're not. A series of municipal bureaucrats from Sunnyvale to Milpitas calls for regional solutions to the valley's environmental, transportation and housing problems, but just how such solutions will be implemented amid an array of competing political jurisdictions isn't articulated. In the absence of such solutions, there's been a 230 percent increase in traffic congestion since 1995. Nonetheless, there are occasional signs of promise in Silicon Valley at the Crossroads . There are teachers who genuinely seem to care about educating their students, social workers who seem equally dedicated to ending gang violence, and open-space advocates committed to preserving what remains of the foothills that loom over what only a few generations ago was known as the Valley of Heart's Delight.