From: Lenny Siegel, Director, Pacific Studies Center
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996
The Economic Argument
Though the environmental assessment is not supposed to look at the economic
costs and benefits of air cargo at Moffett Field, the issue keeps coming
up. I am prepared to argue that uses other than an airfield would support
our local economy better, but the focus right now is on air cargo.
How important is it to Silicon Valley to cut 30 minutes (the drive from
Moffett to SFO) out of package delivery schedules?
For many years I have read and written locational theory articles about
Silicon Valley. In general, industries tend to cluster where the factors
of production are most advantageous. For example, the steel industry historically
located near sources of coal and iron ore. Firms making aluminum and silicon
ingots operate in areas with cheap electricity. Hershey's chose Oakdale
because it was close to dairy farms and sugar beets.
(By definition), the number-one factor of production in high-tech is brainpower.
Highly talented technical professionals have made Silicon Valley the world's
greatest concentration of high-tech industry. They (we) located here, to
a large degree, because we like the quality of life. Any significant threat
to our quality of life will cause people to move away (or not move in),
hurting the local economy.
...significant degradation of that quality of life is likely to discourage
new technical workers from moving in to the area and maybe even lead to
skilled people moving away. This risk is much more substantial than cutting
30 minutes off package delivery times.
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Redevelopment options