[ForrestN]

I think it's more that the fact of having a giant, expensive separate campus is itself not a particularly progressive situation, regulations aside. Just a few common sense examples of the problems with this approach: massive, custom-built complexes are very hard to re-use if and when search advertising revenue declines; tax revenues go to random places that don't need them, instead of cities that could use rich companies headquartered there to better support public services; many employees still have to do business in big cities, so there is a massive amount of unnecessary travel to and from cities and international airports; etc. The issue is "campuses" as much as it has anything specific to do with parking regulations, which I assume all of these companies knew about when they made the decision to build the campuses.

[rrdharan]

Yep, I agree with you to an extent but I was also using "campuses" and "offices" interchangeably.

The Google New York offices follow exactly the model that you are suggesting.

[ForrestN]

Agreed! Here's hoping they cancel the Mountainview expansion and focus on replicating the New York approach.

[cromwellian]

Where would you locate an office for 20,000 people in Northern CA in a city? SF? You'd make housing in the city much worse, and you'd be hard pressed to find the land or permits for it.

[calichoochoo]

Salesforce somehow manages to house 7000 of their employees in San Francisco, and Wells Fargo somehow seats 8000 of theirs. Nobody is suggesting that Google should move all of their people to SF, but I am suggesting they should consolidate into larger offices in the centers of principal cities: San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.

[kmicklas]

And most importantly, outside the Bay Area.

[cromwellian]

I don't think it's viable to encourage companies to do this unless public transport and other services like schools are improved significantly in these cities. San Francisco isn't NYC.